WUNRN
http://www.meforum.org/5361/islamic-state-sex-slavery
Sex Slavery & The Islamic
State
Why
does Islamic State's enslavement of women seem to appeal to potential
recruits, and why is it not challenged more vigorously by mainstream Muslims? By Mark Durie - July 3, 2015 |
Jamie Walker, Middle East
correspondent for The Australian, asked two critical questions in a recent article that discussed the involvement
of two Australian citizens, Mohamed Elomar and Khaled Sharrouf, in Islamic
State sex slavery. In 2014 Elomar purchased sex slaves, of whom four, all
Yazidis, later escaped to a refugee camp, where the ABC caught up with them and
interviewed them. Elomar had also boasted on
Twitter that he had "1 of 7 Yehzidi slave girls for sale" at $2500
each.
Walker's questions were
"why this debased appeal seems to be gaining traction with Islamic State's
target audience, which increasingly includes women, and why it's not challenged
more stridently in the public arena."
The Islamic State has
given its own answer to the first question. In the fourth edition of its
magazine Dabiq, it aggressively promoted sex slavery as an Islamic
practice, arguing that the practice conforms to the teaching and example of
Muhammad and his companions.
Many
Muslim scholars have upheld the practice of enslaving captives of war. |
Does this argument have
any wider appeal than among Islamic State recruits?
The reality is that many
Muslim scholars have upheld the practice of enslaving captives of war. For
example Islamic revivalist Abul A'la Maududi wrote in his influential and
widely disseminated tract Human Rights in Islam that for Muslims to
enslave their captives was "a more humane and proper way of disposing of
them" than Western approaches. Enslavement by Muslims, he argued, is
preferable to the provisions of the Geneva Convention because of the value of
this policy for fuelling the growth of Islam:
The
result of this humane policy was that most of the men who were captured on
foreign battlefields and brought to the Muslim countries as slaves embraced
Islam and their descendants produced great scholars, imams, jurists,
commentators, statesmen and generals of the army.
Islamic revivalist
movements that look forward to the restoration of an Islamic Caliphate have
repeatedly endorsed the practice of slavery in the name of their religious
convictions. For example the (now banned) Muhajiroun movement in the UK
announced in an article, "How does Islam Classify Lands?" that once a
true Islamic State is established, no-one living in other nations (which it
calls Dar al Harb, 'house of war') will have a right to their life or
their wealth:
[H]ence a Muslim in such
circumstances can then go into Dar Al Harb and take the wealth from the people
unless there is a treaty with that state. If there is no treaty individual
Muslims can even go to Dar Al Harb and take women to keep as slaves.
It is a problem that the
Qur'an itself endorses having sex with captive women (Sura 4:24). According to a secure tradition (hadith) attributed to one
of Muhammad's companions, Abu Sa'id al-Khudri, this verse of the Qur'an was
revealed to Muhammad at a time when Muslims had been 'refraining' from having
sex with their married female captives. Verse 4:24 relieved them of this
restraint by giving them permission to have sex with captive women, even if the
women were already married.
Abd-al-Hamid Siddiqui, a
Fellow of the Islamic Research Academy of Karachi and the translator into
English of the Sahih Muslim, commented on this tradition, saying:
When women are taken
captive their previous marriages are automatically annulled. It should,
however, be remembered that sexual intercourse with these women is lawful with
certain conditions.
There have been many cases
reported across the centuries of Islamic armies using captive women for sex
slavery, but is this any different from all wars? It is different in one
important respect — that the mainstream of Islamic jurisprudence has justified
and supported this practice on the basis of Islam's canonical sources,
including Muhammad's own example and teaching. Islamic sex slavery is
religiously sanctioned 'guilt-free sex'.
Islamic sex slavery is
religiously sanctioned 'guilt-free sex'. |
This religious teaching is
impacting our world today because the global Islamic community has been deeply
affected by a grassroots religious revival, which seeks to purify Islam and
restore it to its foundational principles, which include rules for war and the
treatment of captives.
This leads us to Walker's
second question: why is the Islamic State's 'debased appeal' not 'challenged
more stridently in the public arena'?
An obstacle that stands in
the way of such a challenge is that it would require a sober evaluation of the
Islamic character of sex slavery. However, even suggesting a link between Islam
and 'terrorism' has become taboo to those who are afraid of being judged
intolerant. Not only do some impose this taboo upon themselves, but they are
quick to stigmatise those who do not partner with them in this ill-considered
'tolerance'.
It
is not a sign of tolerance when free people deliberately silence themselves
about the ideological drivers of sex trafficking. |
The taboo attached to
making any link between Islamic State atrocities and the religion of Islam was
apparent in comments by Greg Bearup on his interview with South Australian
politician Cory Bernardi. During the course of the
interview Senator Bernardi linked the Islamic State with Muhammad's example, to
which the interviewer wrote "Kaboom!", and called the comment
a 'hand grenade', 'inflammatory' and 'divisive'.
While it is a hopeful sign
that some Muslims, such as Anooshe Mushtaq, have been willing to explore
the Islamic character of the Islamic State, non-Muslim opinion-makers should
show more backbone by engaging with the issue at hand.
It is not a sign of
tolerance when free people deliberately silence themselves about the
ideological drivers of sex trafficking. The same can also be said of acts of
terrorism, such as the world has witnessed over the past week in France,
Tunisia and Kuwait.
Until societies are able
and willing to have a frank and free discussion of the ideological drivers
which motivate acts of terror and abuse, they should not expect to be able to
develop effective strategies to contain or wind back such atrocities.
A state of denial is a
state of defeat.
Mark
Durie is the pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the
Middle East Forum, and Founder of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness.