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ISIS’s Mortal Threat to Women

The Middle East Program at the Wilson Center collected thoughts on the threat to women posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from contributors in the Middle East and the United States.

            The Middle East Program at the Wilson Center collected thoughts on the threat to women posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from contributors in the Middle East and the United States. The following are excerpts from Viewpoints No. 60, Barbarians: ISIS’s Mortal Threat to Women.

Haleh Esfandiari, Director, Middle East Program, Woodrow Wilson Center

            ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (now calling itself simply the Islamic State, or IS), which now controls a swath of territory that stretches from Diyala in Iraq to Aleppo in Syria, has committed many atrocities; but its treatment of women has been particularly barbaric.

            Women have been treated with special savagery, based on the narrowest possible interpretation of Islam and Islamic law. Women are regarded both as trophies and as targets for persecution. When the men of ISIS enter towns and villages, they seize women and sell them as slaves, use them as concubines, and force them into marriages with fighters. Women of all ages have been raped; Christian women have been forced to convert. In the city of Mosul, women were ordered to cover completely and to appear only in the company of male relatives. Baghdadi’s followers even toyed with the idea of female genital mutilation (FGM), and for a while there were rumors (later denied) that al-Baghdadi had issued a fatwa requiring FGM for Mosul’s women.

Robin Wright, author and Wilson Center-USIP Distinguished Scholar

           The barbarian thugs in the Islamic State have been ruthless in their treatment of women and girls as they swept across Syria and Iraq. The reports are still second-hand, at best, but the claims of abduction, rape, and virtual slavery are now so uniform in description that there is little question ISIS is violating basic canons of human rights, including the Islamic law it claims to be invoking. The issue is the scope.

            After ISIS moved in June, from bases in Syria into Iraq, the United Nations Population Fund warned that about 250,000 Iraqi women and girls, including nearly 60,000 pregnant women, were in need of urgent care. Now that the Islamic State controls roughly one-third of Iraq, the numbers are surely much higher. 

            The female body has effectively become both a weapon of war and a “reward” of war.

Safia Al Souhail, Iraqi politician and former Member of Iraqi Parliament, 2005-2014 

            In Iraq and Syria the terrorist organization of ISIS, which became known after the takeover of Mosul on June 10 as the Islamic State (IS), is now controlling an area in these two countries that is bigger than Jordan. Within the territory under their control they introduced a series of degrading, cruel and inhuman practices such as: the genital mutilation of girls and women, and the sexual jihad (jihad al-nikah), which includes encouraging girls and women from the Arab world, Europe, America, China, and elsewhere to join the ISIS terrorists. They have created the al-Khansaa Brigade composed mainly of girls between the ages of 18 and 25. There are also male members of families within ISIS who force their sisters and daughters to marry ISIS fighters to gain the trust of the high-ranking members of the organization and to get promoted in the ranks within the group.

Hanin Ghaddar, former Public Policy Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Center; and Managing Editor, NOW News, Lebanon

           When the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was born, secular activists, intellectuals, and Western journalists treated this movement as an imposed and foreign group that grew and flourished on political conflict and sectarian rhetoric. However, the organization’s attitudes toward women are not unfamiliar in our communities. It is a manifestation—and an exaggeration—of prejudices, regulations, and religious laws that have discriminated against women for a very long time.

            When ISIS carried out the stoning of women in Syria for having sex outside of marriage, it was perceived with significant rejection and anger by the larger communities, but women have always been punished by their societies to certain degrees. Sexually free women and women who are disobedient to their fathers and husbands have always been disciplined and isolated by their communities. Personal freedoms and sexual rights have never been respected by other groups, parties, or leaders in our region.

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