ISIS Sex Slavery by Nicolas Lucont Book Review

Book Review of ISIS Sex Slavery Interviews with the Sex Slaves and War Brides of ISIS Militants by Nicolas Lucont

ISIS Sex Slavery by Nicolas Lucont is a collection of interviews with the sex slaves and war brides of ISIS militants. Some of the chapters contain graphic details and incidents of violence that readers may find disturbing. The book however presents true, firsthand accounts from people who were once the victims. The sex slavery is just a part of it. There are reckless and brutal killing, gang rapes and other violent acts that are day-to-day affair in ISIS occupied places.

The book has two main divisions – the war brides and the sex slaves – and several chapters with the interviews and also brief introduction to the life and philosophy of ISIS militants. When the militants arrived at the village, recounts Mustafa, a young Iraqi refugee, he overheard them talking about killing all the men. But they were very short on bullets. So they decided to cut these men up at the carpenters’. They didn’t do the killing themselves. Instead they lined up the men and asked the carpenters to saw their heads off. Mustafa’s uncle, who was a carpenter, was forced to saw his brother’s head off. The militants asked some of the older kids to gather the heads and put them in large baskets.

Another boy caught my father’s head but I got him to give it to me. I cleaned the blood from his face and I combed his hair before placing it in the row of severed head.

When everything was done to their satisfaction, they killed the carpenters too. They didn’t use bullets. They just beat them on the heads with clubs until the skull collapsed and the blood and brains came out. Mustafa ran home to find his mother being raped by some ISIS militants. When they left, he went inside the house where his mother was curled up in the bed. She asked him to run to his grandmother’s house and stay there. Mustafa went there but found the house empty. So he ran back home to discover that her mother had killed herself.

I went to my uncle’s home. He was one of the carpenters that were clubbed to death. When I got there my aunt was being raped by ISIS men.

The ISIS fighters were rewarded with the freedom to rape whomever they desired when they were in the battlefields. Nicolas Lucont here discussed the condition of the brides of ISIS fighters. Most of them were quite enthusiastic about marrying a soldier. After marriage however their life was no different than the sex slaves. The fighters could abuse them as much as they desired. Marital rape was a concept unknown to them. The wives were often treated like animals.

Yet these women volunteered. They had to study Quran and pass religious tests in order to become eligible to be married to an ISIS jihadist. They were often trained to nurse war wounds and also to clean rifles and guns. Once married these women were forced to take birth control. Though the birth control pills are forbidden in Islam, the ISIS mullahs gave an edict to that order. By not having children, they said, the women were doing Allah’s wishes to have their husbands be on the battlefield. ISIS leadership believed that when a militant had children, he would want to settle down. He would work on a farm, start a business or something like that.

The way they saw it if the women had children, ISIS lost a soldier.

The process through which militants chose their wives was akin to purchasing cattle from the market. The women were lined up – naked – and the militants get to choose. Fadyaa, a young Muslim woman now living in Paris, said she was very excited to become wife of a holy warrior. She was shocked when the mullah asked her to take her burqua off.

The soldiers picked some of the pretty women and left. Then the women were asked to take their robes off. Another group of men walked in. The mullah took a wooden spoon and started to beat the bottom of the women.

The men then picked for wives the women who screamed and cried in a way that brought them pleasure. I was very loud when my bottom was beaten so I was picked up first.

Fadyaa was married to a soldier who beat her every day. He enjoyed hearing her scream and said she was his songbird.

The mullahs issued diktats that were often contradictory but convenient. They had reduced the institution of marriage to the level of prostitution. When their husband died, an ISIS wife was quickly assigned to marry another militant, and often without allowing the woman to mourn. Fairuzza, now in France, had been married four times in a year. When she went to the matron’s quarter, the same mullah’s that forced her to marry four times threw her out. After four men, you weren’t good for any man anymore, she was told.

Most of these interviews revealed the gruesomeness of daily life of ISIS militants. Yemina, whose husband had the hobby of collecting skull, had to clean the human skulls on regular basis. This ISIS fighter had skulls all over the house, for decorations.

My favourite piece was the skull tower. At the bottom we had the biggest skull, then followed by a smaller skull on top and so on until you get to a child’s skull, then a toddler skull, then a baby skull, then finally a fetus skull on top.

Then there was Malika, a young ISIS wife, who was given by his husband to young men whom he would trick to come to his home. A cleric gave him a written fatwa that since he had given his body to fight for Allah, in order to do the duties of a married man, he could use another good man who believe in jihad to serve in his place in the bedroom. That he could let get other man have sex with his wife. He would put this fatwa in display in his room. This made the men interested.

He would dope them and then make them have sex with Malika. Then he would show them another fatwa that he got from his cleric that said that if he ever caught a man having sex with his wife, he was obliged to beat and torture him. So he would beat and torture them in the basement for days, for his own sadistic pleasure.

We never got into any trouble because we had fatwas covering all the angles and because my husband was a very important man in ISIS.

Even later when word got around about the routine, men and boys, hoping that he’d invite to his house, started to visit places where her husband hung out.

They were so eager to lose their virginity with a woman instead of a goat that they volunteered even knowing they would be tortured half to death.

It was the Yazidi women who were the prime victims of ISIS Sex Slavery. It is believed that Yazidi women are generally attractive. In 2014, ISIS mullahs gave permission to jihadists to kill Yazidi men and enslave the Yazidi women.

... many of the Yazidi women are strikingly beautiful and that’s the major reason the Yazidi were targeted for sexual slavery.

Some of the Yazidi women interviewed in this book were betrayed by their Muslim neighbours. Matin, a young Yazidi boy told about one Mr. Hashem, their neighbour who betrayed them to ISIS fighters just to be allowed to rape Matin’s 16 year old sister.

For his help he was going to get a big screen TV one of our Yazidi neighbours owned, my Xbox and all my games, and he would get to rape my sister.

But the ISIS men thought that Bada, as a virgin, would bring good money if they sold her as a slave. So they took her. But instead of shooting Matin’s mother, they were going to let her live so that Mr. Hashem could get a chance to rape her before they killed her.

There were love camps but they were not like the comfort camps run by Japanese soldiers during the world war. There was, says Nicolas Lucont, no love in these camps. Here women were trained to become sex slaves of rich businessmen or sheikhs. Katya, a Russian born woman was in charge of Eva Love Camp that was quite famous. Luna, a Yazidi woman was thus trained and afterwards sold to a businessman from Iraq, Mr. Zahadi. He already had two other love slaves. He didn’t have sex with them. Instead he watched them round-the-clock through peepholes strategically placed at various locations in his house. These maid-cum-slaves also had to entertain rich and powerful people who often visited Zahadi. One such important guest was Admiral McConrad, an American. Somehow Luna hoped that this man would save her, liberate her from her slavery.

Later when she was shamed and humiliated by this man who used her body in every way for his own sadistic pleasure, she became disillusioned. He was like all other men - she concluded. When they find out they can get away with rape, they happily joined in.

 The most heinous war crimes that are committed by ISIS Fighters are probably done against these Yazidis. The last few chapters were about Yazidi women. This is also the part of ISIS Sex Slavery: Interviews with the Sex Slaves and War Brides of ISIS Militants by Nicolas Lucont that’s the most difficult to go through. There are also instances where brave Yazidi women escaped the slavery and took refuge in other countries. There are women who took up arms against the ISIS atrocities. Most of them were either witnesses to the barbarism or were victims themselves. If you are one of the sensitive sort, you should not read this book. There is too much to challenge our sanity and endurance. This book can move you to tears; shock you beyond your wildest imaginations. Yet it all happened on the same earth where we live.

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