The Islamic State group said yesterday it enslaved families from the minority Yazidi sect after overrunning their villages in northwestern Iraq, in what it praised as the revival of an ancient custom of using women and children as spoils of war.
In an article in its English-language online magazine Dabiq, the group provides what it says is religious justification for the enslavement of defeated “idolators”.
The ancient custom of enslavement had fallen out of use because of deviation from true Islam, but was revived when fighters overran Yazidi villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region.
“After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided as khums,” it said. Khums is a traditional tax on the spoils of war.
“This large-scale enslavement of mushrik [idolator] families is probably the first since the abandonment of Shariah law,” it said.
Dabiq, distributed in a slickly-produced online format, is described by the group SITE that monitors militant publications as Islamic State’s English-language magazine.
The cover shows a picture of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, with an Islamic State black flag superimposed in place of the cross atop its obelisk. The article on slavery confirms practices documented by Human Rights Watch, which says Yazidi women and girls were forced to marry Islamic State fighters and shipped out in busloads from Iraq to Syria to be sold off as prizes.
Islamic State practises a harsh form of Sunni Islam and has declared its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the ruler of the entire Muslim world.
The group has hounded ethnic and religious minorities in northern Iraq since seizing Mosul in June, killing and displacing thousands of Christians, Shi’ite Shabaks and Turkmen who lived for centuries in one of the most diverse parts of the Middle East.
Enslaving women and forcing them to become wives reduces sin
Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, have faced some of the harshest penalties from Islamic State. The Dabiq article said fighters were reviving a practice of the companions of the Prophet Mohammad by enslaving enemies. Enslaving women and forcing them to become wives reduces sin by protecting men from being tempted into adultery, it said.
“One should remember that enslaving the families of the non-believers and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah that, if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Quran and the narrations of the Prophet,” the article said.
Many of the captives had “willingly” accepted Islam, the group said, “and now race to practise it with evident sincerity after their exit from the darkness of idolatry”. On Sunday, Human Rights Watch said Islamic State was holding hundreds of Yazidis captive in both Iraq and Syria and that the group had systematically separated young women and teenage girls from their families, forcing some into marriage with fighters.