PREFACE: A sampling of the “straight” news pictures of Muthana that these influential news sources could have used in their stories, and to promote them on social media — instead of the staged “Madonna & Child” images
(1) Examples of the national mainstream “news” media visually depicting Hoda Mothana and her son as Madonna & Child, and writing sympathetic accompanying narratives
(2) Do these “journalists” really not know of the high probability that Mothana was lured by, and participated in ISIS’s abuse and murder of Yazidi slaves, and other acts of terrorism?
PREFACE: A sampling of the “straight” news pictures of Muthana that these influential news sources could have used in their stories, and to promote them on social media — instead of the staged “Madonna & Child” images
These are just some of the “straight” news photos that these news organizations could have employed in their stories, and promotions about Muthana, instead of the staged “Madonna & Child” ones. These were found doing an image search of “Hoda Muthana” at Google, and wading through the reams of staged photos, until these were located.
Instead, as documented below, every one of the major “news” organizations opted to, in effect, collaborate with Muthana to depict her and her son as a modern-day “Madonna & Child,” via clearly staged photos.
(1) Examples of the national mainstream “news” media visually depicting Hoda Mothana and her son as Madonna & Child, and writing sympathetic accompanying narratives
Caption: “Hoda Muthana with her son in Syria. Ms. Muthana was a 20-year-old college student in Alabama when she joined the Islamic State in 2014. She used Twitter to encourage terrorist attacks in the West, but now says she regrets it and wants to return to the United States. Credit: Ivor Prickett for The New York Times”
After being smuggled into the caliphate, the student, Hoda Muthana, posted a photograph on Twitter showing her gloved hands holding her American passport. “Bonfire soon,” she promised.
That was more than four years ago. Now, after being married to three Islamic State fighters and witnessing executions like those she had once cheered on social media, Ms. Muthana says she is deeply sorry and wants to return home to the United States. […]
Home alone as her husband went out to fight, she posted toxic tweets under her pseudonym. “Hats off to the mujs in Paris,” she said in one of them, using an abbreviation for “mujahedeen” on the day in 2015 when jihadists stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed 12 people at the satirical magazine.
She also urged others to join the terror organization. “There are soooo many Aussies and Brits here but where are the Americans, wake up u cowards,” she posted.
And she used her account to help incite attacks in the West, including in the United States. “Americans wake up!” she wrote on March 15, 2015. “You have much to do while you live under our greatest enemy, enough of your sleeping! Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them.”
Clearly, the NY Times journalists knew exactly who and what Muthana was. Yet they (or their editor) published the above photo with this story, depicting this terrorist and her son, sired by another terrorist, as the modern-day version of “Madonna & Child.”
ABC News
This promo was Tweeted by ABC “foreign correspondent”James Longman (link here). In any other day and context, this copy would be considered a PR pitch, framing Mothana’s “narrative” in a way as to evoke worldwide sympathy for her “cause” (emphasis added):
Tonight on ABCWorldNews, Hoda Mothana, the American young woman who went to join ISIS, gives her first TV interview since fleeing the so called Islamic State a month ago. She’s alone with her 18 month old son in a Syrian refugee camp. Full of regret, she’s begging to come home.
Caption: “Hoda Muthana is pictured with her 18-month-old son. She left Alabama four years at the age of 19 to marry an ISIS fighter. Now, she wants to return to the U.S. “
Here are some key passages from this “news” story:
“Child-like, and speaking in almost hushed tones, she says she just wants forgiveness. But in our conversation, it isn’t entirely clear she understands what she’s done.”
“There was no point telling her that many people believe what she did was evil. No point lambasting her. I tried to gently explain to her the ISIS horrors, but that didn’t appear to register.”
“In our interview, I didn’t get the sense she could be a secret jihadi, still harboring dangerous views. To me, there was a feeling of a young girl perhaps easily led, who went from a not very serious Muslim to an ISIS wife in one year. And that’s who I think Hoda Mothana is.”
Do those sound like the words of an objective journalist — or an opinion piece, written by Muthana’s defense lawyer?
This was among the most balanced stories produced regarding Muthana, citing input from terrorism analyst Seamus Hughes, Deputy Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who indicated the Muthana and other ISIS brides knew exactly what ISIS was, and did.
Here, however, is the Tweet CNN produced to publicize the its story — which, to the casual observer, project a completely different perception than that which is in the story:
(2) Do these “journalists” really not know of the high probability that Mothana participated in ISIS’s abuse and murder of Yazidi slaves, or other terrorism?
Many non-Muslim Americans have little knowledge of the origins, ideology, intent and barbaric savagery of ISIS. The following video documentary, by PBS-Frontline, is a good introduction:
(2.1) Timeline of ISIS & Hoda Muthana reveals no doubt that if she “researched” the terrorist group, as she claims she did, she knew exactly what she was getting into
(2.2) Claudia Rosett’s vital timeline of ISIS’s post-2013 evolution, of which it can be reasonably assumed that Murthana knew all or at least part of, before she left the U.S. to join it
(2.3) Accounts of Muslim ISIS wives participating in the rape, abuse and torture of Yazidi girls and women
(2.4) Case studies and background information on ISIS’s rape, torture and sale of female Yazidi slaves
(2.1) Timeline of ISIS & Hoda Muthana reveals no doubt that if she “researched” the terrorist group, as she claims she did, she knew exactly what she was getting into
Wikipedia is the most commonly-used, and easily-accessible research tool in the world.
Muthana claimed in multiple interviews that she had done extensive research into ISIS, before lying to her parents, and using her college tuition money to relocate to Syria, to join the terror group. One can only reasonably assume that at some point, she accessed Wikipedia, or articles cited in it, about what ISIS was, its core ideology, what it aspired to do, and the tactics it employed. Let’s take a look at what Wikipedia’s entry on ISIS contains:
It is assumed that the later materials on this page were added after Muthana was already on the ground in Syria. But here are some highlights from the above entries:
“ISIS promotes religious violence, and regards Muslims who do not agree with its interpretations as infidels or apostates. According to Hayder al Khoei, ISIL’s philosophy is represented by the symbolism in the Black Standard variant of the legendary battle flag of Muhammad that it has adopted: the flag shows the Seal of Muhammad within a white circle, with the phrase above it.”
On 29 June 2014, ISIL proclaimed itself to be a worldwide caliphate.[308] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – known by his supporters as Amir al-Mu’minin, Caliph Ibrahim – was named its caliph, and the group renamed itself ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah (“Islamic State” (IS)).[74] As a “Caliphate”, it claims religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide.[76]
Wikipedia goes on to chronicle the brutal, totalitarian nature of ISIS, and what would likely happen if it ever gained control of territory containing non-Muslims.
(2.2) Claudia Rosett’s vital timeline of ISIS’s post-2013 evolution, of which it can be reasonably assumed that Murthana knew all or at least part of, before she left the U.S. to join it
About Claudia Rosett (from the Independent Women’s Forum bio):
Claudia Rosett is a foreign policy fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, and an award-winning journalist who has reported over the past 37 years from Asia, the former Soviet Union, Latin America and the Middle East. She is widely credited with groundbreaking reporting on corruption at the United Nations. From 1984-2002 Ms. Rosett was a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, serving as a member of the Editorial Board in New York (1997-2002); reporter, promoted to bureau chief, in Moscow (1993-96); editorial-page editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong (1986-93); and book review editor in New York (1984-86).
In the media coverage of this case, all that bloody record of deliberately inflicted human agony seems to have faded into some remote and misty past, summarized in maybe a sentence or two—or symbolized on the TV news by short video clips of ISIS fighters waving black flags and shooting guns, with no obvious target. As far as I’m aware, no media outlet has so far juxtaposed an interview of Hoda Muthana with such signature ISIS footage as videos of American hostages, on their knees, about to be beheaded by ISIS; or that young Jordanian pilot burned alive in a cage.
Instead, we’re invited to focus our attention and sympathies on a young woman in a headscarf, holding her infant son or pushing him in a stroller around a refugee camp, telling her assorted media interlocutors that in joining ISIS she made a “big mistake.” This past week she told ABC News that she regrets joining ISIS, and she hopes Americans will “excuse me because of how young and ignorant I was.”
Was it really nothing but youth and ignorance?
Here are some key highlights from Rosett’s timeline of 2014 (highlights added):
February—From Alabama, Hoda Muthana renews the U.S. passport initially issued for her at her father’s behest in 2005.
June—ISIS declares its “caliphate” with Raqqa as its capital.
August—ISIS releases video of captured American journalist James Foley, on his knees in an orange jumpsuit, and beheads him on camera.
ISIS launches a genocidal attack on the Yazidis in Iraq, besieging tens of thousands of men, women, and children who have fled to the upper reaches of Mount Sinjar, denying them access to food and water in temperatures rising above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The horrors go on and on, sickening to read about (see this 2016 UN report, “They came to destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis,” based on interviews with survivors). Hundreds of Yazidis die on Mount Sinjar before the siege is broken.
ISIS captures thousands of Yazidis, separates families, kills the men and older boys who refuse to convert to Islam, and enslaves the women and girls, starving and raping them, setting up a slave market in Raqqa where Yazidi girls as young as five are sold at auction.
September—ISIS releases video of the beheading of American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff.
ISIS releases video of the beheading of British aid worker, David Haines.
October—ISIS releases video of the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning.
It is only within the context of the above sequence of events, most of where were publicized at the time, that one can understand the gravity of what Muthana did in November and December, 2014. Continuing from Rosett’s report:
November—Hoda Muthana tells her parents she is leaving on a school trip, and uses her university tuition money to buy a ticket to Turkey and travel onward to Raqqa, Syria.
December—From Syria, Hoda tweets a photo of American, British, and Canadian passports, with the comment “Bonfire soon, no need for these anymore. alhamdulillah.” She marries an Australian ISIS jihadi, who is killed a few months later. While in Syria, she will go on to marry a second ISIS jihadi, bear him a son in 2017, and when that second husband is killed, marry a third ISIS jihadi, whose whereabouts she now says she does not know.
(2.3) Accounts of Muslim ISIS wives participating in the rape, abuse and torture of Yazidi girls and women
UPDATE, April 13, 2019: Witnesses claim the other ISIS bride, from England, whose story emerged at the same time as Muthana’s, was a brutal enforcer of shariah law in Syria; read the story at the UK Telegraph here. More here.
An ISIS bride – like Hoda Muthana – at left, marching female Yazidi slaves, in chains, to sell them at a market.
Nadia Murad
Nadia Murad (AFP/Getty Images)
Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman, was captured by ISIS in 2014, when she was 21, and was systematically raped and traded by its terrorists, until she finally escaped in 2015. She was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her courage to speak out on behalf of other Yazidi victims.
In a recent editorial she wrote for Glamour, Nadia addressed one of the least-known aspects of the atrocities perpetrated on her and her Yazidi sisters: the fact that in many if not most cases, the wives of their rapists participated in their rapes, torture, and even murder. The Glamour editors offered this preface (all items bolded by SaveTheWest for emphasis):
The [ISIS] buses took the women to Mosul, where Nadia was beaten, spit on, and burned with cigarettes. She was held in different houses for several days, then sold in a slave auction and forced to convert. Her captor immediately began to physically and emotionally abuse her, pausing only to take a call from his wife. That was when Nadia realized the most chilling fact of her captivity: The women were in on it.
I have heard the rare story of an Islamic State woman helping a Yazidi woman. For instance, one girl from my town was given a phone by the wife of her captor, so she was able to coordinate an escape for all the Yazidi girls in her house. But more often I hear stories of women who were even more cruel than men. They beat and starved their husbands’ sabaya (the Arabic term for sexual slave), out of jealousy or anger or maybe just because we’re easy targets. Or maybe these women think of themselves as revolutionaries—even feminists—and have told themselves, as people have throughout history, that violence toward a greater good is acceptable. Still, I don’t understand how anyone could stand by while thousands of Yazidis are sold into sexual slavery and raped until their bodies break. There is no justification for that kind of cruelty, and no greater good that can come of it.
UPDATE March 25, 2019: Statement by Nadia Murad and the Free Yazidi Foundation
Three days after this SaveTheWest report was published, the Gatestone Institute published a similar one, that contained the following quote from the Free Yazidi Foundation, regarding its outrage over the “news” media evoking sympathy for ISIS brides — while ignoring what they did to their victims:
Addressing British MP Diane Abbott, who said that making Begum “stateless” is “callous and inhumane,” the Foundation tweeted:
“Did you know that some of our girls, as young as SIX YEARS OLD, were literally sold on slave markets in #ISIS territory? When the men went out to fight, it was #ISISBride who would lock them in the house.
“Furthermore, it was #ISISbride who would shower, clothe, put on makeup to the #Yazidi#Yezidi women & girls to prepare them to be gangraped or sold. Many male and female perps were #British, perhaps we can instead draw attention to the inhumane & callous genocide they committed?…
“… it is an abomination that the welfare of this woman and her baby receive such enormous attention, while the THOUSANDS of women who were abducted and forced into slavery by her organisation (with participation of ISIS women) does not.”
A Yazidi sex slave has told how she was kidnapped, raped and beaten with a plastic pipe by a brutal ISIS soldier as his British teenage jihadi bride witnessed her suffering and did nothing to end it.
Ferida
Ferida, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, revealed her sickening abuse at the hands of the jihadi fighter during a four-month ordeal held in Deir ez-Zor, eastern Syria.
In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, a tearful Ferida explained how her terrifying ordeal began when Islamic State raided her home town of Sinjar in Iraq in August last year. She was held and transferred at various prisons for a few months before being handed over to an ISIS fighter.
‘They gave every woman to an ISIS fighter. I was given to someone called Abu Muslim, a Saudi national and I was forced to marry him,’ she said. […]
Ferida remembered the girl had a British accent and that her Arabic was ‘very bad’, so she spoke English to her husband.
He was from Saudi Arabia and studied medicine in America for four years where he trained in midwifery.
‘Whatever they ordered, I had to do for both of them. Life was so terrible. I cried every time.’ […]
In May, ISIS released a chilling document in which it justified the kidnapping and rape of Yazidi girls it enslaved.
The shocking admissions were made by a jihadi bride in the ninth edition of Islamic State’s propaganda magazine Dabiq in a feature entitled: ‘Slave girls or prostitutes.’ She describes the cruel sex crimes as Sunnah which roughly translates as ‘a way of life’. […]
Previously, a 14-year-old Yazidi girl has told how she was forced to undergo medical exams to ‘prove’ her virginity before she was sold to ISIS militants in a twisted auction.In May, a 17-year-old Yazidi revealed how she and her little sister were raped daily by depraved jihadis after they were sold into slavery at an auction of virgins – and she is now pregnant with the a jihadi’s child.
After being repeatedly raped by an ISIS terrorist, a Yazidi slave claims she was beaten by his wife for “tempting” him
A Yazidi woman sold as a sex-slave eight times by an ISIS jihadi says she was put on parade like she was being picked out in a ‘car showroom’.
Khalida, 20, was kidnapped and taken to Raqqa where she was put on display in a ‘meat market’ where women are purchased for as little as a mobile phone, or simply given away as ‘gifts’.
The most beautiful women are put into a separate ‘VIP’ room where leaders can take their time choosing their favourite three or four girls each.
Khalida was bought by an old man with a white beard and kept in a small room where he raped her – and then beaten by his wife for ‘tempting’ her husband.
Khalida
Captured ISIS wife says keeping rape slaves is in the Qur’an
ISIS wife on Yazidi sex slaves:
ISIS woman: If it’s in the Quran then who am I to question it?
One woman recalled being raped by an Islamic State fighter. First the fighter’s wife would come in and put makeup on her. Then the wife would force her to dress up. Then, when his wife was done “preparing” her, the husband would come and rape her. According to an account published this year, the survivor remembers the rapist calling her “kuffar,” the Islamist word for sub-human or “unbeliever.”
Today the ISIS “widows” are the center of sympathy.
“Hundreds of ISIS widows trapped in Syria as caliphate falls,” a headline at The Sunday Times claims. The article tells us that young ISIS brides miss their homes far away. They are the victims now. Then there is the story of the German woman who joined ISIS and now claims to have been an “idiot” for doing so. She was a teenager and left home to go to romantic and exotic Syria and Iraq.
She showed little remorse, according to an article at The Telegraph. […]
One told a reporter from Alternet that some of the jihadists’ wives were “worse” than the men. A Yazidi woman named Seeham said that the ISIS women would shout abuse at her. One of the women forced her to shave her body and “brought sexy clothes to wear for her husband and helped him rape me by tying me to the bed.” It got worse. Seeham had a little daughter.
The ISIS women would bring over their friends and force the Yazidi woman, whom they viewed as a “slave,” to clean the house. They would mock and tease her as she cleaned and boast about their “slave.” Seeham recalls that one time while cleaning the ISIS women kept her crying daughter on the fourth floor of the house. “She forced me to clean from the fourth floor to the first floor, the whole time I could hear my daughter crying,” she said, but the ISIS women would not allow her to breastfeed the little girl. […]
They joined their husbands in expelling locals and in abusing “slaves” the men purchased. Accounts tell of ISIS women encouraging their husbands to sell and buy women on online forums, such as Telegram.
To pretend that ISIS “widows” played no role or were innocent victims replicates the chauvinist world view of ISIS and pretends that women are not equal to men in their choices.
Australian ISIS wife allegedly used social media to urge Muslims to mass-murder non-Muslims
An Australian woman trapped with her two young children in a refugee camp for Islamic State group families says her daughter needs urgent medical care and she wants to come home.
In an interview exclusively obtained by the ABC, the woman said she wants to bring her two-year-old son and six-month-old daughter back to Australia.
“Both of my kids are sick. [My daughter is] very malnourished, she’s … very skinny,” she said.
“I have no money, I’m not allowed to have money, they don’t give us food here and they don’t let us contact our families.” […]
Ms Duman moved to the IS Syrian capital of Raqqa and married Australian fighter Mahmoud Abdullatif.
She was a vocal supporter of IS’s violent rhetoric on social media, as well as an effective recruiter.
In 2015 Ms Duman, calling herself Umm Abdullatif Australi, posted a picture of a woman holding an automatic rifle, with the caption: “catch me if you can”. A Twitter account believed to be operated by Ms Duman was suspended in 2015, after she called for violence against “kuffars”, or non-Muslims.
A picture taken on April 29, 2018 in the Iraqi capital Baghdad’s Central Criminal Court shows Russian women who have been sentenced to life in prison on grounds of joining the Islamic State (IS) group standing with children in a hallway. (Photo by Ammar Karim / AFP)
The circumstances for the so-called ISIS wives has worsened over the past few months, as the organization withdrew from massive swathes of territory. Estimates state that around 4,500 women arrived from abroad to join the terror organization. Today, when the group’s demise seems closer than ever, it appears that everyone wants rid of these women—especially the ones suspected of taking an active part in the fighting.[…]
In the ISIS camps, there was a clear division: boys go to improved schools with the fighters’ wives, and then went on training camp at ages 10-12. Girls study for four years and then go home to their mothers to learn “how to treat the soldiers upon their return.” “Be nice and obedient,” say the mothers to their daughters, “don’t argue with your fighter husband. Give him a good life since he won’t be with us for long, and you’ll be able to start over.” […]
Um Mohammed, 32, said she also thought she was on her way to a better life when she moved her family from the Netherlands to Syria, to live under ISIS rule. “I was sure everything would be much better, that we’d have mutual understanding, that life would be more convenient and that I would run my life in a manner that suits me best.” […]
Meanwhile, ISIS continues to manipulate the media. “All of a sudden, they want to highlights the women’s role,” says Dr. Maher Muhammed, from an Arab research institute. “Women are offered fighting roles, but mostly recruitment positions in Europe and working as agents there. There are still ISIS women who are ready to go on, but the numbers are dwindling. Some escaped and some were caught. Either way—forces are closing in on them.” […]
At its height, in 2014-2016, ISIS drew Islamist extremists from around the world. According to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence at King’s College London, more than 10 percent of the foreign volunteers were women—some 4,500 in total. ISIS had purely female terror squads, single women who went out on missions, and whole families that operated as terror cells.
Some of the women that came from the West were “Jihad brides” and operated as sex slaves for the fighting forces who often had more than one such woman. Some had propaganda positions and called other women to join the cause.
While devoted followers of the Islamic State, a man and woman bought a 5-year-old Yazidi girl in Iraq to use as a slave, then let her die of thirst in the scorching heat, the German authorities contend. The trial of the woman began on Tuesday — one of the highest-profile cases against a female member of the terrorist group.
The prosecution stems largely from the words of the defendant, who was desperate to return last year to the Islamic State, or ISIS, and found someone willing to drive her to the Middle East. Unknown to her, the driver was working with the German security services, and he recorded their conversations as she told him all about her life in the organization.
The 27-year-old German woman, identified only as Jennifer W. in keeping with German privacy law, showed no emotion during the 15 minutes it took a judge in Munich to read out the charges against her, which include murder, war crimes, membership in a foreign terror organization and weapons violations. […]
But the Yazidi girl’s mother, whose identity has not been released, is expected to testify, providing both key evidence and the emotional heart of the case. The mother, who says she was also held as a slave by the German woman and her husband, is serving as a co-plaintiff in the trial but was not in court for the opening proceedings.
British jihadi bride Shamima Begum has insisted she is ‘not dangerous’ and pleaded to be allowed back to the UK with her newborn son. The teenager showed little emotion as she claimed the British people ‘should have sympathy’ for her, despite admitting that she still agrees with the ideology of Isis. […]
‘They do not have any evidence against me that I am dangerous.’ But she refused to apologise for her actions and seemed indifferent to the atrocities committed by the organisation she joined, saying she ‘doesn’t regret’ leaving the UK. ‘I had my kids, I did have a good time there, just at the end things got harder and I couldn’t take it any more.’
But she admitted: ‘I didn’t know what I was getting into when I left.’
However, when asked if she had seen the evidence of Isis beheadings before she fled the UK, she said: ‘Yeah I was OK with it, because I heard Islamically it was OK, so I was fine with it.’
(2.4) Case studies and background information on ISIS’s rape, torture and sale of female Yazidi slaves
An ISIS terrorist auctioning off a young Yazidi girl as a rape slave
Marwa Khedr was just ten years old when Islamic State jihadis swept into her village in the Sinjar region of Iraq and rounded up all the families at gunpoint.
The men were buried alive in a mass grave, while the women and children were taken to a nearby town in the north of the country, where they were divided up by age.
The most prized, taken off by senior IS figures, were those aged between ten and 20.
This petrified group included Marwa, a member of the Yazidi persecuted minority religion. She had turned ten shortly before the appalling events in August 2014.
Yesterday, her aunt Mahdya, who has just escaped from Baghuz, the last holdout of the IS ‘caliphate’, told me that the final time she saw her niece, she was huddled with others in a market close to Hardan, where she lived, before being taken to the jihadi ‘capital’ of Raqqa.
Months later, a friend told Mahdya she had seen Marwa again and she was pregnant, despite her young age – one more grotesque sign of the barbarism inflicted by IS. It is not known where Marwa is now.
“ISIS Sex Slave Raping & Selling Girls” – Australian Broadcasting Company
A new televised interview, conducted in Arabic with a Yazidi girl who endured sexual captivity at the hands of the Islamic State, was published on March 22, 2016. It appeared on “Shabaab [Youth] Talk,” hosted by Ja’far Abdul.
The teenage girl, who went by the pseudonym of Birvan, was enslaved when she was 15 and endured months of captivity before she managed to escape. She is now 17. […]
There Birvan found another 5,000 Yazidi girls enslaved. “They would come and take any girl against her will; if she refused, they would kill her on the spot.”
“They used to come and buy the girls without a price, I mean, they used to tell us Yazidi girls, you are sabiya [spoils of war, sex slaves], you are kuffar [infidels], you are to be sold without a price,” meaning they had no base value and explains why Yazidi girls were “sold” in exchange for a few packs of cigarettes.
“Anyone who walked by our room and liked us would just say ‘Let’s go.'”
When her turn came and a man said “come,” “I refused and resisted, and he beat me savagely.” He purchased her, forced her to his home, which had formerly belonged to Yazidis, where, to live, she gratified him
When asked about him, she said, “He was truly foul, truly, I mean, if you saw him, there’s no difference between him and a beast. Actually animals have more mercy in their hearts than these [ISIS].”
When Ja’far Abdul asked for more details of her everyday experiences, Birvan visibly appeared uncomfortable. She kept pausing, simply repeating the word “rape.” At one point she said “there were 48 ISIS members in that house, and we were two girls — two Yazidi girls” — as if to say “use your imagination.”
A Yazidi woman sold as a sex-slave eight times by an ISIS jihadi says she was put on parade like she was being picked out in a ‘car showroom’.
Khalida, 20, was kidnapped and taken to Raqqa where she was put on display in a ‘meat market’ where women are purchased for as little as a mobile phone, or simply given away as ‘gifts’.
The most beautiful women are put into a separate ‘VIP’ room where leaders can take their time choosing their favourite three or four girls each.
A Yazdi girl as she is being auctioned off to Saudi men
Khalida was bought by an old man with a white beard and kept in a small room where he raped her – and then beaten by his wife for ‘tempting’ her husband.
But it was only the beginning of the horror: she went on to endure months of daily abuse, torture and brutality at the hands as she was bought and sold by eight men.
The quiet, slight-framed, woman tried to kill herself many times to end her terrible ordeal and even tattooed her father’s name onto her arm so her body could be identified after her death.
The courageous young woman – who was held for 16 months, finally won her freedom after she convinced her ‘slave master’ to sell her back to her family for $24,000.
Now she bravely breaks her silence to tell the world of her people’s desperate plight.
Khalida told MailOnline: They did everything to me. But I want people to know what happened to me so that the world understands how the Yazidi people have suffered.’
Her ordeal began in August 2014 when her family were denounced as ‘unbelievers’ by former neighbours as they tried to flee their hometown of Sinjar after it had been overrun by ISIS fighters.
Khalida told MailOnline: ‘Our neighbours, who are Muslims, said they would protect us, but when we were stopped at a checkpoint one of them pointed us out to the foreign [ISIS] fighters and said we were Yazidi. And we were all taken. There were 36 of us.’
The family were separated by sex. To this day Khalida does not know what happened to the men – her father, her uncles, some of her brothers.
In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.
He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.
When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.
“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.
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. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.
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.
Because these girls don’t practice Islam, rape is justified and encouraged by ISIS’ extremist version of Islam. ISIS cites certain portions of the hadith to defend its use and sale of sex slaves.
As women who have escaped begin to tell their horrifying stories, ISIS is being revealed for the unbelievably brutal terrorist group that it is.
Firsthand accounts report that girls, as young as six years old, were raped multiple times by different men, forced to marry members of ISIS, and mandated to convert to Islam (some at gunpoint). The girls were beaten, or even murdered, for disobedience.
“From 9:30 in the morning, men would come to buy girls to rape them. I saw in front of my eyes ISIS soldiers pulling hair, beating girls, and slamming the heads of anyone who resisted. They were like animals…Once they took the girls out, they would rape them and bring them back to exchange for new girls. The girls’ ages ranged from 8 to 30 years…”
In the past few months, the world has witnessed horrific accounts of the enslavement of thousands of innocent Yazidis and other religious minorities by ISIS partisans in Iraq and Syria.
In a recent article in its online English-language magazine, ISIS ideologues offered legal justifications for the enslavement of these non-Muslim non-combatants, stating that “enslaving the families of the kuffar [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah or Islamic law.”
The article argues, based on a variety of Shariah sources, that ISIS partisans have a religious duty to kill or enslave members of the Yazidi community as part of their struggle [jihad] against their enemies.
Yazidi survivor: “I was raped every day for six months”
Interview with captured SIS commander on his murder and rape of Yazidis
ON SALE TO RAPISTS ISIS is trafficking dozens of sex slaves ‘to be sold in horrifying auctions to UK ally Saudi Arabia’; The terror group has been accused of the sick trade before, by Sam Webb, September 20, 2016. Excerpt:
“We hope to liberate her and all Iraqi women taken as sexual slaves by ISIS within Iraq or outside of Iraq as their basic human rights are being denied.
Sadly, it is not the first time the accusation that ISIS sells rape victims to Saudi Arabians has emerged.
An 18-year-old Yazidi sex slave who escaped ISIS claims she was sold in an international auction.
The teenager, Jinan, was abducted from her village in Northern Iraq last year when ISIS troops stormed her village and took her prisoner before torturing and sexually abusing her and the other captives in the terror group’s stronghold of Mosul.
She said said dozens of women were being held in a large room, and it was not only Iraqis and Syrians trading women but also Saudis and Westerners, whose actual nationality was not clear.
Potential buyers, she wrote in her book ‘Daesh’s Slave’ would inspect the women “like livestock”.
An estimated 3,500 people, mainly women and children, are believed to be held as slaves in Iraq by Islamic State militants who impose a harsh rule marked by gruesome public executions, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The militant group, which also controls large parts of neighboring Syria, has committed widespread abuses that may “in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide,” the report said.
The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN human rights office estimated that 3,500 people were “currently being held in slavery by ISIS.”
“Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yezidi community, but a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities,” said the joint report issued in Geneva.
A pamphlet titled “Questions and Answers regarding slave-holding,” distributed to ISIS fighters in October 2014, defines slave women as part of the loot the organization’s fighters are allowed to take following their victories over “the enemies of Islam.”
According to the pamphlet, the religion authorizes the rape of infidel slave women, but the issue of raping Muslim apostates is considered controversial.
The advertisement on the Telegram app is as chilling as it is incongruous: A girl for sale is “Virgin. Beautiful. 12 years old…. Her price has reached $12,500 and she will be sold soon.”
The posting in Arabic appeared on an encrypted conversation along with ads for kittens, weapons and tactical gear. It was shared with The Associated Press by an activist with the minority Yazidi community, whose women and children are being held as sex slaves by the extremists.
While the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is losing territory in its self-styled caliphate, it is tightening its grip on the estimated 3,000 women and girls held as sex slaves.
In a fusion of ancient barbaric practices and modern technology, ISIS sells the women like chattel on smartphone apps and shares databases that contain their photographs and the names of their “owners” to prevent their escape through ISIS checkpoints. The fighters are assassinating smugglers who rescue the captives, just as funds to buy the women out of slavery are drying up.
Lamiya Aji Bashar, who was repeatedly beaten and gang-raped by ISIS terrorists for daring to escape their clutches. (Balint Szlanko/Associated Press)
The shocking discovery was made by SAS soldiers when they gained access to Baghuz, a town in northern Syria near where the last of the jihadis are desperately clinging to their only remaining scrap of territory, according to the Mail on Sunday. The terrorist group beheaded dozens of women who had been given to ISIS fighters for sexual gratification. Women captured by ISIS were often given to fighters as “rewards“, previous reports have revealed.
According to Iraq’ human rights ministry, thousands of women and girls from the minority Yazidi sect were abducted by ISIS after it took control of vast swathes of the country in August 2014.
A source told the newspaper: “In their hour of defeat, the jihadis’ cruelty knew no bounds.
“They conducted a cowardly slaughter of these desperately unfortunate women as a final act of depravity and left their severed heads behind for us to find.
“The motivation for such a sickening act is beyond comprehension for any remotely normal human being.”
