Antonio: Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
- The Merchant of Venice
Article in Islamic State's English-language online magazine Dabiq not only admits selling Yazidi women into sex slavery but justifies it according to the theological rulings of early Islam
The Telegraph
Monday, October 13, 2014
Thousands of Yazidi women sold as sex slaves 'for theological reasons', says Islamic State
By Richard Spencer
Islamic State jihadists have given detailed theological reasons justifying why they have taken thousands of women from the Iraqi Yazidi minority and sold them into sex slavery.
A new article in the Islamic State English-language online magazine Dabiq not only admits the practice but justifies it according to the theological rulings of early Islam.
"After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Sharia amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated," the article says.
It says there is a difference between women from Muslim sects the jihadists regard as heretical, who can be considered as "apostates", and the so-called mushrikin - polytheists and pagans.
"Their women could be enslaved, unlike female apostates."
The women were seized when the group swept across parts of northern Iraq in early August.
When the jihadists attacked areas occupied by Yazidis, the West's attention focused on the tens of thousands of refugees who crowded on to the barren hills of nearby Mount Sinjar, before they were rescued by Kurdish fighters.
But thousands more were surrounded and captured in nearby towns and villages.
The article does not specify that they are to be used as sex slaves, but later on equates them with "concubines".
The Islamic State newsletter, released online at the weekend, also contains an article by John Cantlie, a British journalist being held hostage, in which he says he fears he will soon be killed like his four fellow hostages, James Foley, Steven Sotloff, David Haines and Alan Henning.
But most of it is devoted to theological justifications for Islamic State behaviour, citing early clerics and the practices of the Prophet Mohammed and his Companions during the early years of Islamic expansion.
"The enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers as the mushrikin were sold by the Companions before them," the article, entitled "The Revival of Slavery before the Hour", says.
It says that "well-known" rules are observed, including not separating mothers from their children - something which may account for the number of teenage girls being used in this way, according to their families.
It says that 20 per cent of women are being taken in this way, in accordance with rules demanding a fifth of property captured in war to be handed over as tax.
The women are also given the chance to convert to Islam.
"This large-scale enslavement of mushrik families is probably the first since the abandonment of this sharia law," the article says.
"The only other known case - albeit much smaller - is that of the enslavement of Christian women and children in the Philippines and Nigeria by the mujahedeen there."
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