US Special Operations Forces have recently discovered a fatwa justifying the systematic rape and treatment of women captured and relegated as sex slaves by the Islamic State, or ISIL.
This specific document was among a cache of other documents discovered and confiscated by US Special Operations Forces when they raided a location in Syria back in May. The raid aimed to target an ISIL official with ties to the sex trade. The fatwa is like a how-to manual that covers issues on how "owners" should treat their female slaves. According to The Telegraph, leading ISIL expert at Princeton University, Cole Bunzel, says the fatwa seems to have the force of law and goes beyond previous known rulings on slavery, including a 2014 pamphlet detailing how to treat slaves. It is an interpretation of centuries' old Islamic teachings on the treatment of women held in captivity.
ISIL's Committee of Research and Fatwas issued the document, labeled as Fatwa Number 64 and dated January 29, 2015. It starts with a question regarding the matter of violations on the treatment of female sex slaves and lists 15 authoritative warnings and orders in response to the question. The rules set the parameters of sexual relations between ISIL soldiers and their sex slaves. Some rules are detailed like a father and son not allowed to share a sex slave, or an "owner" of a mother and daughter not allowed to have sexual intercourse with both.
The United Nations and several human rights groups have called attention to the Islamic State's "systematic abduction and rape of thousands of young women and girls", some of them as young as 8 or 12. According to a Human Rights Watch report based on the interview of 20 female slaves who escaped captivity, young women and girls captured by ISIL fighters were shipped off to ISIL-controlled territories, where they were regularly subjected to rape and sexual abuse. Some were raped multiple times within a day. Some girls were exchanged, passed over, given as gifts to other fighters, or sold at the "market". Many of these women are members of the Yazidi community in northern Iraq, and have been particularly targeted by ISIL when jihadists attacked towns all over the province of Sinjar.
According to Reuters, who also analyzed the document, the militant group is deliberately misinterpreting old religious teachings and quotes to justify raping thousands of women and young girls and forcing them into sexual slavery, particularly northern Iraqi Yazids.
