Pseudo-feminists betrayed by their own ignorance

Asma Mohamed, first wife – now widow - of ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

If I said the name Asma Mohammed, I doubt many people would know who she is. Truth be told, neither did I until a few days ago.

When looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon an interview she gave to the Saudi state-owned Al Arabiya network on February 15.

Why should you care who Mohammed is or pay attention to what she said? Mohammed was the first wife – now widow – of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that’s why. And what she bears witness to is almost impossible to read.

For the purposes of this conversation, I want to focus on her as a witness to the terrorist regime’s obsession with women. Oh, they presented to the world as holy warriors, but in reality they were sex-obsessed little boys in adult bodies, abusers who kept strings of Yazidi girls as slaves, some as young as 14.

Mohammed described ISIS as a black stain, a group of savages who had “big dreams of conquering Rome”. She estimates Baghdadi kept more than 10 Yazidi girls as sex slaves, one of whom was a child. “All the emirs owned Yazidi women,” she said.

Baghdadi, like a true coward, killed himself via a suicide belt rather than be taken by US forces, killing two of his children and a wife in the process. This was in October 2019. Nearly five years later, one of his widows courageously gives an awful window into what it was like for women under ISIS rule.

Hold that thought for a second while we fast forward to life for women under Hamas since it took over in 2007.

Manar al-Sharif is a Damascus-born, Muslim journalist who spent years living in Gaza, was jailed in Gaza and, incredibly, managed to escape and bear witness. She describes enforced wearing of the hijab. She tells of being arrested and beaten for hosting a dinner party at her home at which both single men and women attended, strictly forbidden in Gaza under Hamas. While in jail she met a woman who, along with her husband, was arrested and imprisoned for making art and selling it to Israelis.

Journalist Manar al-Sharif.

Sharif’s is just one story. But one may as well be a thousand. The bravery it takes to speak up against Hamas – we know no such bravery in this country. We know entitlement, we know historical ignorance and we seem well acquainted with skewed morals.

This week, the Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel published its first report based on survivor testimonies from October 7.

Silent Cry: Sexual Crimes in the October 7 War details the sexual atrocities committed, in the words of witnesses, first responders, coroners and returned hostages.

A copy of the ARCCI report was handed to the UN. As journalist Efrat Forsher writes in Israeli news website Israel Hayom, it details “gang rapes at gunpoint, sometimes in front of family and friends – a practice aimed at sowing fear and deepening oppression and humiliation – castration and mutilation of female and male organs, and ‘insertion of weapons in intimate areas … genital organs’.

“This included ‘nails, grenades, and knives. It represents a specific expression of the pattern of targeted mutilation and harm to sexual organs.’ ”

According to the ARCCI report, “When other women are forced to witness the sexual assault, even if they were not themselves victims, they are influenced and subdued by the perpetrator’s power. Forcing spouses, parents, and siblings to witness the sexual assault of a family member is a practice of torture. In many cases, family members are killed when they try to protect their family from sexual assault.”

Something inside me fractures, reading this. I read this and I see the faces of my friends, my mother and my aunt and niece. I see the faces of my neighbours, women in my neighbourhood who I don’t know but recognise.

To the women who continue to champion the Hamas cause, you are complicit.

With every chant of “From the river to the sea” you condemn women and children on the other side of the world to a life you would never want for yourself or your own. There is historic, irrefutable, first-hand evidence of how women are abused under the control of ISIS and Hamas, yet you call for this regime to be legitimised. As for the men among you? You are weak apologists for a regime that revels in the subjugation of women.

You don’t believe Israeli women, Jewish women. Will you believe Muslim women who testify bravely to the same truths, the same endemic behaviours? There is no grey here, only right and wrong.

Let me tell you something that may be hard to hear. In Israel, women in the shortest shorts I have seen in my adult life walk down the same street as a woman in a hijab. A woman can go to the beach in a bikini or not. A woman can choose. She has choice and she has freedom. She has liberty. She is not at risk of being stoned for immorality. Jailed for having a single man in her home. She is not at risk of being forced to cover her hair or her body if she doesn’t want to.

Back to the brave Mohammed and Sharif. Feminism is so pesky, isn’t it? All of a sudden “believe all women” is inconvenient so it’s believe some women; certainly not the women you don’t like, and definitely don’t believe Jewish or Israeli women. While we’re at it, you absolutely can’t afford to believe a Christian or conservative woman. Throw them under a bus as often as you like. But will they believe these two Muslim women? Will you believe Mohammed and Sharif?

The privileged, bored pseudo-feminists and academics of the West are betrayed by their ignorance. Women were kept as sex slaves by ISIS years ago. The Assad regime in Syria had killed more than 5000 women and children by 2020 and now all of sudden these ladies have discovered war? Cowards who enjoy complete sexual, social, financial, religious and political liberty are not raising voices to demand that women in the disputed territories might be free, they are raised in hatred of Israel. For Jews. For Jewish women.

This is an undeniable truth, and we must contend against this hatred until it is no more. And until all women are free.