Islamic State Fighters Fear Shortage Of Virgins To Rape

They are left with no one to repeatedly gang-rape but girls who have already been terrorized and beaten extensively, and the challenge is gone.

Raqqa, June 24 – Newly arrived Islamic State trainees from other countries are worried that the region is running out of virgin girls upon whom to perpetrate brutal rapes, recruits say.

The onslaught of Islamic State conquests has featured bloodshed and brutality directed not only at captured enemy fighters, but at the civilian populations in conquered areas. Murder and torture have been the order of the day for anyone accused of insufficient Islamic piety, most recently and graphically in the crucifixion of several boys for not fasting properly during Ramadan. However, even strict adherence to Islam does not spare women and girls from being treated as chattel, and the only thing distinguishing the fate of the “right” kind of Muslim girls from others is the level of brutality in their treatment. However, the efficiency and scale of the rapes has severely depleted the supply of virgins in the territory controlled by the Islamic State.

Sexual slaves are easy to obtain in IS-ruled areas, but the thrill of forcing oneself on a virgin remains elusive for many recruits, says Mustafa Hymen, who came to Syria two months ago from Toulouse, France, specifically to partake of the kind of brutal sexual cornucopia unavailable in France. “In communities abroad, liaisons of every sort outside marriage are frowned upon. Here in the Dawlah,” he continued, referring to the Islamic State, “we are not only allowed to, but encouraged, to assert our masculinity by taking girls and doing to them as we please, in the name of Allah. But our blessed soldiers have been so effective and conscientious in that aspect of our divine mission that the newer recruits are lucky if they can rape a virgin maybe every two months.”

The shortage has become more acute as the string of successful IS offensives has stalled. American-led bombing campaigns in support of Kurdish and Iraqi military campaigns have succeeded in slowing, perhaps effectively stopping, the growth of the Islamic State’s borders, and the efficiency of the first few waves of mass rape means that the demand for untouched victims far outstrips supply. Hymen and his cohorts have been left with no one to repeatedly gang-rape but girls who have already been terrorized and beaten extensively, and the challenge is gone.

“When we first got here, some of us were given brides, but they had already been ‘broken in’ beforehand,” complained Takem Asdeyar, who came from Turkey to fight and pillage, not necessarily in that order. “It gets dull after they lose the will to resist, and after nothing shocks them anymore. This sexual drudgery is not what I was led to believe would be my lot when I signed up.”

“If I knew this was coming, I’d have accomplished the same thing by just getting married back home.”