The mainstream media not too long ago was flooded with articles purporting to show that John Kerry and David Cameron weren’t the perfect idiots they appear to be, and that the Islamic State really was violating the core tenets of Islam. This is another one from that same mill, but it represents, whether wittingly or unwittingly on the part of its author and the Washington Post, a significant retreat: while it claims that the Islamic State is “violating Islamic rules of war,” it establishes this by quibbling about waiting periods, etc. — all the while taking for granted the much more significant point: that sex slavery is allowed in Islam.
The Post’s poorly reasoned and scantily supported farrago was penned by none other than Mia Bloom, the puffed-up academic who has already demonstrated that she knows very, very little about the ideology underpinning Islamic jihad activity. She has previously claimed that the Qur’an’s triple choice of conversion, subjugation or death was not for the ahl al kitab, People of the Book, when that was precisely the group it was for. She also is an extremely careless researcher, approvingly citing an Islamic text without apparently realizing that it endorsed murdering apostates from Islam, as well as also approvingly citing a site criticizing me, without apparently realizing or caring that it was a neo-Nazi hate site.
In this case, she takes careless research to a whole new level, citing a foremost authority to show that the Islamic State is violating the tenets of Islam: none other than…the Islamic State. Really, you couldn’t come up with a better parody of an arrogant and dimwitted pseudo-academic who owes her position not to competence but to political correctness than Mia Bloom.
“Six things you need to know about women and ISIS,” by Mia Bloom, Washington Post, June 4, 2015:
…1. How does ISIS justify its brutality towards women? In its magazine Dabiq, ISIS claims that there is a long tradition of war booty, concubinage and religious sanction for taking women as slaves. ISIS even coerces local Sunni women into forced marriages….
4. Women captured and enslaved by ISIS report being passed around to 20, 30, or as many as 100 men. One woman who escaped ISIS reported being “married” and “divorced” 22 times in a single weekend. These reports come from women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including a dozen Sunni women from Tunisia.
5. ISIS is violating Islamic rules of war through these gang rapes, multiple temporary “marriages” and refusal to free women who give birth. According to the rules laid out in the Hadith, a collection of the teachings, sayings, and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.
What exactly does Mia Bloom mean by this unfinished sentence? And how did this sentence fragment get past the Post’s editors? But even worse, click on the link she provides. One would expect it to go to some hadith collection, no? In fact, it goes to a publication of the Islamic State itself. That’s right: she is citing the Islamic State to buttress her case against the Islamic State. Nor is she catching them in a contradiction: the Islamic State document she cites doesn’t say anything about sex slavery of Infidel women being wrong, or anything about waiting periods at all. And the Washington Post publishes this nonsense.
If a female slave is not a virgin, a man must wait till she completes her menses, or roughly 30 days, before he can touch her to ensure she is not already pregnant. If she becomes pregnant by him, she is supposed to be freed, following the practice (or sunnah) of the prophet, who freed his enslaved concubine Mariyyah after she bore his son Ibrahim. Even within the Shi’a tradition of temporary marriage, or muta, there is a 30-day waiting period before a woman is permitted to remarry. This is to establish paternity, so that the father must take responsibility for the child, who has inherited his religion and ethnicity. In other words, there is no Muslim authorization for multiple marriages and divorces of the same woman without the requisite waiting period. What ISIS is doing is thinly veiled gang rape.
This time her link goes to Islam QA. Not only does it not contain any evidence for Bloom’s argument about the waiting period, but it also actually endorses the sex slavery of infidel women.
6. Most Muslim authorities reject slavery altogether. In other words, not only does ISIS abuse women, but it does not even follow the religious rules it purports to uphold regarding women.
After failing with two links, Bloom fails with a third: her link to Muslim authorities rejecting slavery goes to a Washington Post page that says, “The page that you requested is not available.”
Mia Bloom’s piece is unsupported and poorly argued to the point of absurdity, but it appears to provide substantiation for the establishment claim that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam — and so it gets into the Washington Post and is retweeted by the State Department. Just another sign of how deep a fix we are in these days.
Jacksonl03 says
“After failing with two links, Bloom fails with a third: her link to Muslim authorities rejecting slavery goes to a Washington Post page that says, ‘The page that you requested is not available.'”
Unfortunately most Washington Post readers will take her at her word, will not click up her references. Those few who do will not take the time to ferret out inconsistencies or will be too ignorant of Muslim texts and practices to detect them regardless of time spent reading them through.
Poor America.
Shane says
More lies about Islam from the Lamestream media which tells American that ISIS is not Islamic and jihad does not mean holy war. Screw them.
somehistory says
Jethro Clampett could write a better article explaining cyphering. From where do these *writers* and *experts* come? Misleading, to say the least.
somehistory says
I meant Jethro Bodine, not Clampett.
Lia Wissing says
From American universities, where islam is not only tolerated, but elevated above both the Constitution & the Bible.
Angemon says
Oh, do they? Most of them? Phew, I feel reassured already.
What a jackass.
John Fleming says
Bloomin’ idjit !
mortimer says
Editors are to blame for expecting rookies to write articles about Islam. It would be like asking them to write about medical matters or legal matters without having taken any courses of study.
Islam requires years of study, first to learn the source texts, then to learn the commentaries, then to learn the modern authorities, then to learn the jihad writers, then to learn the terrorist groups. A rookie can’t learn that in a week.
The editors have to get real about Islam and realize that writers can write VALUABLE, ACCURATE ARTICLES without in-depth knowledge of Islam. It’s too complex for a rookie.
Mirren10 says
Islam requires years of study ? I don’t think so.
By their fruits you shall know them, is a sound critique, in my book.
Raja says
Mortimer,
You are 100% right in your views. It takes lots of time to understand the devil for the world. A Christian/bible lover has already been given this truth in Matthew 7:15…..Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.
The fruits of Jihadi is globally known. Who are they speaking for or propagating for?
Uncle Vladdi says
Seriously, the enemedia traitors are committing horrific crimes enabling muslims to murder infidels. Willing accessories to murder – both before and after the fact – ARE murderers, by legal traditions which state that deaths caused while committing other crimes are in fact murder. The examples given are usually when a bank robber’s bomb sends bricks flying into unsuspecting citizens, killing them, but the analogy applies here as well. The enemedia, right now only fearing muslims, should be the first to go.