Islam Rape Kit

Islam contains an ideological rape kit. Sacred texts of Islam clearly state that “those that your right hand possess” (that is, slaves) can be sexually exploited. Slaves are obtained in battle. Devout Muslims are enjoined to practice as the Qur’an enjoins to do. The New York Times, in an harrowing description of systematic raping of children by Muslim warriors, is finally waking up to these facts. See:

Just As The Moon, A Pre-Islamist Religion, Rules Over Islam, So Does Abominable Sexism

Qur’an (33:50) – “O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those (slaves) whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee”
This is one of several verses “from Allah” which say that the limit of four wives to have sex with does NOT apply to slaves:

Qur’an (23:5-6) – “… abstain from sex, except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess…”
The Qur’an is a small book (only 83,000 words, including much repetitive salutations to god), thus, if Allah wasted valuable space to make the same point four times, sex slavery has got to be a great value to him.
Qur’an (4:24) – “And all married women (are forbidden unto you) except those (captives) whom your right hands possess.” Sex with married slaves is authorized.

It is often said that Islam promotes equality: nothing is further from the truth. Christians and Jews, where and when tolerated had to pay a tax, wear distinct marks on their clothing, and to be killed if having sex with Muslim women. “Non-believers” and “apostates” have to be killed too.

However, even among Muslims, there is no equality:
Qur’an (2:178) – “O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the murdered; the freeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female.”
S0 all human beings are not equal, even among Muslims: freemen, slaves and females are three categories.

Plenty of Hadith relate that Muhammad enjoined his men to practice rape after battles (see for example Hadiths from Bukhari, say Bukhari (62:137), Bukhari (34:432), etc.).

The apologists of Islam scoff that this is all irrelevant: there are bigger predators out there, please stop worrying about Islam. Certainly so. And, as I have argued, modern vicious, fundamentalist Islam was promoted by American plutocrats and their servants.

But there is a much larger problem: Islamist ideology has obviously vicious, prominent aspects which explain what went wrong in the territories it conquered. That’s granted. The larger problem is that it ought to have been obvious all along. And the question is:

If Western intellectuals could not see what an abysmal superstitious, vicious ideology Islam represented, which other superstitious, obviously vicious ideologies do they not see? And even more pertinent, which ones do they have interest not to see?

The political and financial systems are obviously vicious and pernicious ideologies it’s best not to look at. Or then to look at in such a way that the critiques are too mild, and, or, too off base (thus ineffective).

Here are some extracts from the Times’ article… and not even the worst ones:

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QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.

He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.

When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.

“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.

The trade in Yazidi women and girls has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them.

A total of 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year… To handle them, the Islamic State has developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery, including sales contracts notarized by the ISIS-run Islamic courts. And the practice has become an established recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden.

A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month. Repeatedly, the ISIS leadership has
emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Quran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.

“Every time that he came to rape me, he would pray,” said F, a 15-year-old girl who was captured on the shoulder of Mount Sinjar one year ago and was sold to an Iraqi fighter in his 20s. Like some others interviewed by The New York Times, she wanted to be identified only by her first initial because of the shame associated with rape.

“He kept telling me this is ibadah,” she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship. “He said that raping me is his prayer to God. I said to him, ‘What you’re doing to me is wrong, and it will not bring you closer to God.’ And he said, ‘No, it’s allowed. It’s halal,’ ” said the teenager, who escaped in April with the help of smugglers after being enslaved for nearly nine months.
…“They laughed and jeered at us, saying ‘You are our sabaya.’ I didn’t know what that word meant,” she said. Later on, the local Islamic State leader explained it meant slave.

“He told us that Taus Malik” — one of seven angels to whom the Yazidis pray — “is not God. He said that Taus Malik is the devil and that because you worship the devil, you belong to us. We can sell you and use you as we see fit.”

Here is a last Hadith, for the road. It’s often asserted that Islam promotes, and protects women. Apparently rather unsuccessfully:

Volume 7, Book 62, Number 126:Narrated Imran:

The Prophet said, “I looked at Paradise and saw that the majority of its residents were the poor; and I looked at the (Hell) Fire and saw that the majority of its residents were women.”

Patrice Ayme’

Tags: Hadith, Islam, Muhammad, Qur'an, Rape, Slaves