The
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...
(ISIL) has employed sexual violence against women and men in a
terroristic manner. Sexual violence, as defined by
The World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...
includes “any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work.” ISIL has used sexual violence to undermine a sense of security within communities, and to raise funds through the sale of captives into
sexual slavery
Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership rights, right over one or more people with the intent of Coercion, coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activities. This include ...
.
Background
There is a history of sexual violence, especially when inflicted by the state, in modern Iraq. After the 1979
Iranian revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...
,
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...
interned and deported 40,000 Iraqis of Shia faith. Many of these families were subjected to
rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ag ...
and torture while in internment camps.
During the
Iran–Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council ...
, Iraqi secret police would sexually assault prisoners and video tape it. During the
Anfal campaign
The Anfal campaign; ku, شاڵاوی ئەنفال or the Kurdish genocide was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988, at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted ru ...
, Saddam's troops raped Kurdish women. After the Gulf war,
sanctions against Iraq
The sanctions against Iraq were a comprehensive financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, stayed largely in force until May 22, ...
crippled the economy and incapacitated the government; women were abducted in Baghdad and sold into sexual slavery.
The 2003
invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Ba'athist Iraq, Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one mont ...
dismantled Iraqi security forces, resulting in a "tidal wave" of sexual violence.
Between 2003 and 2006, upto 3,500 Iraqi women disappeared, many feared to have been sold into sexual slavery. As de-baathification disempowered Sunnis, men Sunni women turned
prostitution
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in Sex work, sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, n ...
to survive.
Under US administration,
Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib prison ( ar, سجن أبو غريب, ''Sijn Abū Ghurayb'') was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison with torture, weekly exe ...
continued be
used for sexual abuse of prisoners. After US withdrawal, Iraqi and Kurdish security forces continued the sexual violence of their predecessors;
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...
documented sexual assaults of women (especially Sunni women), sometimes in front of their husbands or children.
Stated justification
In October 2014, in its digital magazine ''
Dabiq'', ISIL explicitly claimed religious justification for enslaving
Yazidi
Yazidis or Yezidis (; ku, ئێزیدی, translit=Êzidî) are a Kurmanji-speaking endogamous minority group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The majo ...
women. Specifically, ISIL argued that the Yazidi were idol worshipers and appealed to the
shariah
Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the H ...
practice of
spoils of war. ISIL asserts that certain
Hadith
Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...
and
Qur’an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing.: ...
ic verses support their right to enslave and rape captive non-Muslim women.
ISIL appealed to
apocalyptic beliefs and "claimed justification by a Hadith that they interpret as portraying the revival of slavery as a precursor to the end of the world." According to ''Dabiq,'' "enslaving the families of the
kuffar
Kafir ( ar, كافر '; plural ', ' or '; feminine '; feminine plural ' or ') is an Arabic and Islamic term which, in the Islamic tradition, refers to a person who disbelieves in God as per Islam, or denies his authority, or rejects ...
and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharia’s that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur'an and the narration of the Prophet … and thereby apostatizing from Islam."
In late 2014 ISIL released a pamphlet that focused on the treatment of female slaves.
[Amelia Smith]
"ISIS Publish Pamphlet On How to Treat Female Slaves,"
''Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'', 12/9/2014[Katharine Lackey]
"Pamphlet provides Islamic State guidelines for sex slaves,"
''USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...
'', December 13, 2014 It says fighters are allowed to have sex with adolescent girls and to beat slaves as discipline. The pamphlet's guidelines also allow fighters to trade slaves, including for sex, as long as they have not been impregnated by their owner.
Charlie Winter, a researcher at the counter-extremist
think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
Quilliam, described the pamphlet as "abhorent".
[Adam Withnall]
"Isis releases 'abhorrent' sex slaves pamphlet with 27 tips for militants on taking, punishing and raping female captives,"
''The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', 10 December 2014[Carey Lodge]
"Islamic State issues abhorrent sex slavery guidelines about how to treat women,"
,''Christianity Today
''Christianity Today'' is an evangelical Christian media magazine founded in 1956 by Billy Graham. It is published by Christianity Today International based in Carol Stream, Illinois. ''The Washington Post'' calls ''Christianity Today'' "evange ...
'', 15 December 2014 ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' said in August 2015 that "
e 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."
ISIL has received widespread criticism from Muslim scholars and others in the Muslim world for using part of the Qur'an to derive a ruling in isolation, rather than considering the entire Qur'an and Hadith.
In late September 2014 a group of 126 Islamic scholars had signed an
open letter
An open letter is a Letter (message), letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally.
Open letters usually take the form of a letter (mess ...
to the Islamic State's leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ( ar, أبو بكر البغدادي, ʾAbū Bakr al-Baḡdādī; born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai ( ar, إبراهيم عواد إبراهيم علي محمد البدري السامرائي, ʾIb ...
, rejecting his group's interpretations of the
Qur'an
The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...
and
hadith
Ḥadīth ( or ; ar, حديث, , , , , , , literally "talk" or "discourse") or Athar ( ar, أثر, , literally "remnant"/"effect") refers to what the majority of Muslims believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval ...
to justify its actions.
The letter accused the group of instigating
fitna—sedition—by instituting slavery under its rule in contravention of the
anti-slavery consensus of the
Islamic scholarly community.
According to Martin Williams in ''
The Citizen'', some hard-line
Salafist
The Salafi movement or Salafism () is a reform branch movement within Sunni Islam that originated during the nineteenth century. The name refers to advocacy of a return to the traditions of the "pious predecessors" (), the first three generati ...
s apparently regard extramarital sex with multiple partners as a legitimate form of
holy war
A religious war or a war of religion, sometimes also known as a holy war ( la, sanctum bellum), is a war which is primarily caused or justified by differences in religion. In the modern period, there are frequent debates over the extent to wh ...
and it is "difficult to reconcile this with a religion where some adherents insist that women must be covered from head to toe, with only a narrow slit for the eyes". According to
Mona Siddiqui
Mona Siddiqui (born 3 May 1963) is a British academic. She is Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, a member of the Commission on Scottish Devolution and a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. ...
, ISIL's "narrative may well be wrapped up in the familiar language of jihad and 'fighting in the cause of Allah', but it amounts to little more than destruction of anything and anyone who doesn't agree with them"; she describes ISIL as reflecting a "lethal mix of violence and sexual power" and a "deeply flawed view of manhood".
In response to the ISIL pamphlet on the treatment of slaves Abbas Barzegar, a religion professor at
Georgia State University
Georgia State University (Georgia State, State, or GSU) is a Public university, public research university in Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1913, it is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities. It is also the ...
, said Muslims around the world find ISIL's "alien interpretation of Islam grotesque and abhorrent".
[Greg Botelho]
"ISIS: Enslaving, having sex with 'unbelieving' women, girls is OK,"
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
, December 13, 2014 Muslim leaders and scholars from around the world have rejected the validity of these claims, claiming that the reintroduction of slavery is unislamic, that they are required to protect 'People of the Scripture' including Christians, Jews, Muslims and Yazidis, and that ISIL's fatwas are invalid due to their lack of religious authority and the fatwas' inconsistency with Islam.
International attention
An article in ''
Foreign Policy
A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...
'' suggests the existence of "a bias against covering rape and sexual assault, since they tend to be viewed by some as 'women’s issues' versus 'mainstream' insurgent tactics." Others warn that sexual violence should not be categorized as an act of terror, because such a categorization could provoke dangerous consequences.
Catherine M. Russell
Catherine Mary Russell (born March 4, 1961) is an American attorney and political adviser who is currently serving as Executive Director of UNICEF. She previously served as Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, United States ...
, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues affirms “the de-humanization of women and girls is central to ISIL's campaign of terror, through which it destroys communities, rewards its fighters and feeds its evil. A coalition that fights ISIL must also fight this particularly egregious form of brutality."
On September 6, 2014,
Defend International
Defend International (commonly known as DI) is a non-governmental organization focused on promoting and protecting human rights in the Middle East and North Africa region. Defend International was founded in 2007.
The co-founder of the organisati ...
launched a worldwide campaign entitled "Save The Yazidis: The World Has To Act Now" to raise awareness about the tragedy of the Yazidis in Sinjar; coordinate activities related to intensifying efforts aimed at rescuing Yazidi and Christian women and girls captured by ISIL, and building a bridge between potential partners and communities whose work is relevant to the campaign, including individuals, groups, communities, and organizations active in the areas of women's and girls’ rights, inter alia, as well as actors involved in ending modern-day slavery and violence against women and girls
On October 14, 2014, Dr.
Widad Akrawi
Widad Akreyi is a Kurdish health expert and human rights activist. She has co-founded the human rights organization Defend International and is the author of several books about both health issues and human rights.
Akreyi holds a master's degree ...
of Defend International dedicated her
2014 International Pfeffer Peace Award to the Yazidis, Christians and all residents of Kobane because, she said, facts on the ground demonstrate that these peaceful people are not safe in their enclaves and therefore in urgent need for immediate attention from the global community.
She asked the international community to make sure that the victims are not forgotten; they should be rescued, protected, fully assisted and compensated fairly. On November 4, 2014, Dr. Akrawi said that "the international community should define what’s happening to the Yezidis as a crime against humanity, crime against cultural heritage of the region and ethnic cleansing," adding that Yazidi females are being subjected to a systematic gender-based violence and that slavery and rape are being used by ISIL as weapons of war.” On 3 November 2014, the “price list” for Yazidi and Christian females issued by ISIL surfaced online, and Dr. Akrawi and her team were the first to verify the authenticity of the document. On 4 November 2014, a translated version of the document was shared by Dr. Akrawi. On 4 August 2015, the same document was confirmed as genuine by a UN official.
A United Nations report issued on October 2, 2014, based on 500 interviews with witnesses, said that ISIL took 450–500 women and girls to Iraq's
Nineveh
Nineveh (; akk, ; Biblical Hebrew: '; ar, نَيْنَوَىٰ '; syr, ܢܝܼܢܘܹܐ, Nīnwē) was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern ban ...
region in August where "150 unmarried girls and women, predominantly from the Yazidi and Christian communities, were reportedly transported to Syria, either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or to be sold as sex slaves".
In mid-October, the UN confirmed that 5,000–7,000 Yazidi women and children had been abducted by ISIL and sold into slavery. In November 2014 the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said that ISIS was committing
crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
. In 2016 the Commission for International Justice and Accountability said they had identified 34 senior ISIL members who were instrumental in the systematic sex slave trade and planned to prosecute them after the end of hostilities.
In a statement on April 21, 2021,
UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of
internally displaced person
An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.
A ...
s, Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, welcomed adoption by the
Iraq parliament of The Law on Yazidi Survivors as "a major step towards promoting justice for crimes committed by ISIL" and expressed concern for the unaddressed situation of children born out of rape by ISIL fighters.
Examples of sexual violence by ISIL
According to one report, ISIL's capture of Iraqi cities in June 2014 was accompanied by an upsurge in
crimes against women
Violence against women (VAW), also known as gender-based violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), are violent acts primarily or exclusively committed against women or girls, usually by men or boys. Such violence is often c ...
, including kidnap and rape.
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' reported that ISIL's extremist agenda extended to women's bodies and that women living under their control were being captured and raped. Fighters are told that they are free to have sex and rape non-Muslim captive women.
Hannaa Edwar, a leading women's rights advocate in Baghdad who runs an NGO called Iraqi Al-Amal Association (IAA),
said that none of her contacts in Mosul were able to confirm any cases of rape.
However, another Baghdad-based women's rights activist, Basma al-Khateeb, said that a culture of violence existed in Iraq against women generally and felt sure that sexual violence against women was happening in Mosul involving not only ISIL but all armed groups.
In a press release by the United Nations Iraq on August 12, 2014, representatives report “atrocious accounts on the abduction and detention of Yazidi, Christian, as well as Turkomen and Shabak women, girls and boys, and reports of savage rapes, are reaching us in an alarming manner.”
Instances of sexual violence appear to be increasing, with some estimates totaling 1,500 Yazidi and Christian captives forced into sexual slavery.
Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
infers that ISIL has “launched a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq,” where “many of those held by IS have been threatened with rape or sexual assault or pressured to convert to Islam. In some cases entire families have been abducted”. Thus, these crimes extend beyond gender-based violence as males, in addition to females, are being targeted. In this case sexual violence is employed to achieve a political goal, religious conversion to Islam as interpreted by ISIL.
Yazidi girls in Iraq allegedly raped by ISIL fighters have committed
suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...
by jumping to their death from
Mount Sinjar
The Sinjar Mountains ( ku, چیایێ شنگالێ, translit=Çiyayê Şingalê, ar, جبل سنجار, translit=Jabal Sinjār, syr, ܛܘܪܐ ܕܫܝܓܪ, Ṭura d'Shingar,) are a mountain range that runs east to west, rising above the surroundi ...
, as described in a witness statement.
Haleh Esfandiari from the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (or Wilson Center) is a quasi-government entity and think tank which conducts research to inform public policy. Located in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washi ...
has highlighted the abuse of local women by ISIL militants after they have captured an area. "They usually take the older women to a makeshift slave market and try to sell them. The younger girls ... are raped or married off to fighters", she said, adding, "It's based on temporary marriages, and once these fighters have had sex with these young girls, they just pass them on to other fighters." Speaking of
Yazidi
Yazidis or Yezidis (; ku, ئێزیدی, translit=Êzidî) are a Kurmanji-speaking endogamous minority group who are indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The majo ...
women captured by ISIS,
Nazand Begikhani
Nazand Begikhani (born 1964 in Iraq) is a contemporary Kurdish/British writer, poet and leading academic researcher into gender based violence, and an active advocate of human rights. She is an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of B ...
said "
ese women have been treated like cattle... They have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery. They've been exposed in markets in Mosul and in Raqqa, Syria, carrying price tags." ''Dabiq'' describes "this large-scale enslavement" of non-Muslims as "probably the first since the abandonment of Shariah law".
''The Guardian'' reported on September 29, 2014, that ISIL extended its recruitment efforts to Western females, asking them to join the movement in order to bear children for the new caliphate.
Hundreds of females, predominantly between 16 and 24 years old, have been radicalized and abandoned their families, homes, and countries to join the jihad in the name of ISIL. At least one is as young as 13 years old.
In December 2014 the
Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights announced that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had killed over 150 women and girls in
Fallujah
Fallujah ( ar, ٱلْفَلُّوجَة, al-Fallūjah, Iraqi pronunciation: ) is a city in the Iraqi province of Al Anbar, located roughly west of Baghdad on the Euphrates. Fallujah dates from Babylonian times and was host to important Jew ...
who refused to participate in
sexual jihad
Sexual jihad ( ar, جهاد النكاح, translit=jihad al-nikah) refers to the alleged practice in which women sympathetic to Salafi jihadism travel to warzones such as Syria and voluntarily offer themselves to be "married" to jihadist militan ...
.
Shortly after the death of US hostage
Kayla Mueller
Kayla Jean Mueller (August 14, 1988 – February 6, 2015) was an American human rights activist and humanitarian aid worker from Prescott, Arizona. She was taken captive in August 2013 in Aleppo, Syria, after leaving a Doctors Without Borders ho ...
was confirmed on 10 February 2015, several media outlets reported that the US intelligence community believed she may have been given as a wife to an ISIL fighter. In August 2015 it was confirmed that she had been forced into marriage to
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ( ar, أبو بكر البغدادي, ʾAbū Bakr al-Baḡdādī; born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai ( ar, إبراهيم عواد إبراهيم علي محمد البدري السامرائي, ʾIb ...
, who raped her repeatedly.
"'ISIS leader al-Baghdadi repeatedly raped US hostage Mueller before her death' ... We were told Kayla was tortured, that she was the property of al-Baghdadi," Mueller's parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, told ABC News"
, jpost.com, August 14, 2015. ''The Washington Post'' reported that " e leader of the Islamic State personally kept a 26-year-old American woman uelleras a hostage and raped her repeatedly." The Mueller family was informed by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(FBI) that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had sexually abused
Sexual abuse or sex abuse, also referred to as molestation, is abusive sexual behavior by one person upon another. It is often perpetrated using force or by taking advantage of another. Molestation often refers to an instance of sexual assau ...
Ms. Mueller, and that Ms. Mueller had also been torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
d. Abu Sayyaf
Abu Sayyaf (; ar, جماعة أبو سياف; ', ASG), officially known by the Islamic State as the Islamic State – East Asia Province, is a Jihadist militant and pirate group that follows the Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. It is based i ...
's widow, Umm Sayyaf
Nasrin As'ad Ibrahim, better known by the ''nom de guerre'' Umm Sayyaf, is the widow of Abu Sayyaf. She was captured in May 2015 by US Delta Force soldiers on the mission where they killed her husband, a suspected leader of the Islamic State.
Dur ...
, confirmed that it was her husband who had been Mueller's primary abuser.
See also
*Genocidal rape
Genocidal rape, a form of wartime sexual violence, is the action of a group which has carried out acts of mass rape and gang rapes, against its enemy during wartime as part of a genocide, genocidal campaign. During the Armenian genocide, Armeni ...
*Genocide of Yazidis by ISIL
A genocide of Yazidis by the Islamic State was carried out in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq in the mid-2010s. The genocide led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced i ...
* Human rights in ISIL-controlled territory § Slave trade
*Islamic views on slavery
Islamic views on slavery represent a complex and multifaceted body of Islamic thought,Brockopp, Jonathan E., “Slaves and Slavery”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington D ...
*''Ma malakat aymanukum
Islamic views on slavery represent a complex and multifaceted body of Islamic thought,Brockopp, Jonathan E., “Slaves and Slavery”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington D ...
''
* Persecution of Assyrians by ISIL
*Sexual jihad
Sexual jihad ( ar, جهاد النكاح, translit=jihad al-nikah) refers to the alleged practice in which women sympathetic to Salafi jihadism travel to warzones such as Syria and voluntarily offer themselves to be "married" to jihadist militan ...
* Sexual slavery § Middle East
*Slavery in 21st century Islamism
Quasi-state-level jihadist groups, including Boko Haram and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, have captured and enslaved women and children, often for sexual slavery. In 2014 in particular, both groups organised mass kidnappings of la ...
*Wartime sexual violence
Wartime sexual violence is rape or other forms of sexual violence committed by combatants during armed conflict, war, or military occupation often as spoils of war, but sometimes, particularly in ethnic conflict, the phenomenon has broader ...
References
{{Militant Islamism in the Middle East
Women's rights in Iraq
Terrorism tactics
Wartime sexual violence
Sexual abuse
Torture
Sexual slavery
Genocidal rape
History of women in Iraq