Religion and Politics

ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape

In The New York Times, Rukmini Callimachi writes, “The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution.” ISIS claims that the Qur’an encourages the rape of non-Muslim women as a means of drawing them closer to God, and they use the practice to recruit men from conservative Muslim communities that forbid casual sex. The organization’s leadership celebrates “each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.”

Read at The New York Times

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