LONDON (Reuters) — Fatwa from Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS) theologians says father and son cannot share a sex slave, among other regulations
Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when “owners” of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent effort to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females.
The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond ISIL’s previous known rulings on slavery, a leading ISIL scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the rape of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq under its control.
The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by US special operations forces during a raid targeting a top ISIL official in Syria in May.
Among the fatwa’s injunctions are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave, and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as “part of a joint ownership.”
The United Nations and human rights groups have accused ISIL of the systematic abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls as young as 12, especially members of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Many have been given to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.