ISIS fatwa urges 'compassion' for sex slaves at the end of detailed list of rules for rape

Rule No. 14 in a detailed January 2015 Islamic State fatwa on the treatment of female slaves suggest that "the owner of a female slave should show compassion towards her, to be kind to her, not humiliate her," and No. 15 says slave owners should not sell a female slave to anybody "he knows will treat her badly," according to a copy of the religious edict obtained by Reuters. The other 13 rules, which carry the force of law in ISIS-controlled territory, dictate when and how the "owner" of a female slave can force sex on her.

The sale, dissemination, and rape of female slaves is so common in ISIS that, as Reuters reported over the weekend, it has a "war spoils" department that manages the distribution of female "infidels." The January fatwa, from ISIS theologians on the "Committee on Research and Fatwas," is an attempt to dictate rules for permissible sex with the slaves. The rules — which you can read here — prohibit a father and son from having sex with the same slave, for example.

In 2014, more than 120 Islamic scholars repudiated ISIS's attempt to justify taking slaves as sanctioned by Islam, and Prof. Abdel Fattah Alawari, the dean of Islamic theology at Egypt's 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar University, reiterated that point to Reuters. ISIS "has nothing to do with Islam," he said, and its teachings on slavery are a deliberate misreading of Islamic prohibitions on owning slaves. "Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery was the status quo when Islam came around.... Judaism, Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all practiced it and took the females of their enemies as sex slaves. So Islam found this abhorrent practice and worked to gradually remove it."

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