Erbil, Iraq — Dozens of Yazidi sex slave survivors, including 9-year-old girls, were rescued this week by smugglers from their Islamic State captors following months of brutal rape and torture by their "owners" and other Jihadi soldiers who purchased them at an IS slave market.
"Their fighters pray to Allah before and after they systematically rape Yazidi women and children, including some as young as 9-years-old," said Hadi Pir, vice president of Yazda, a U.S.-based global Yazidi organization to The Christian Post.
While some Christians had the option to pay jaziya (Islamic tax paid by non-Muslims) to purchase their freedom, most other minority groups such as the Yazidis, who number about 600,000 in Iraq, were specifically targeted and separated for sex slavery.
Basing their slavery system on Quranic verses and Hadiths that govern groups they consider heretics, Islamic State gave the Yazidis only two options: convert to Islam or die. Many victims chose the later.
Yazidi Noor, a 22-year-old sex slave survivor whose name has been changed for her own protection, told CP about how she was kidnapped and enslaved during the Iraqi Sinjar province's Kocho massacre in 2014.
She escape after using an old mobile phone to contact her brother who coordinated with smugglers to get her out of Islamic State via Turkey and then into Kurdistan.
"IS soldiers gathered us and separated the virgin girls and children from the other women. ... They chose the beautiful girls and transported them to the Qasr Al Mihrab village where they distributed the girls to IS fighters. … My sister and I were given to a fighter named Muhammad Salah, who took us to Mosul where he raped and tortured us," Noor explains.
Both sisters tried several attempts to commit suicide, after they were sold on to other IS fighters in Syria over a period of six months. Ending up in the city of Raqqa, Noor was then forced to convert to Islam and practice Islamic rituals, while systematically being raped and tortured daily.
"Sometimes I deflected the rapes by telling them I had my period ... one IS soldier named Abu Khadija injected me with drugs to sedate me so he could rape me, as I kept trying to kill myself. When I woke up I realized I had been brutally raped by him," adds Noor.
Islamic State has infamously promoted its sex slave doctrine on social media, with a senior United Nations official confirming the groups "Sex slave price list" for captured women and children.
U.N. official Zainab Bangura, was given a copy of an Islamic State price list during a visit to Iraq, stating that "the girls get peddled like barrels of petrol," and "boys and girls aged 1 to 9 are equal to about $165," according to a report in Bloomberg
One 12-year-old Yazidi sex slave survivor in Iraq sparked global outrage after she explained her painful rape ordeal to a New York Times reporter earlier this month, and shared how her attacker told her that what he was doing was considered to be acceptable to Allah.
"I kept telling him it hurts — please stop. 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," The New York Times reported.
Another Yazidi girl aged 15, who also escaped, told the Times: "Every time that he came to rape me, he would pray. 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.'"
According to an article published in the Islamic State's propaganda magazine, Dabiq, Yazidis are considered heretics and their women and children can be divided "according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State."
The glossy propaganda platform published in several languages, including English, blends several Quranic and Hadith passages to explain why the slavery of heretics is permissible according to Islamic law. It also lists a set of rules on how to govern slaves, such as not separating mothers from their children.
"Before Shaytan [Satan] reveals his doubts to the weak-minded and weak hearted, one should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shari'ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur'an and the narration of the Prophet...and thereby apostatizing from Islam," as reported by the CP reported last October.
Pir told this reporter that many of the enslaved Yazidi women were able to escape, thanks to international business people and donations helping to purchase their freedom.
"The only people I know who are helping to free Yazidi women are mediators who have access to the areas controlled by Islamic State. ... U.S. donations have also helped us 'buy back' many Yazidi women and children as well as smuggle out many critical cases as well," he said.
As of August, around 1,446 Yazidi women and 2,054 men and children are still being held inside Islamic State territory. "U.S. intervention saved tens of thousands of Yazidis who were trapped on Mount Sinjar in August 2014. ... The U.S. airstrikes also saved many Yazidis and helped them fight Islamic State … but the U.S. has no policies or plans to save Yazidis and guarantee their future in Iraq," adds Pir
Yazda officials in Iraq say that the UNHCR did contact them twice, however, the only support they have received so far has been medication from the World Health Organization. "Most of the women are traumatized and need psychological therapy more than anything else," said Dohuk's Executive Director of Yazda, Jameel Chomer to CP.
Established in 2014, Islamic State has seized large areas of territory in Syria and Iraq and has declared it's own caliphate. The state follows a strict interpretation of Islam and Shariah law, which is not accepted or supported by the majority of Muslims globally.
Islamic State is notorious for its brutality, mass killings, abductions, sex slavery and the persecution of Christians including a priest whom they chopped into pieces, as documented by CP here.
The group has demanded that all Muslims throughout the world swear allegiance to its leader — Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai, known to his followers as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — and move to it's new territory.
IS sex slavery was introduced in 2014 as an incentive to recruit more soldiers, by the group's leader, who personally held the late American Aid Worker Kayla Mueller as his sex slave, according to the International Business Times.
According to the BBC, Islamic State has publicly executed thousands of hostages, including American journalist James Foley, in a bid to confront the U.S.-led coalition against them and spark an End Times war they believe, is between Muslims and their enemies described in Islamic texts.