“Question 4: Is it permissible to have intercourse with a female captive? Allah the almighty said, ‘successful are the believers who guard their chastity, except from their wives or the captives and slaves, that their right hands posses for then they are free from blame (Koran 23:5-6). Note: the words ‘captives and slaves’ don’t exist in the original version of Quran.”
With that “note,” Morocco World News is trying to give the impression that the Islamic State is playing fast and loose with the Qur’an in justifying slavery. This is, unfortunately, not the case. Those whom “their right hands possess” are universally understood by Islamic exegetes to be referring to slaves; even Islamic apologetic sources that try to minimize the reality of slavery in Islam acknowledge that this term refers to slave women.
“ISIS’s “Science” of Slavery: How ISIS Justifies Enslavement of Yezidi Women with Islam,” by Johanna Higgs and Amal Ben Hadda, Morocco World News, June 26, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
Slavery, possibly one of the worst human horrors occurring on this earth at this time. In 2014, ISIS invaded the small town of Sinjar in Northern Iraq and began to carry out what has now been described as genocide against the Yezidi people. Thousands of young women and girls were dragged off to be sold as sex slaves in markets.
Yezidi women who have returned from captivity have described a system of organized rape and sexual assault, sexual slavery and forced marriage. Guidelines for slavery have been established and they have repeatedly used a narrow and selective interpretation of the Quran to justify their barbarous acts of sexual violence.
According to Amnesty International, it is estimated that there are still as many as 3 800 girls being held as slaves by ISIS.
In a small makeshift IDP camp in the centre of Erbil Bese Qawal, Hana Xwededa and Fayza Haji, three Yezidi women who fled their homes in Sinjar when the violence with ISIS began to unfold. They had spent over a year living with another small group of Yezidi’s in a few ramshackle buildings with little certainty as to what the future would hold. As they sat in their small home they quietly described the horror that forced them to flee,
‘When the first assaults started, ISIS tried to stop us from fleeing. They wanted to kill the men and take the women. They tried to capture us but we managed to escape into the mountains. They burned our home, we came here with nothing,’ said Qawal as she leaned back against the wall. All three women sat somberly in the room as small children darted in and out.
‘They wanted to take the women as slaves. Our family is safe but we know some of the girls who were captured. They are selling girls as young as 8 or 9 years old in markets.’
When asked why they believed that ISIS was targeting the Yezidis, Qawal looked at the ground and replied quietly, ‘by god I don’t know. We are poor people.’
The Yezidi’s have been persecuted by the surrounding Muslim communities for many centuries. A minority in the region the Yezidis constitute only 1.5 percent of Iraq’s estimated population of 34 million. Of Kurdish descent, the Yezidis are generally considered to be a pre Islamic sect with an oral tradition as opposed to written scripture, though there are several ideas as to where the Yezidi culture originated.
For ISIS this makes them unbelievers of the worst kind, more so than Christians and Jews who are considered to have some limited protections according to their descriptions in Quran as ‘people of the book.’
It is for this reason, that ISIS has proclaimed their right to enslave Yezidi women.
ISIS considers their rules of enslavement as a ‘science that has been almost absent in modern Islamic jurisprudence,’ or what is known as fiqh. The word figh is an Arabic term meaning ‘full understanding’ and refers to the body of Islamic law extracted from detailed Islamic sources.
In a pamphlet released by ISIS, they highlight the need to practice this ‘science’ throughout the Islamic Caliphate, which they seek to establish throughout the world.
This pamphlet, through its questions and answers, uses interpretations of the Quran, as defined by various Sunni Islamic scholars to justify their acts of slavery. These scholars, using interpretations as defined by the exegesis, use the term ‘right hand possession’ as meaning ‘female slave’.
Some of the questions and answers of the pamphlet are as follows,
Question 3: Can all unbelieving women be taken captive?
There is no dispute among the scholars that it is permissible to take such women who are characterized by original unbelief such as the women from among People of the Book ie Jews and Christians.
Question 4: Is it permissible to have intercourse with a female captive?
Allah the almighty said, ‘successful are the believers who guard their chastity, except from their wives or the captives and slaves, that their right hands posses for then they are free from blame (Koran 23:5-6).
Note: the words “captives and slaves” don’t exist in the original version of Quran
Question 6: Is it permissible to sell a female captive?
It is permissible to buy, sell or give as a gift female captives and slaves for they are merely property.
The literal interpretation in Arabic of the term ‘right hand’ means any promise or commitment that must be observed and respected. So the term, ‘right hands possession’ semantically means the obligation to fulfill promises. This could be relevant to different contexts, particularly those regarding social commitments such as caring for orphans, marriage, and recently, this term was referred to in relation to surrogacy. In the Quran, both men and women are called to respect what their right hands possess.
However, when the word ‘possession’ is added, ISIS interprets this as female slave.
Through this traditional interpretation of Quran, ISIS has publically and officially sanctioned their use of slavery and rape. The ‘right hands possession,’ means for them that ‘religiously’ they can have sex with ‘unbelieving’ women, virgins and young girls, captured during war even if it is outside the institution of marriage. They consider this as a reward for their war efforts and is a motivator for soldiers to fight….
eur says
The slave market and having sex slaves has been commonplace since the Arabs left their peninsula. I do not know why they deny it.
TheOldOligarch says
They deny it due to their current position of weakness. Give a Muslim nation USA level military power and see how long it takes for the mass sexual enslavement of infidel women to be resumed as a core practice of Islam.
Bharat Mehta says
Civilized world must proclaim their right to destroy Islamic books and its Mosques and Imam from the state. No followers of Islam should be consider as eligible for citizenship. Otherwise, followers of this stupid world will destroyed Civilization without mercy.
mortimer says
Please note that Koran 4.23-24 doesn’t merely permit the rape of captive women in general. The point of Koran 4.23-24 is to permit the rape of MARRIED CAPTIVES.
Koran 4.23-24 is a DECREE BY ALLAH that endorses CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY and WAR CRIMES.
Koran 4.23-24 was used by the Pakistan Army in JUST THAT MANNER in the 1971 invasion of Bengal and the RAPE of 400,000 Bengali women. Some women were raped 80 times a night and died from gang rape.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Bangladesh_Liberation_War
During the war, a fatwa in Pakistan declared that the Bengali ‘freedom fighters’ were Hindus and that their women could be taken as the ‘booty of war’.
Rape is normative Islam, rather than an aberration. Islam is a RAPE CULT as well as being a DEATH CULT.
Lynn says
ISIS is following the example of Muhammad, the perfect man, in using the lure of sex slaves and booty to obtain followers.
gravenimage says
Exactly, Lynn.
Debi Brand says
Yup. In a word.
Michael Copeland says
“Slavery is a part of Islam. Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.”
Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan,
professor, imam and eminent Saudi scholar.
https://libertygb.org.uk/news/slavery-part-islam-–-muslims-speak
gravenimage says
Islamic State justifies sex slavery of infidel women by quoting the Qur’an
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There is nothing more Islamic than these atrocities.
God, I hate Islam.
Steve's nephew says
Do you really think it is God.s will for someone to rape another person for any fricking reason? NO, it’s not. The Muslims have perverted God’s will in a vile, sick, and manipulative way. God’s instructs people to “love your neighbor as yourself.” That means to be empathetic towards other people. Those poor Yesidi young ladies who were sexually and morally pure virgins saving themselves for their future husbands had their virginity and their dreams brutally stolen from them by Muslim savages. No way in the entire world could this EVER be God’s will. The Muslims should repent now. Read what Christ has to say about dealing with your neighbor. If your desire is to be close to God, this is all you have to do.