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Quasi-state-leveljihadist groups, includingBoko Haram and theIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant, have captured and enslaved women and children, often forsexual slavery.[1][2] In 2014 in particular, both groups organised mass kidnappings of large numbers of girls and younger women.[3][4]
The first report of slave-taking by Boko Haram was on 13 May 2013 when a video was released of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau saying his group had taken women and children - including teenage girls - hostage in response to the arrest of its members' wives and children.[5]
According to Islamism expertJonathan N.C. Hill, Boko Haram began kidnapping large numbers of girls and young women for sexual use in 2014. The attacks echoed kidnappings of girls and young women for sexual use by Algerian Islamists in the 1990s and early 2000s, and may reflect influence byal-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.[3][6]
According to a community leader from Borno state quoted by the BBC, some captured young women and teenage girls held by Boko Haram have been forced to marry one Boko Haram fighter after another as the fighters are killed. "Any time they go for an operation and one of the fighters is killed they will force the young woman to marry another one ... Eventually she becomes a habitual sex slave."[7]
| Islamic State price list for women and children slaves | |
|---|---|
| 1–9 years old | $165 |
| 10–20 | $124 |
| 21–30 | $82 |
| 31–40 | $62 |
| 41–50 | $41 |
| SOURCE:Zainab Bangura, UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict.[8] | |
The Economist reports thatISIS (also called "Islamic State") has taken "as many as 2,000 women and children" captive, selling and distributing them as sexual slaves. Some women were reportedly sold via auction and even via online auction to Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.[9][10] Matthew Barber, a scholar of Yazidi history at the University of Chicago, later stated to have compiled a list of 4,800 capturedYazidi women and children, and estimated that the overall number could be up to 7,000.[4] Yazidi are a small minority who practice a religion based on "a mix of Christian, Islamic, and ancient Mesopotamian beliefs".[8]
According to reports endorsed as credible byThe Daily Telegraph,virgins among the captured women were selected and given to commanders as sexual slaves.[11] According to an August 2015 story inThe New York Times, "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."[12][13]
In April 2015,Zainab Bangura, theUnited Nations special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, visited Iraq and was given a copy of an Islamic State pamphlet including a list of prices for captured women and children. According to a story on the list in Bloomberg, the list's authenticity "was established by UN researchers who'd gathered anecdotes on similar slave markets in Islamic State-controlled areas". The captives are non-Muslim minorities, "mostlyArab Christians and Yazidis" who have refused to convert to Islam and whose adult male relatives have been murdered. Bidders for the captive women and children include "the groups own fighters and wealthy Middle Easterners."[8]
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Female slavery was common during the medievalArab slave trade, where prisoners of war captured in battle from non-Arab lands often ended up assex slaves, concubines (who are considered free when their master dies -Umm al-walad - if they give birth to a child acknowledged by him).[14]
Chattel slavery survived longest inthe Middle East, and was eventually banned during the 20th-century due to pressure from Western nations and international bodies such as the UN. After theTrans-Atlantic slave trade had been suppressed, the ancientTrans-Saharan slave trade, theIndian Ocean slave trade and theRed Sea slave trade continued to traffic slaves from the African continent to the Middle East. During the 20th century, the issue of chattel slavery was addressed and investigated globally by international bodies created by theLeague of Nations and the United Nations, such as theTemporary Slavery Commission in 1924–1926, theCommittee of Experts on Slavery in 1932, and theAdvisory Committee of Experts on Slavery in 1934–1939.[15] By the time of the UNAd Hoc Committee on Slavery in 1950–1951, legal chattel slavery still existed only in the Arabian Peninsula:in Oman,in Qatar,in Saudi Arabia,in the Trucial States andin Yemen.[15] Legal chattel slavery was finally abolished in the Arabian Peninsula in the 1960s: Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962, in Dubai in 1963, and Oman as the last in 1970.[15]
Earlier in the 20th century, Islamist authors declared slavery outdated without actually clearly affirming and promoting its abolition. This has caused at least one scholar (William Clarence-Smith[16]) to criticize the notable "evasions and silences ofMuhammad Qutb" and the "dogged refusal ofAbul A'la Maududi to give up on slavery".[17][18]
Sayyid Qutb, a leading scholar of the IslamistMuslim Brotherhood wrote in histafsir (commentary of the Quran) that slavery was a way of handling prisoners-of-war and it "was necessary for Islam to adopt a similar line of practise until the world devised a new code of practise during war other than enslavement".[19] Qutb's brother and promoter,Muhammad Qutb, vigorously defended Islamic slavery, telling his audience that "Islam gave spiritual enfranchisement to slaves" and "in the early period of Islam the slave was exalted to such a noble state of humanity as was never before witnessed in any other part of the world."[20] He contrasted the adultery, prostitution,[21] and (what he called) "that most odious form of animalism" casual sex that are found in Europe,[22] with (what he called) "that clean and spiritual bond that ties a maid [i.e. slave girl] to her master in Islam."[21]
Abul A'la Maududi, the founder ofJamaat-e-Islami in the early 20th century, meanwhile wrote:
Islam has clearly and categorically forbidden the primitive practice of capturing a free man, to make him a slave or to sell him into slavery. On this point the clear and unequivocal words of [Muhammad] are as follows:
There are three categories of people against whom I shall myself be a plaintiff on theDay of Judgement. Of these three, one is he who enslaves a free man, then sells him and eats this money" (al-Bukhari and Ibn Majjah).
The words of this Tradition of the Prophet are also general, they have not been qualified or made applicable to a particular nation, race, country or followers of a particular religion.....After this the only form of slavery which was left in Islamic society was the prisoners of war, who were captured on the battlefield. These prisoners of war were retained by the Muslim Government until their government agreed to receive them back in exchange for Muslim soldiers captured by them.....[23]
According to some scholars,[24] there has been a "reopening" of the issue of slavery by some conservativeSalafi Islamic scholars after its "closing" earlier in the 20th century whenMuslim countries banned slavery and "most Muslim scholars" found the practice "inconsistent with Qur'anic morality."[25][26]
In response to the Nigerian extremist groupBoko Haram's Quranic justification for kidnapping and enslaving people,[27][28] andISIL's religious justification for enslavingYazidi women asspoils of war as claimed in their digital magazineDabiq,[29][30][31][32][33][34] 126 Islamic scholars from around the Muslim world, in late September 2014, signed anopen letter to the Islamic State's leaderAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi, rejecting his group's interpretations of theQur'an andhadith to justify its actions.[35][36][n 1] The letter accuses the group of instigatingfitna – sedition – by instituting slavery under its rule in contravention of theanti-slavery consensus of theIslamic scholarly community.[37]
According toCNN andThe Economist, the self-styledIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant "justifies its kidnapping of women as sex slaves citing Islamic theology." An article entitled, 'The revival (of) slavery before the Hour,' (of Judgement Day), published in theISIL online magazine,Dabiq, claimed thatYazidi women can be taken captive and forced to become sex slaves or concubines under Islamic law, "[o]ne should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar -- the infidels -- and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah, or Islamic law."[4][38][39]
It not only justified the taking of slaves but declared that those who "deny or mock" the verses of the Koran or hadith that justified it wereapostates from Islam, asserting that concubinage is specifically justified in the Koran:
Yazidi women and children [are to be] divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations [in northern Iraq] … Enslaving the families of the kuffar [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Koran and the narrations of the Prophet … and thereby apostatizing from Islam.[40]
Another article inDabiq rebuked supporters of ISIS who had denied ISIS had taken slaves "as if the soldiers of the Khilafah had committed a mistake or evil," and promised "slave markets will be established."[41]
ISIL appealed toapocalyptic beliefs and "claimed justification by a Hadith that they interpret as portraying the revival of slavery as a precursor to the end of the world."[42] In late 2014, ISIL released a pamphlet on the treatment of female slaves.[43][44][45][46][47]
Abubakar Shekau, the leader ofBoko Haram, a Nigerian Islamist group, said in an interview "I shall capture people and make them slaves" when claiming responsibility for the2014 Chibok kidnapping.[27] Shekau has justified his actions by appealing to theQuran saying "[w]hat we are doing is an order from Allah, and all that we are doing is in the Book of Allah that we follow."[48]
In April 2023, Nihad Jariri, a seniorAl Aan TV journalist, reported on Twitter that according to a leak document,Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have engaged in slavery of women and children in Congo.[49]
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