IS HOLDS WOMEN IN FEAR AND MISERY

COMMENTARY: Fear and Misery under the Niqab

While the Kurds just passed a women’s rights declaration, IS continues to oppress and persecute women, treating them as chattel.

Nov 13, 2014, 11:25AM | Rachel Avraham

In Iraq and Syria today, the Kurds are fighting against Islamic State not just with guns, but also at the ideological level.    When it comes to women, the vision of the Kurdish fighters could not be more drastically different than Islamic State.   Kurdish forces permit women to fight beside them as equals and recently, Syrian Kurds in the Jazira Province issued a women’s rights decree.

According to a report in Al Arabiya, the decree calls for equality between men and women “in all spheres of public and private life.” It declares that women should not be married under age 18, bans polygamy, grants women equal rights when it comes to divorce, and outlaws honor crimes and other forms of violence against women.

Additionally, the Washington Times noted that the decree also grants women labor rights, such as equal pay for equal work, as well as giving them paid maternity leave for their first three children. It also noted that arranged marriages; where a woman is forced to wed a man without her consent is forbidden under the decree. According to women’s rights activist Phyllis Chesler, the decree even grants Kurdish women the right to hold public office.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights added that the decree is an affront to “laws being passed by the Islamic State, which are highly discriminatory against women. Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP: “While fighting the jihadists, the Kurds also want to send a message to the international community, to say that they want to espouse a culture of democracy and civil rights.”

Meanwhile, as the Syrian Kurds have been promoting women’s rights in areas that they administer, Islamic State has been continuing to oppress and persecute women, treating them as chattel. The Clarion Project recently reported that face veils known as the niqab are no longer considered sufficiently modest Islamic dress under Islamic State’s definition.

Abu Ward al-Raqqawi, one of the founders of the human rights group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, told the Clarion Project that women are now forbidden to leave their homes unless they are wearing a dara, an additional covering worn on top of the niqab (face veil) and chador (a loose, long black cloth or coat that envelops the body from head to toe). 

According to Reuters, even mannequins in stores must be adorned with the niqab and children under age 12 must also wear headscarves. One Iraqi woman told the western media: “Why do they force us to do something against our will? We’re born free and it’s unfair to be treated like this.”

Additionally, women living under Islamic State cannot leave their homes without a male chaperone. Reuters reported that in Fallujah, a woman in her fifties protested this Islamic State edict, stressing that she should be able to walk alone because she is a widow and she did not want to burden her brothers. 

She reportedly told Islamic State in court: “You say that Allah does not accept a woman walking outside her home alone. Then how could Allah accept you killing people?” The IS terrorist told her in response: “We would decapitate you if you were a man.” Instead, they opted to expel the woman from the city and confiscate her property.

However, for women living under Islamic State, being raped, compelled to marry a foreign jihadist, or sold into slavery remains the main concern. A troubling video has recently been circulated on the internet documenting Islamic State men joking as they purchase Yazidi women as sex slaves.

According to the Washington Times, Islamic State has recently set price controls for the sale of Yazidi and Christian women. Women between age 40 and 50 cost $42; women between age 30 and 40 cost $63; women between age 20 and 30 cost $85; women and children between age 10 and 20 cost $127; and children under age 10 cost $169. Islamic State also declared that no one can buy more than three women unless one hails from Turkey, Syria or the Gulf states. IS reportedly set the price controls because the slave market, which they depend on for revenue, was not performing as well as they liked.

The thousands of IS sex slaves suffer a horrendous fate. According to a CNN report, these women are housed in three story homes with hundreds of other women. Islamic State men come and take three women at a time home with them. 

“These women have been treated like cattle,” Nazand Begikhani, an adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government on gender issues, explained. “They have been subjected to physical and sexual violence, including systematic rape and sex slavery. They've been exposed in markets in Mosul and in Raqqa, Syria, carrying price tags.” In one case reported last month, a Yazidi woman testifies that she was raped 30 times within a few hours.

IS justifies their abduction and rape of non-Muslim women in their online magazine Dabiq: “One should remember that enslaving the families of the kufar (unbelievers) and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah (Islamic law).” As Islamic State continues to oppress and persecute as the Kurds struggle against it, the people of Syria and Iraq are fighting for the future direction of their countries.