A new manual, allegedly published by the Islamic State’s official publishing house (the Al-Himma Library), provides graphic details on how to properly beat, rape, and fail to impregnate female slaves, offered in a question-and-answer format to curious jihadis.
Translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, the institute notes that it was apparently published in response to international outrage at the Islamic State’s treatment of female slaves, particularly Yazidi and Christian girls and women captured in territories. Reports from conquered territories in Iraq indicate that Islamic State wives run brothels in which Yazidi sex slaves are forced to undergo rape on a near-constant basis, and many are bought and sold on the black market to jihadis looking for more personalized slaves.
The guide permits the “capture” of “unbelieving” women and provides detailed rules on how to engage in sexual intercourse with them. “Consent” only appears once–in a rule stating that jihadis do not need it to “ejaculat[e] on a woman’s pudendum [i.e. coitus interruptus].”
The manual is clear on slavery: “It is permissible to buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property, which can be disposed of.” The guide allows for them to be used as sex slaves only when the master is the exclusive owner of that slave. “If she is a virgin,” the guide explains, “he [her master] can have intercourse with her immediately after taking possession of her. However, is [sic] she isn’t, her uterus must be purified [first]…”
Most horrifyingly, the manual endorses pedophilia with girls. “It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse,” the guide claims, without defining how a girl can be “fit” for intercourse without having reached puberty. It allows for the jihadi to “enjoy her without intercourse” if she is not “fit.”
The UK Independent publication notes that, as with many of these publications, there is no independent confirmation of where it came from, only that it is being distributed to jihadis in Iraq through an official ISIS channel. “Though it could not be independently verified,” the newspaper notes, “the list is believed to have been printed on 3 December by Isis’s in-house publishers on behalf of the group’s ‘Research and Fatwa Department.'”
While there are no definitive estimates on how many women are currently enslaved by Islamic State jihadists, hundreds have been captured at a time, particularly from Iraq’s Yazidi community. In August, one individual raid resulted in up to 500 Yazidi women being kidnapped, with most still in captivity.