ISIS' Humanitarian Ideology

A 15-year-old Yazidi girl captured by Isis and forcibly married to a militant in Syria describes her ordeal having escaped 

The girls are rounded up and auctioned off to the bidders among the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham jihadists anxious to procure for themselves a female slave. Islamic law and tradition affirm this as a legitimate practise in jihad. For a given sum any ISIL jihadi can take possession of a young girl whose future has been forfeit by an accident of fate that led the Islamic State to advance on Yazidi towns and villages, sending the terrified residents streaming away, looking for haven elsewhere.

 

Footage shows men discussing how they would pay more for a girl with greeneyes

And enabling the advancing ISIS militias with their reputations for violence and gore preceding them, to capture women and girls, and boys. The men are usually, if they're unfortunate to be rounded up, quickly disposed of. Their ancient presence and peculiar religion so offensive to Islam marks them for death. But the women and girls can be useful as sex slaves. After all, the conquering heroes have the heritage example of such Islamist practises to render legitimacy, not that legitimacy concerns them.

"We prayed five times per day, including the 4:00 a.m. morning prayer, read the Qur'an, had religious lessons and special classes in Islamic State ideology."
"He [the boys' teacher] was kind to us, unless someone made a mistake in his lessons or behaved badly and then he was ordered to send us for punishment."
"They strung me up by my arms, hanging me by a rope that was tied to my wrists. They practised karate and kick-boxing on me."
"I must speak the truth. The Islamic State are right, and all the things they taught me are true. I am convinced they are right."
Jan, 25-year-old Kurdish schoolboy, Sanliurfa, Turkey

Pictures released by anti-ISIL group 'Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently' purport to show young Syrian children being trained at the Al Sharea'l camp in Syria's Raqqa province Photo: TIM STEWART NEWS

And then there are the boys. In this instance, Kurdish boys, who are, unlike the Yazidis, Muslim. But in need of a quick refresher course in correct Islam of the only variety recognized by the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. For five months ISIS in Syria kept 148 Kurdish schoolboys whom they abducted when they stopped a group of schoolchildren taking their middle school exams returning to  Kobani.

The group consisted of both boys and girls. The girls were released, the boys were taken as the group was being taken back home from their exams in Aleppo. Fifteen-year-old Jan is now returned to his family, the last of the groups of 15 boys to be released by ISIS, after they had undergone months of religious tutoring and beatings, when they were deemed to have backslid.

Jan made the error of using the Kurdish word for God instead of the Arabic "Allah", and for that he was committed to a unique punishment. Despite the torture he had undergone, the brainwashing techniques used by ISIS appear to have been successful. Taken by his family to shelter in Turkey, Jan now identifies with the mission of the Islamic State.

At Manbij, not far from Kobani, in the hands of the Islamic State, the boys were kept fifteen to a locked room, their ages between thirteen and fifteen. One hostage in each cell of fifteen was given the role of "emir" or leader. With a regimen of kindness and brutality their days were comprised of five daily prayers and daily lessons. Jan's cell's teacher was a Jordanian named Surukhan al-Tabuki who befriended the boys.

When punishment was required it was other men who fulfilled that obligation, jihadis whose names were unknown and who presented themselves with black face masks. The boys' treatment was geared to transforming them into prospective future Islamists whose religious commitment became fanatical in outlook, fertile ground for their future as jihadis unless their parents were able to counteract the effects of the mind-control experience.

They were released once the jihadists were convinced their instruction had taken root. The girls, on the other hand, are now confined to a lifetime of sexual abuse and contempt heaped on them by men who view them as chattel with no human rights attached to their position as slaves. The situation exemplifies Islamist contempt for other religions, for tribal position, for ethnic disabilities, for misogyny.