New Fatwa Permits Rape of Non-Sunni Women in Syria

By Raymond Ibrahim

Yet another Islamic cleric recently made it permissible for the Islamic fighters waging a jihad in Syria—politely known as “the opposition”—to rape the nation’s women.

Salafi Sheikh Yasir al-‘Ajlawni, a Jordanian of origin who earlier lived in Damascus, Syria for 17 years, posted a YouTube video last week where he said he was preparing to issue a “legitimate fatwa” making it legal (in the eyes of Islam) for those Muslims fighting to topple secular president Bashar Assad and install Sharia law to “capture and have sex with” all non-Sunni women, specifically naming Assad’s own sect, the Alawites, as well as the Druze and several others, in short, all non-Sunnis and non-Muslims.

The sheikh used Islam’s legitimate Arabic term for these hapless, non-Muslim women, melk al-yamin, a phrase that appears in Islam’s sacred book, the Koran, and which is simply a reference to non-Muslim sex-slaves. For example, Koran 4:3 commands Muslim men to “Marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four… or what your right hands possess.” Islam’s ulema, or “scholars,” are unanimously agreed that “what your right hands possess” is, according to Islamic law, simply a sex-slave. Linguistic evidence further suggests that she is seen more as an animal or a possession than a human—hence this inhuman fatwa.

Jordanian Sheih Yasir al-‘Ajlawni is certainly not the first cleric to legitimize the rape of infidel women in recent times. Calls to capture and rape non-Muslim women are appearing with increasing frequency from all corners of the Islamic world.

A few months earlier, Saudi preacher Muhammad al-Arifi also issued a fatwa allowing jihadi fighters to engage in “intercourse marriage” with captive Syrian women that lasts for a few hours “in order to give each fighter a turn”—also known as gang-rape.

Then there is Egyptian Sheikh Ishaq Huwaini, who once lectured on how infidel captives, or to use another term from the Koran, ghanima, the “spoils of war,” are to be distributed among the jihadis and taken to “the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold.” He, too, referred to such women as “what your right hands possess,” saying: “You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate—though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff—and this is agreed upon by the ulema…. In other words, when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

Indeed, even some Muslim women advocate the enslavement and rape of fellow (non-Muslim) women. Kuwaiti political activist, Salwa al-Mutairi, for instance, is working to see the institution of sex-slavery return. In a video she posted online, she explained how she once asked Islam’s greatest authorities living in the city of Mecca, the city of Islam, about the legality of sex-slavery and how they all confirmed it to be perfectly legitimate. According to Mutairi:

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.

The Kuwaiti activist went on to offer concrete suggestions: “For example, in the Chechnya war, surely there are female Russian captives. So go and buy those and sell them here in Kuwait; better that than have our men engage in forbidden sexual relations. I don’t see any problem in this, no problem at all.”

One can go on and on with more examples. The point is that last week’s fatwa permitting the jihadi-led “opposition” to target and rape non-Sunni Syrian women is in good company, and certainly not an aberration.

The only aberration seems to be the United States’ wholesale support for self-professed rapists and terrorists—quite laughably, in the name of “democracy.”

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Raping Women in the Name of Islam

By Khaled Abu Toameh

While jihadis in Syria are importing girls from Tunisia to satisfy their sexual needs, their colleagues in Libya are kidnapping and raping women.

Last week, the father of two British women of Pakistani origin said that his daughters were gang raped in front of him by Muslim fundamentalists in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi.

The father, Awadh al-Barassai, said on his Facebook page that the women were part of a humanitarian convoy that was heading to the Gaza Strip.

He said that the women were raped in front of him after being kidnapped by Muslim extremists. He condemned the crime as a "horrible act."

According to reports in the Arab media, the two women were gang raped in accordance with a fatwa [Islamic religious decree] issued by Jordanian Salafi Sheikh Yasser Ajlouni.

Ajlouni's fatwa allows the jihadis to have sexual intercourse with women who fall captive during war.

The women who were raped in Libya obviously had not been aware of the fatwa.

That they were part of a human convoy headed to help Muslims in the Gaza Strip did not prevent Libya's jihadis from perpetrating their crime.

The "pro-Palestinian" groups in charge of the convoy must feel a bit embarrassed about this crime. That is perhaps why they have been trying to hide the case from the eyes of Muslims and the international community.

What happened to the two women in Libya is a big disgrace not only to Islam, but to all those who sympathize with fundamentalists and terrorists, including the "scholars" and "sheikhs" who authorize such crimes.

Moderate Muslims who fail to strongly condemn the Muslim terrorists and rapists also bear responsibility for the crimes that are being committed in the name of Islam.

The gang rape in Libya will also cause tremendous damage to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. As of now, families of "pro-Palestinian" activists around the world will have to think ten times before sending their daughters on humanitarian aid convoys.

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Fighting sin with sin, the twisted morals of rapists in the Syrian conflict

From Al Bawaba

Calling a spade a spade, it's rape not a Holy War.

“Wahhabist fighters have called the rape as ‘Jihad al-Nikah,’ assuming women and girl as war prisoners, and raping them as permissible,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay reportedly denounced in the first official recognition of the phenomenon in Syria.

Over the past months, religious representatives across the Middle East might have taken different sides in the Syrian conflict but they all agree on one point: no matter which God Syrian women pray to, the brave fighters can prey whoever they like.

In a video posted last month on Youtube, Jordanian cleric Salafi Sheikh Yasir al-Ajlawni legitimized the raping of  Syrian "Alawites and other non-Sunni, non-Muslim women", Human Events reported.

Fear not for the other religious strands, Saudi preacher Muhammad al-Arifi had already enacted a Fatwa allowing jihadi fighters to have "intercourse marriage" with the Syrian captives as a way of cheering up "the warriors of Islam".

Al-Arifi also called for the intercourse to last long enough to ensure "each fighter his turn" but reassured the girls -gang-rape was preconised on girls as young as 14- that women who yield themselves as "short-term intercourse brides" are guaranteed entry into al-Janah (Paradise).

Aren't they just lucky?

"With every war and major conflict, as an international community we say 'never again' to mass rape," reportedly said Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, who is co-chair of the International Campaign to Stop Rape & Gender Violence in Conflict. "Yet, in Syria, as countless women are again finding the war waged on their bodies --we are again standing by and wringing our hands". 

A recent report by the Women's Media Center, based on over 150 stories by Syrian men and women, found that 85% of these women aged between 7 and 46 years, had been sexually abused, with about 40% probably being gang-raped.

Erin Gallagher, a former investigator of sexual and gender-based violence for the UN's Commission of Inquiry on Syria has done extensive research, speaking with Syrian women in Jordanian and Turkish camps. 

"There are more victims out there than what we are finding," and getting a clear vision of the scope of the phenomenon "is going to take time, trust building, and a broader, holistic approach," she told The Atlantic.

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