One eight-year-old girl was so traumatized by the repeated rapes inflicted on her by ISIS, and justified by their imams under sharia law, that she set herself on fire to stop it from happening again.  A German doctor, coming upon her ruined body in a refugee camp, arranged for her to be sent to a German hospital in the hope she might survive the burns over 80% of her body.

Another of the same doctor’s patients was also eight.   “IS sold her eight times during the 10 months she was held hostage, and raped her hundreds of times,” the doctor told the Agence France-Presse in Geneva.  “This is one of the cases I always have in my mind.”

London’s Sunday Times interviewed another Yazidi girl who had been thirteen at the time of her capture.

EVERY night Sarah wakes screaming in a cold sweat from a recurring nightmare in which her hands and legs are bound by an Isis rapist about to force himself on her…. Over the course of several months, Sarah, then 13, was passed between fighters before she was “married” to Imad, a 40-year-old, who raped her nightly after feasting on the meals she would prepare while he was on the battlefield.

According to a CNN report, ISIS leader al-Baghdadi has put out a letter claiming that repeated rapes by at least ten different members of the organization can cause Yazidi women to convert to Islam.  Baghdadi, whom American intelligence says obtained a doctorate in Islamic Studies from the University of Baghdad, is claiming that rape by Muslims is good for the womens’ souls.  Indeed, it is their salvation.

ISIS’s propaganda magazine, Dabiq, discussed the theology of sex slavery in its ninth issue.  This is not a battlefield rumor, in other words.  It is a core part of the message of the so-called Islamic State.  It is a theological argument they are advancing seriously as part of the true message of Islam.  The idea that slavery is a way to salvation is not an implausible reading of Islam:  indeed, aside from “Muhammad,” among the most common names in the Islamic world are “Abdul-*”, which means “slave of” and is followed by one of the 99 names of God (e.g., “Abdullah”).  Slavery is the path of virtue for the devout Muslim on this reading of sharia, and ISIS refers to its members as “slaves of hardship” in its propaganda.  To be a slave of hardship is a good thing, if the hardship is in Allah’s path, just as to be a true slave of Allah is to attain the height of human perfection.  This is why a female ISIS member, Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirah, wrote in Dabiq:

As for the slave-girl that was taken by the swords of men following the cheerful warrior, then her enslavement is in opposition to human rights and copulation with her is rape?! What is wrong with you? How do you make such a judgment? What is your religion?

The last question is aimed at fellow Muslims who object to sex-slavery. It is a good question.