As the Islamic State marched through Iraq and Syria this summer, its refrain was “convert or die.” For many, refusal to swear fealty to the Islamic State and adopt its violent, repressive ideology meant a bullet to the head.
But some women and children imprisoned by the Islamic State who refuse to convert have been dealt a fate some might consider worse than death.
By the end of August, the Islamic State had abducted up to 2,500 Iraqi civilians, most of them women and children, according to a new United Nations report based on more than 450 interviews with witnesses.
Some have been awarded to fighters, others sold as slaves in markets in Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria.
There were several reports of an office in Mosul where women and girls are tagged with a price and offered for sale to buyers.
Some women have reportedly been sold to young men to entice them into fighting for the Islamic State
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Absolutely not! There is no war on women. As any man. They will tell you.
Get serious. This nonsense, human trafficking, are just extreme examples of the war on women. Men exercise power over women. In our country, the war is more subtle and appears in the form of legislation. Just getting the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized in 2013 was like herding cats. Conservatives kept throwing up road blocks for a variety of different reasons.
Wars appear on many fronts.
Thanks for agreeing with us finally.
THAT is a war on women and we have called it such.
What the media and Democrats, but I repeat myself, are calling a war on women is pure hyperbole.
Apparently you are short circuiting. You don’t see the connection do you? Women who don’t have power are very vulnerable. End of statement.
Plenty of people who aren’t Democrats understand that the war on women really is a metaphor for the attempt to keep women unempowered.
Primitive cultures use concrete examples like holding women captive at the end of a sword. Those of us who have progressed past the stone age understand the more abstract version of being unempowered.
@Cargosquid
As a man, what makes you think you get to define what women believe to be war or not?
Agree, Censored. I expect those ISIS boys probably don’t feel they have declared a war on women either. Bet the women and girls would disagree.
@Censored bybvbl
As a woman, what make you think you get to be the only arbiter of the definition? There are women who disagree with your “war on women” propaganda.
Those are the women whose men take extra good care of them.
Absolutely those who are being targeted get to decide.
Surely you have been through at least one bullying course. Who gets to decide when there is bullying going on? The person being bullied gets to decide.
There are also people who say there were no beheadings at the hands of ISIS. That doesn’t make it so.
@Cargosquid
I’m willing to give those women who disagree with me the option of disagreeing with me on a variety of subjects – a choice. Many of them want to dictate to others what their options should be.
They want to control my/our choices.
Truly confident (not arrogant) men have few problems with women. It’s the insecure types, politically striving, stuck-in-a-rut, or religiously arrogant types that generally create the problems and want everyone to be as miserable as they are. Educated men want the best opportunities for their wives, daughters, granddaughters. They know they can be better than the Taliban.
Whether it’s extreme, as with ISIS, or more subdued, as it is with the conservative religious extremists here, it’s all the fruit of the same tree. It’s all men attempting to control women using religion as a tool.
And it always affects the poorest the most. Financially secure women can afford birth control and health care without help, and 75% of the beneficiaries of a raised minimum wage would be women, for example. And those better off have the means to move out of the way of extremists like ISIS.
The helpless poor bear the brunt of religious extremism all over the world, especially the women.
Excellent post, Middleman. I concur.
Wow, you can tell we’re getting close to an election that isn’t looking good for the Dems.
Funny how for eight years, the only people interested in protecting women from the people you say are waging a war on women are the people you say are waging a war on women. (If that sounds confusing, maybe you need to reconsider your views.)
I think that Democrats, Independents and Republicans want to defeat ISIS. Other than that….maybe YOU should rethink which political parties and which extremists do the most to make sure women aren’t empowered.
Start with the notion that until women are able to control their own reproduction, they really aren’t empowered. If you doubt that, look back to when women really were hired by corporations. The parallels are astounding. The reasons given for not hiring them are very “madmen’esque.”
Yeah, because there’re no Democrats in the military or Homeland Security. What a uninformed, partisan comment…
I think the growing lack of respect people have for others in general and especially those with whom they disagree is out of control. We can only blame ourselves. When did that become acceptable?
I don’t know. @Lyssa.
It used to be that you were judged by how you treated others. You were also judged by how your children behaved.
Now…not so much.
So if I understand correctly your comparing ISIS raping women and cutting their heads off to… Obama not paying women in his administration as much as he pays the men who work for him?
No, you don’t understand me correctly at all.
So President Obama isn’t attempting to keep women unempowered by paying them less than men?
No he isn’t. Get over it.
Sorry, I must have been mistaken in thinking equal pay was an example of the war on women. I suppose paying women less then men for the same job isn’t an issue any longer.
I don’t think you have proof that women are being paid less for the same job in the White HOuse.
You’re being perverse. Being beaten slightly is okay?
@Moon-howler
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/male-female-pay-gap-remains-entrenched-at-white-house/2014/07/01/dbc6c088-0155-11e4-8fd0-3a663dfa68ac_story.html
Here ya go.
Often these things can be as simple as there a lot more maids than male maids. The White House also compares favorably to other agencies and to Virginia.
Would we all feel better if they hired based on gender only?
Why don’t we start bitching that elementary schools have too many women teachers and that the NFL has too many males per team.
More significant is whether women receive equal pay for equal work. Its a good initiative and good for President Obama for pushing the goal.
* It’s a proven fact that women receive less pay for equal work in President Obama’s administration and have been since he took office 6 years ago.
* The White House has admitted to the fact on a few occasions.
* The President has had 6 years to remedy the situation and pay women equal to men for equal work and has yet to do so.
* The response from President Obama supporters, and pushers of the ‘war on women’ meme when confronted with this fact isn’t shock/outrage/demanding it be fixed NOW but instead denial and “Its a good initiative for President Obama for pushing the goal” seeming to forget that he has been “pushing the goal” (for everyone else apparently) since he took office but has yet to achieve that goal and most likely never will.
* Also, one of the most common reactions is like this one “The White House also compares favorably to other agencies and to Virginia”. So yes, President Obama pays women less for equal work than men but hey… the rate at which he pays them less isn’t as big a gap as other companies? Really? So paying women less is okay, just as long as it’s not THAT much less. A little less is just fine?
This is one of the reasons why most people find the ‘war on women’ to be a cheap political scam because if the top Democrat, the President, pushes the ‘war on women’ while at the same time actively participates IN the ‘war on women’ and the reaction from women is… eh (shrugging of shoulders), it’s not THAT bad then it comes across as fake.
You either believe there is a war on women and push that notion or you don’t. It’s disingenuous to push a ‘war on women’ but excuse active participants in that war just because they have a ‘D’ next to their name. Otherwise nobody will take the war on women seriously.
Jackson, you stretch my patience….you are aware that perhaps the 13% difference is not that 2 people doing the same job make different salaries? It is that there aren’t as many women filling top positions. There also could be more women at lower paying jobs, like the maid squad.
I wouldn’t read anything into a 13% differential. Only someone with a partisan bone to pick would so something like that.
Until you change the conversation to face the situation, I am just not going to respond to you.