Folks, look at this (again):
QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.
...
When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.
“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “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,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.
...
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.
...
A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month. Repeatedly, the ISIS leadership has emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Quran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.
...
In much the same way as specific Bible passages were used centuries later to support the slave trade in the United States, the Islamic State cites specific verses or stories in the Quran or else in the Sunna, the traditions based on the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, to justify their human trafficking, experts say.
Scholars of Islamic theology disagree, however, on the proper interpretation of these verses, and on the divisive question of whether Islam actually sanctions slavery.
Many argue that slavery figures in Islamic scripture in much the same way that it figures in the Bible — as a reflection of the period in antiquity in which the religion was born.
“In the milieu in which the Quran arose, there was a widespread practice of men having sexual relationships with unfree women,” said Kecia Ali, an associate professor of religion at Boston University and the author of a book on slavery in early Islam. “It wasn’t a particular religious institution. It was just how people did things.”
Cole Bunzel, a scholar of Islamic theology at Princeton University, disagrees, pointing to the numerous references to the phrase “Those your right hand possesses” in the Quran, which for centuries has been interpreted to mean female slaves. He also points to the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence, which continues into the modern era and which he says includes detailed rules for the treatment of slaves.
Islamic State militant rapes 12-year-old girl, uses Quran to justify it-Zee News, India.
Report: ISIS Makes Rape Part Of Theology, Uses Practice As Recruiting Tool-CBS News.
Both of those are based on a story today in the quasi-official New York Times:
ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape
From the Times story:
QADIYA, Iraq — In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.
...
When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.
“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “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,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.
...
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.
...
A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month. Repeatedly, the ISIS leadership has emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Quran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.
A narrow and selective reading it is but it is a reading, it is there. The Confederate States of America cited to biblical passages to justify slavery; slavery is there, in the Bible! Sanctioning slavery however is not as prevalent in the Bible as it is in the Quran. Every Christian and Jewish society in the world now has read the sanctioning of slavery out of the Bible, they have interpreted it to forbid slavery. Christianity has interpreted the Bible as a living document, to be molded to the times. There have been Reformations, plural, in Christianity. Yet, President Obama has said that Islam does not have to become "modern."
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“He kept telling me this is ibadah,” she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship....
In much the same way as specific Bible passages were used centuries later to support the slave trade in the United States, the Islamic State cites specific verses or stories in the Quran or else in the Sunna, the traditions based on the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, to justify their human trafficking, experts say.
Scholars of Islamic theology disagree, however, on the proper interpretation of these verses, and on the divisive question of whether Islam actually sanctions slavery.
Many argue that slavery figures in Islamic scripture in much the same way that it figures in the Bible — as a reflection of the period in antiquity in which the religion was born.
“In the milieu in which the Quran arose, there was a widespread practice of men having sexual relationships with unfree women,” said Kecia Ali, an associate professor of religion at Boston University and the author of a book on slavery in early Islam. “It wasn’t a particular religious institution. It was just how people did things.”
"It was just how people did things." Yes! That was just how people did things. WE DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY NOW IN CHRISTIANITY! We interpreted the Bible to conform it to the way that Christianity is practiced and preached today.
“There is a great deal of scripture that sanctions slavery,” said Mr. Bunzel, the author of a research paper published by the Brookings Institution on the ideology of the Islamic State. “You can argue that it is no longer relevant and has fallen into abeyance. ISIS would argue that these institutions need to be revived, because that is what the Prophet and his companions did.”
This is how Islam is practiced and preached today, not by every Muslim, but not by an insignificant "Jay-Vee team" as President Obama termed it either. ISIS is a strong, growing force in the Middle East--and beyond. Those, like President Obama, like Pope Francis, who say that Islam is just like other religions, peaceful, that it cannot be insulted, that it is in no need of reform, are in conscious denial. And they are deceiving people. The variants of Islam that are practiced and preached today by ISIS, in Salafi Saudi Arabia, in Shi'ite Iran, in Sunni Pakistan are varying degrees of hostile to the practitioners of other religions, to the idea of separation of Church and State, to America.
This is how Islam is practiced and preached today, not by every Muslim, but not by an insignificant "Jay-Vee team" as President Obama termed it either. ISIS is a strong, growing force in the Middle East--and beyond. Those, like President Obama, like Pope Francis, who say that Islam is just like other religions, peaceful, that it cannot be insulted, that it is in no need of reform, are in conscious denial. And they are deceiving people. The variants of Islam that are practiced and preached today by ISIS, in Salafi Saudi Arabia, in Shi'ite Iran, in Sunni Pakistan are varying degrees of hostile to the practitioners of other religions, to the idea of separation of Church and State, to America.
