The Islamic State’s murderous rampage across the Middle East continues apace, and the marauding terrorist group is using sex slavery as a tool to recruit and quash opposition, the New York Times reported in a shocking exposé this week.
Islamic State soldiers capture and rape girls as young as 12 years old, the report said. The terror group, which grows by the day, claims the Quran supports this behavior because the victims are not Muslims.
But for CNN’s Chris Cuomo, there’s another question that needs to be asked: Does the Times’ report on the Islamic State’s systematic brutalizing of captured women feed into negative stereotypes about Islam?
“Let’s finish this part of the discussion on a point that you feel often needs to be made,” Cuomo said as he interviewed women’s rights activist Qanta Ahmed. “This feeds the impression that these Muslims are animals, savages and their faith makes them that way.”
“And it feeds an impression of what Islam is,” he added. “What is your response to that?”
Ahmed ignored Cuomo’s line of questioning and focused instead on criticizing radical Islam.
“This is Islamism at work,” she said. “We’ve talked a lot about this on this show. Islamism is totalitarianism … totalitarianism, that means absolute domination of the self.”
The Times’ report appears to back her claim. In fact, according to the report, rape of the conquered is a core principle of the Islamic State’s ideology.
“The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution,” the report reads.
More than anything else, the Islamic State treat captured non-Muslim women like livestock. “The trade in Yazidi women and girls has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them,” the Times reported.
The numbers are staggering. The Islamic State captured 5,270 Yazidi women in 2014, according to the report. Roughly 3,144 remain in captivity.
For the Islamic State, sex slavery is just like any other business.
“To handle them, the Islamic State has developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery, including sales contracts notarized by the ISIS-run Islamic courts. And the practice has become an established recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden,” the Times reported.
One victim said that her abuser would always pray just before raping her.
“He said that raping me is his prayer to God. I said to him, ‘What you’re doing to me is wrong, and it will not bring you closer to God.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s allowed. It’s halal,'” one victim, who escaped this year after nine months of abuse, told the Times.
