The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS

by Robert Spencer

  Victims of Islamic State Beheadings: A Partial List

  SYRIAN SOLDIERS: On July 25, 2014, Islamic State supporters posted to social media photos of soldiers of the Assad regime beheaded in Raqqa—one ISIS supporter said seventy-five soldiers had been beheaded.14

  JAMES FOLEY: The Islamic State posted video of the beheading of American journalist Foley on August 20, 2014.15

  ALI AL-SAYYED: Eight days later, on August 28, 2014, the Islamic State posted photos of the beheading of Lebanese Army Sergeant al-Sayyed on social media.16

  STEVEN SOTLOFF: The beheading video of Israeli-American journalist Sotloff was published September 2, 2014.17

  DAVID HAINES: British humanitarian aid worker Haines’s beheading video was published on September 13, 2014.18

  15 RELATIVES OF POLICE OFFICERS IN AFGHANISTAN: On September 20, 2014, masked men calling themselves soldiers of the Islamic State beheaded fifteen family members of Afghan police officers.19

  HERVÉ GOURDEL: A French mountaineering guide, Gourdel was kidnapped in Algeria. The Algerian Islamic State affiliate Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate) released a video showing his beheading, “A Message of Blood for the French Government,” on September 24, 2014.20

  ALAN HENNING: The Islamic State released the beheading video of British humanitarian aid worker Henning on October 3, 2014.21

  PETER KASSIG: American humanitarian aid worker Kassig converted to Islam while in captivity, taking the name Abdul-Rahman. His conversion did not save him, as he had served in the U.S. military in Iraq, and thus as far as the Islamic State was concerned had to be punished as a “Crusader.”22 A video showing his beheading—and also that of twenty-one Syrian soldiers—was published on November 16, 2014.23

  HARUNA YUKAWA AND KENJI GOTO: The Islamic State released the beheading video of Yukawa in January 2015, after the Japanese government did not pay the demanded ransom of $200 million. Shortly thereafter, after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made it clear that he was not going to accede to the Islamic State’s demands, Goto’s beheading video was released as well.24

  21 EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANS: On February 15, 2015, the Islamic State posted a video entitled, “A Message Signed with Blood to the Nation of the Cross.” It showed the Islamic State’s Libya affiliate beheading twenty-one Coptic Christians from Egypt who had gone to Libya to find work.25

  WHY ARE THE VICTIMS SO CALM?

  One curious feature of the Islamic State’s beheading videos is that they include propaganda statements from the hostages who are about to be executed. These hostages are invariably quite calm, reading the statements prepared for them clearly and without hesitation. This anomaly has let some to speculate that the hostages in ISIS beheading videos are drugged—and even that the videos are entirely fake. Fueling this speculation is the fact that we know that many of the Islamic State hostages were extensively tortured: James Foley, for instance, was beaten, waterboarded, and made to go through mock executions. Islamic State hostages have been kept in a general state of terror and deprivation, with no blankets or mattresses and very little food. They have often been confined in darkness for days on end. ISIS has shown gruesome footage—victims’ heads are typically sawn off with relatively small knives, a process that takes some time—of the execution of hostages to the terrified survivors.26 After all this, the moment of a hostage’s own execution would be the crowning horror, and calm would be the last reaction we would expect from the hostages. A defector from the Islamic State has explained the mystery. It was his job, he says, to make sure that the hostages did not panic. For this reason, the beheadings are extensively rehearsed. According to the defector, the jihadist doing the beheading “would say to me, ‘Say to them, no problem, only video, we don’t kill you, we want from your government [to] stop attacking Syria. We don’t have any problem with you; you are only our visitors.’ So they don’t worry. Always I say to them, ‘Don’t worry, doesn’t matter, nothing dangerous for you.’ But at the end I was sure [they would die].” In the same way, the Islamic State jihadi preparing to behead his victim would say to him, “It’s a rehearsal, don’t [be] afraid.” He would instruct the hostages to say, “I’m living in ISIS and will stay and continue.” The hostages were given Arabic names to reassure them further. Japanese hostage Kenji Goto was renamed “Abu Saad” and told: “You should be Muslim and come with us.”27 In the end, they killed him.

  And about Those Slave Girls

  Similar calculations apply in regard to the Islamic State’s practice of kidnapping Yazidi and Christian women and pressing them into sex slavery. The Qur’an says straightforwardly that in addition to wives (“two or three or four”), Muslim men may enjoy the “captives of the right hand” (4:3, 4:24). These are specified as being women who have been seized as the spoils of war” (33:50) and are to be used specifically for sexual purposes, as men are to “guard their private parts except from their wives or those their right hands possess” (23:5–6).

  If these women are already married—no problem. Islamic law directs that “when a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled.”28

  The Islamic State did not originate this belief in the right that Muslim warriors have to make sex slaves of captive women. Not only is this the traditional understanding of how things should work, firmly grounded in the obvious literal meaning of the passages of the Qur’an quoted above, but also in recent years, Muslim thinkers have been suggesting that it is time to revive the practice. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that “if we could conduct one, two, or three jihadist operations every year, many people throughout the earth would become Muslims.” Those who rejected the invitation to convert to Islam (da’wa) should be enslaved:

  And whoever rejected this da’wa, or stood in our way, we would fight against him and take him prisoner, and confiscate his wealth, his children, and his women—all of this means money. Every mujahid who returned from jihad, his pockets would be full. He would return with three or four slaves, three or four women, and three or four children. Multiply each head by 300 dirhams, or 300 dinar, and you have a good amount of profit. If he were to go to the West and work on a commercial deal, he would not make that much money. Whenever things became difficult (financially), he could take the head (i.e. the prisoner) and sell it, and ease his (financial) crisis. He would sell it like groceries.29

  This statement, understandably enough, touched off a firestorm, leading al-Huwayni to reassure everyone that he wasn’t suggesting that Muslims could be enslaved in this way—only infidels:

  OSTRICH ALERT

  “[Islamic State] extremists are beheading people and parading their heads on spikes, subjugating women and girls, killing Muslims, Christians and anyone who gets in their way. This is no liberation movement—only a perverted, oppressive ideology that bears no relation to Islam.”

  —UK Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper30

  Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels. . . . Do you understand what I’m saying? Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars—there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.

  When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name milk al-yamin, “that which your right hands possess” [Qur’an 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on thi
s point—there is no disagreement from any of them. [ . . . ] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.31

  Around the same time, a female Kuwaiti activist and politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and morality:

  I received a message that was a little strange. A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth. The topic that he brought up is an old topic. I have been working on it for two years now.

  I was working with this man, a young man, who (liked) women a lot. I was sympathetic to his situation, and also dedicated to my work. I was given the opportunity to visit Mecca, and when I did so, I brought up (this man’s) situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?”

  The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”

  “Is this forbidden by Islam?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not—she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”

  Of course, I also asked religious experts in Kuwait (about this issue), and they told me about the problem with the passionate man, or even the man who is committed to his religion. For every good man in our religion, the only solution for him—when forbidden women come around, if he’s tempted to sin, then the solution to this issue is for him to purchase sex slaves. I hope that Kuwait will enact the law for this category, this category of people—the sex slaves. . . .

  I hope that a law will be enacted for this category, and they will open the door for this, just as they have opened the door for servants (to come into the country). They should open the door for sex slaves, by enacting a sound law, so that our children don’t waste away in the abyss of adultery and moral depravity. Allah-willing, this will work out. I believe, look, the (sex slaves could come from) a country like Chechnya, where there is a war between an (Islamic) state and another state. Certainly there are prisoners. These prisoners could be purchased. They could be purchased and sold to the merchants in Kuwait. This is better than (the merchants) committing that which is forbidden. There is nothing wrong with this.

  Harun al-Rashid [the Abbasid caliph from 786 to 809] had many more sex slaves than this. When he died he had 2,000 sex slaves. But he only had one wife. This was not forbidden. Our shari’a permits such a thing as this. Praise be to Allah, here in Kuwait there are many merchants who are committed (to Islam). I hope the best for Kuwait, Allah-willing.32

  Unfortunately, this isn’t the view of just a couple of nut cases. Boko Haram, the notorious jihad group in Nigeria that ultimately allied with the Islamic State, made international headlines and inspired Michelle Obama to join the #BringBackOurGirls protest on Twitter in April 2014 when it captured over two hundred non-Muslim girls and pressed them into sex slavery.

  And for some Muslims living in the West, Islamic justifications for enslaving infidel women captured in war seem to have bled over into an attitude that the daughters of their non-Muslim neighbors are fair game. From Yorkshire to Minneapolis, groups of Muslim men have engaged in sex trafficking and the forced prostitution of non-Muslim women on an appalling scale. Britain has seen a horrifying number of cases of “Asian sex gangs” (“Asian” is a common euphemism for “Muslim” in the British media): groups of Muslim men who cajole or kidnap non-Muslim girls, often in their early teens, and force them into prostitution.34 As many as fourteen hundred minors may have been abused in this way in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, alone—the British city where the phenomenon first came to light.35 Meanwhile, Muslims from the Twin Cities area in Minnesota ran an interstate sex trafficking ring until they were caught and indicted in late 2010.36

  GREAT WORLD RELIGION OR PENTHOUSE?

  “A Muslim state must [first] attack a Christian state—sorry, I mean any non-Muslim state—and they [the women, the future sex-slaves] must be captives of the raid. Is this forbidden? Not at all; according to Islam, sex slaves are not at all forbidden. Quite the contrary, the rules regulating sex-slaves differ from those for free women [i.e., Muslim women]: the latter’s body must be covered entirely, except for her face and hands, whereas the sex-slave is kept naked from the bellybutton on up—she is different from the free woman; the free woman has to be married properly to her husband, but the sex-slave—he just buys her and that’s that.”

  —female Kuwaiti politician explains how sex slavery should work33

  But in the Islamic State, the trafficking in girls is not in any way surreptitious. Sex slavery is an institution recognized by law. And where the non-Muslim world sees barbarism and cruelty, devout and knowledgeable young Muslims see the Islamic State’s enslavement of young non-Muslim girls and gain respect for a group that is willing to defy the world’s opprobrium to practice what it regards as pure Islam. The Islamic State made this abundantly clear in the October 2014 issue of its Dabiq magazine, in which it said, “Enslaving the families of the kuffar [non-believers] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Sharia.”37 In a November 2014 video of gleeful Islamic State jihadis laughing and bantering at a sex slave auction, one of the fighters declares, “Today is the slave market day. Today is the day where this verse applies, ‘[Guard your private parts] Except with their wives and the (captives) whom their right hands possess, for (then) they are not to be blamed.’”38

  The Islamic State amplified this point in December 2014, when it issued a pamphlet explaining how sex slaves should be treated and why the practice was acceptable in Islam.

  The pamphlet was entirely in line with classic Islamic theology regarding sex slaves. It explained that al-Sabi—the slave—was “a woman from among ahl al-harb (the people of war) who has been captured by Muslims”—that is, a non-Muslim woman taken as the spoils of war. It was permitted to use these women in this way because of their “unbelief”: “Unbelieving (women) who were captured and brought into the abode of Islam are permissible to us, after the imam distributes them (among us).”

  The Islamic State asserted that “there is no dispute among the scholars that it is permissible to capture unbelieving women (who are characterized by) original unbelief (kufr asli), such as the kitabiyat (women from among the People of the Book, i.e. Jews and Christians) and polytheists. However, (the scholars) are disputed over (the issue of) capturing apostate women.” In other words, there was some question over whether women who had left Islam could be used as sex slaves. But since “the consensus leans towards forbidding it,” the Islamic State announced that it was inclined not to use ex-Muslim women in this way.

  NOT THAT THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM

  “Question 4: Is it permissible to have intercourse with a female captive?

  “It is permissible to have sexual intercourse with the 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 possess, for then they are free from blame [Koran 23:5–6].’ . . . ”

  —from a pamphlet on sex slaves issued by the Research and Fatwa Department of the Islamic State39

  Other rules allow Muslims “to buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property, which can b
e disposed of (as long as that doesn’t cause the Muslim ummah) any harm or damage.” An owner cannot sell his slave if she becomes pregnant by him. Upon his death, his slaves will be “distributed as part of his estate, just as all [other parts] of his estate [are distributed].”

  The instructions are quite detailed. “A man may not have intercourse with the female slave of his wife, because [the slave] is owned by someone else. . . . A man may not kiss the female slave of another, for kissing [involves] pleasure, and pleasure is prohibited unless [the man] owns [the slave] exclusively.”

  And if a slave gets out of line, it is “permissible to beat the female slave.” A runaway is to be “reprimanded (in such a way that) deters others like her from escaping.” It is forbidden for a Muslim man to marry his slaves, except under certain strict circumstances.40

  The Islamic State’s guidelines on sex slavery are remarkably similar to what the other proponents of the practice had said several years before the Islamic State was established. And no wonder—they were all drawing their understanding from the same principles of Islamic law. Thus the October 2014 issue of the Islamic State magazine Dabiq explained that in practicing sex slavery, the group was simply reviving an institution justified under Sharia. The article noted that, scrupulously, “one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided as khums”—that is, the cut of the spoils of war due to Islamic leaders, in line with the Qur’an: “And know that anything you obtain of war booty—then indeed, for Allah is one fifth of it and for the Messenger . . . ” (8:41).41