Thanks to those who have generously chipped in to my Paypal account at Darksydothemoon-at-aol-com. I may be able to cut this blegging out within a week or less!
Update: HuffPo says the claim about mutilation may be false, other sites still reporting it.
Just in case any lurking Christians think we write about them too much or exaggerate, I’d take my nosy, over zealous Christian right meddlers any day over these Iraq-Syrian ISIS assholes. This week they ordered everyone in their territory to convert to Islam under penalty of death and, as part of that process, women must under go genital mutilation:
India Times — Jihadists in Iraq have ordered that all women between the ages of 11 and 46 must undergo female genital mutilation, which could affect up to four million women and girls in the war-ravaged country, a UN official said Thursday. The UN’s second most senior official in Iraq, Jacqueline Badcock, said, “It is a fatwa (or religious edict) from ISIS, we learnt about it this morning. We have no precise numbers.”
Genital mutilation usually means a back alley or home clitorectomy. Cutting off the clitoris. Because those dang unclean women might have an orgasm, and then seek to temp honorable Allah-fearing men into unauthorized sex. Talk about sick projection. But ISIS isn’t done yet! These creepy bloodthirsty savages have also decreed that everyone in their territory must convert to their narrow version of fundamentalist Islam:
Guardian — Last weekend Isis gave the city’s Christians a stark choice: convert to Islam, pay a religious tax, or face death. “They said there is no place for Christians in the Islamic state,” one distraught refugee said from the safety of Bashiqa, 16 miles from Mosul. “Either you become Muslim or you leave.” Mosul’s last 1,500 Christian families were reportedly robbed at Isis checkpoints as they fled.
Hundreds have found shelter in areas between Mosul and Irbil – the capital of the Kurdistan regional government – that are controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, but they face an uncertain future.
“If Isis stays, there is no way the Christians can return,” Father Boutrous Moshi told the Guardian from Qara Qoosh, a Christian area south-east of Mosul. “It is up to God whether we return or not. They have not burned the churches but they did set fire to the pictures and the books and broke the windows.”
I can’t imagine how they would treat atheists. ISIS isn’t entirely our fault, religious fundamentalism has left a trail of blood and horror all over the world for centuries, long before the United States were a gleam in the founders’ eyes. But Bush’s war of choice didn’t help matters one bit.
Numerous parties, some on the ground in Syria, have suggested that this story may come from creative minds in some anti-ISIS group over there.
Commenters at Ophelia Benson’s post on this report have accumulated a set of links to follow-up stories. So far, no confirmation has shown up.
Thanks, I was just updating it. Man I hope it’s not true.
Apparently, according to this article on Aussie ABC news online :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-25/militants-order-female-genital-mutilation-in-iraq/5622826
the United Nations has confirmed this – “UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Iraq Jacqueline Badcock told reporters by video-link from the Iraqi city of Arbil on Thursday.”
I am horrified but not exactly surprised.
The fact that this was so easy to believe is very damning for ISIS. There is no crime they could commit that isn’t believable.
“Easy to believe” and “proof” are two different things. It depends on how gullible you are.
A lot of things are easy to believe (the level of rabid fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. is certainly proof of that), which is exactly why we need to be fully aware of what kind of assholes we’re dealing with.
The last thing we need is for this site to become the atheist version of Fox News.