Rape and Sexual Slavery In Islam (Part 1)

Introduction

In May 2015, U.S. Special Operations Forces captured a number of documents during a raid on a high-ranking Islamic State official in Syria. Among the documents was a fatwa, or Islamic legal ruling, issued by Islamic State theologians, outlining the “rules” regarding who can have sex with women captured in battle by the jihadist organisation, and when the rape of these sex slaves is and is not permissible.

ISIS has been open and unashamed about its support for sexual slavery, justifying it in terms of Islamic theology on multiple occasions, and the harrowing testimony of the group’s victims – particularly those from the Yazidi minority in Iraq – serves as heartbreaking confirmation that the practice is taken very seriously.

But just how Islamic is this behaviour? A major manual of Islamic law which has been certified by Cairo’s Al-Azhar University makes only two mentions of rape in 1200 pages, and while it is forbidden on both occasions, it is important to note that it is only prohibited against those who are “unlawful” sexual partners for Muslims – suggesting that there are “lawful” women who could conceivably be raped without sanction under sharia.

This new set of blog posts will examine the phenomenon of Islamic sexual slavery, casting light on the legal authority Islam provides to its male adherents to justify rape, as well as elaborating on the implications of these doctrines regarding the increasingly common sexual abuse of women by Muslim immigrants in the West.

Sexual Slavery in the Qur’an and Hadith

On several occasions in the hadith, Muhammad is depicted as uncritically allowing his warriors to rape female captives of war:

We went out with Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to the Banu al-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl (coitus interruptus). But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born. (Sahih Muslim b.8, no.3371) 

Jabir (Allah be pleased with him) reported that a man came to Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) and said: I have a slave-girl who is our servant and she carries water for us and I have intercourse with her, but I do not want her to conceive. He said: Practise 'azl, if you so like, but what is decreed for her will come to her. The person stayed back (for some time) and then came and said: The girl has become pregnant, whereupon he said: I told you what was decreed for her would come to her. (Sunan Abu Dawud b.8, no.3383)

Note that at no point does Muhammad tell his men not to have sex with their slaves. Instead, he merely tells them that they do not have to practise coitus interruptus (withdrawal of the penis before ejaculation, to avoid pregnancy), because Allah will ultimately decide whether to make the women pregnant or not.

We can justifiably assume that Muhammad allowed himself to engage in similar “pleasures” with captive non-Muslim women on occasions. Consider, for example, the case of Safiyya bint Huyyay, a Jewish woman from the Khaybar oasis. Khaybar was attacked by Muhammad in 629 AD. After the battle, when the Muslims had taken the Jewish women as spoils of war, they praised Safiyya’s beauty in front of Muhammad, proclaiming that they had “not seen the like of her among the captives of war.” (Muslim b.8, no.3329) Shortly afterward, the Prophet selected her for himself (Sahih Bukhari v.3, b.34, no.437), before having her “beautified” and marrying her. He then “passed the night with her” in his tent, according to his earliest biographer.  It is not explicitly stated what happened in the tent, but the implication seems obvious, and it goes without saying that this would qualify as rape, since most of Safiyya’s family, including her father and husband, had just been killed by the Muslims, so it is unlikely that she would have willingly consented to sexual intercourse with their killer.

Further support for the assumption that Muhammad’s marriage to Safiyya involved forced sexual intercourse comes from another hadith, in which he explains to his followers: “The stipulations most entitled to be abided by are those with which you are given the right to enjoy the (women's) private parts (i.e. the stipulations of the marriage contract).” (Bukhari v.7, b.62, no.81) Indeed, the Arabic word used multiple times in the Qur’an, and still used today, for an Islamic marriage – nikah – more literally means sexual intercourse. The prominent Egyptian Muslim jurist Khalil ibn Ishaq (d.1365), who was a renowned specialist in the Maliki school of Islamic law, wrote: “When a woman marries, she sells a part of her person. In the market one buys merchandise, in marriage the husband buys the genital [region].”

Moreover, Islamic law allows Muslim men to enforce this “right” to sexual intercourse against their wife’s will. Reliance of the Traveller, an Islamic legal manual certified by numerous international Muslim organisations, explains:

It is obligatory for a woman to let her husband have sex with her immediately when: 

(a) he asks her;
(b) at home (home meaning the place in which he is currently staying, even if being lent to him or rented);
(c) and she can physically endure it. 

In another section, the manual affirms that “[w]hen a husband notices signs of rebelliousness in his wife”, he is permitted to use physical violence in order to correct her. Crucially, one specific example of “rebelliousness” that it provides is when “he asks her to come to bed and she refuses”. This principle derives directly from the Qur’an: “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge [i.e. beat] them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.” (4:34)
   
Disturbingly, this kind of marital rape has been endorsed by Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, president of the UK’s Islamic Sharia Council, who has stated on multiple occasions that there is no such thing as rape within marriage. The concept of wife-beating for disobedience has also been advocated by numerous high-profile Islamic clerics, including Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential and famous Muslim scholars in the world today.

Returning to the concept of female sex slaves or concubines, it is perhaps unsurprising to find it endorsed and promoted in numerous verses of the Qur’an (all emphasis mine):

If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, Marry women of your choice, Two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess. (4:3)  

Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess... (4:24) 

[Those] Who abstain from sex, Except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess,- for (in their case) they are free from blame, (23:5-6) 

O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee... (33:50) 

Not so the worshippers, who are steadfast in prayer, who set aside a due portion of their wealth for the beggar and for the deprived, who truly believe in the Day of Reckoning and dread the punishment of their Lord (for none is secure from the punishment of their Lord); who restrain their carnal desire (save with their wives and their slave girls, for these are lawful to them: he that lusts after other than these is a transgressor... (70:22-30)

The phrase “those whom your right hands possess” is understood by Muslim scholars to refer to slaves, and is often used specifically to mean female concubines.

Unfortunately, it is not only the Islamic State that takes verses like these seriously. In 2011, the Egyptian Sheikh Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini argued that after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation by jihad, the properties and persons of those who refuse to convert to Islam or become subjugated dhimmis should be seized as ghanima, or “spoils of war.” Quoting from the Qur'an and the hadith, Huwaini outlined an ideal scenario in which women and girls are taken captive as part of the war spoils and sold to Muslims in slave markets. He referred to these slave girls using the Qur'anic term “those your right hands possess”, and concluded: “In other words, when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

The very next week, Salwa al-Mutairi – a female political activist and former Kuwaiti government official – also called for a revival of the institution of sex slavery, arguing that it would be an effective way to allow Muslim men to satiate their frustrated sexual desires and prevent them from committing illegal adultery. She also added that when she had previously spent time in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, she had spoken with various authoritative imams and muftis, and all of them had affirmed to her that sexual slavery was perfectly legal under sharia.

Coming soon: How Islamic law lets rapists get away with it

Female Genital Mutilation: An Islamic Or "Cultural" Practice? (Part 3)

Extent and Persistence

According to the previously cited UNICEF report on the prevalence of FGM in Africa, there are four countries in which over 90% of girls are circumcised, all of which have a Muslim majority: Somalia (98%), Guinea (96%), Djibouti (93%) and Egypt (91%). In terms of raw numbers, Egypt is the worst offender, with over 27 million girls having undergone the procedure. Worldwide, it is estimated that female genital cutting affects up to 200 million girls in varying degrees of severity, with as many as 60 million of these victims found in Indonesia alone.

As disturbing as these figures are, they are unfortunately beginning to manifest themselves in the West as well, due to rising immigration from Muslim countries. In the UK, there were over one thousand cases of hospital attendances due to FGM recorded by the National Health Service in just three months between April and June 2015 – roughly eleven instances per day. The same amount were recorded in the first three months of this year, also. It had previously been estimated that up to 100,000 girls in the UK had been victims of genital cutting.

This problem is clearly exacerbated by mainstream clerical support for the practice among Muslim authorities in the West. For example, the imam Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad, a board member of the UK’s Islamic Sharia Council, has argued that there is a “proper” way of performing female cutting, stating that “it is consensus of all scholars that female circumcision is sunnah [i.e. in accord with the teachings of Muhammad]”.

Returning to FGM in the Muslim world, there may be a correlation between its prevalence in certain Islamic countries and adherence to the Shafi’i school of Sunni Islamic law. As we have already seen, Reliance of the Traveller – a sharia manual dealing primarily with the Shafi’i doctrine – says that “circumcision is obligatory for both men and women”, and the school’s eighth-century founder also declared it to be a religious necessity, in contrast to other jurists who saw it as merely recommended. The Shafi’i school is one of the largest schools of Islamic jurisprudence in terms of global adherents, and is predominant today in many of the world’s major hotspots for FGM, including Egypt, Indonesia, Somalia, and Kurdish regions of Iraq. It is also prevalent among the FGM-practising Muslim minorities in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Thailand, among others. In Africa, four of the five countries with the highest rates of FGM follow Shafi’ite Islam (Somalia, Djibouti, Egypt, and Eritrea - the latter being a significant Muslim minority, maybe as high as 48%, within a non-Muslim country).

Conclusions

We can no longer continue to deny the Islamic dimension of FGM, and its prevalence among Muslim communities worldwide. We must begin to have a more open, honest discussion about the nature and scope of the problem, just as we must also pressure Muslim organisations and leadership to forcefully condemn it and work transparently to bring this misogynistic barbarity to an end.

Female Genital Mutilation: An Islamic or "Cultural" Practice? (Part 2)

Theological Justification

Why is FGM so prevalent in Islamic societies? In this case, the answer cannot be found in the Qur’an, as circumcision is not mentioned in the Islamic holy book at all. Even in the hadith, there is very little mention of it, with only two major references that suggest that it was known in seventh-century Arabia, and that it was never condemned by Muhammad:

The Messenger of Allah said: When anyone sits amidst four parts (of the woman) and the circumcised parts touch each other a bath becomes obligatory. (Sahih Muslim b.3, no.684)

A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet said to her: Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband. (Sunan Abu Dawud b.41, no.5251)

In the first hadith, it appears to be taken for granted by Muhammad that both Muslim men and women will have circumcised parts. In the second, Muhammad is aware of a woman performing circumcision on girls and does not condemn it, only warning her not to cut “severely” – an entirely subjective judgement. Islamic law permits Muslims to engage in any behaviour which Muhammad saw but did not forbid, and thereby gave “unspoken approval” to (for example, explained in this book, p.53), and so most Muslim scholars have traditionally either allowed or encouraged FGM. Referring to the second hadith, a note in the English translation of the Sunan Abu Dawud hadith collection summarises the views of the four main Sunni legal schools as follows:

The reference is to the circumcision of girls. It was practiced in Arabia when Islam came. It is disputed amongst the jurists. Some Shafi'i scholars hold that circumcision of girls is obligatory, but others think that it is recommended. Ata, Ahmad b. Hanbal, and some Maliki jurists also hold that it is obligatory. Abu Hanifah maintains that it is recommended and not obligatory. Malik also holds that it is recommended. 

FGM is also given explicit religious sanction in the important Islamic legal manual Reliance of the Traveller, which has been endorsed by Cairo's Al-Azhar University - Islam's highest centre of religious learning - as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.”  The manual states: “Circumcision is obligatory for both men and women [emphasis mine]. For men it consists of removing the prepuce [foreskin] from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (bazr) of the clitoris (not the clitoris itself, as some mistakenly assert).” It is important to note that this English translation of the manual renders this passage in a dishonest way that does not accurately reflect the original Arabic text. In actual fact, the Arabic word Bazr means the entire clitoris, and not just the foreskin as the translation claims. (For example, see Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, p.64)

Coming soon: How widespread is Islamic FGM?

Female Genital Mutilation: An Islamic Or "Cultural" Practice? (Part 1)

An African Problem?

It is frequently claimed by Islamic apologists that FGM is merely an “African problem” that has its roots in tribal customs that long predate Islam, and is practised by people of all faiths across the continent.

It is certainly true that Muslims are not the only community to practise FGM, and that it is prevalent among peoples across Africa that are not Muslim. But this does not mean that Islam should not be held at least partially responsible for its continued popularity in many countries. In 2013, UNICEF published a statistical analysis of genital cutting focusing predominantly on Africa. Of the thirteen countries in the study in which over 50% of the female population are subjected to FGM (see opening pages at the link above), ten of them have a Muslim majority. Additionally, in the remaining three countries that do not have a Muslim majority – Eritrea, Ethiopia and Liberia – a higher percentage of Muslim women and girls undergo cutting compared to the Christian population. Overall, there is a higher percentage of Muslims than Christians practising FGM in 20 out of 24 countries examined in the survey (see page 73).

There are other important points to consider, as well. For example, although FGM is practised by many Coptic Christians in Egypt today, the custom was entirely borrowed from Islam, and was not an accepted tradition in the country or among any sect of Christianity prior to the Islamic conquests of the seventh century. Female cutting is also increasingly widespread in Islamic countries outside of Africa, for example in Iraq, where a 2012 study found that in one region alone, 40.9% of Sunni Muslim women and 23.4% of Shi’ites suffer it, with no Christian women affected at all. Meanwhile, in Thailand, FGM is commonplace only in the provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani, where Muslims make up a majority.

But perhaps the most compelling evidence that FGM is not merely an “African problem” comes from the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia. Research conducted by anthropologists throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century concluded that female circumcision was not a native custom in the Indonesian archipelago, but was introduced to the region by Islam, and was generally not practised by any non-Islamic peoples there. More recently, a wide-ranging 2003 survey by the United States Agency for International Development found an average rate of female circumcision of 97.5% across eight study regions, all of which have Muslim majorities. Furthermore, Indonesia’s largest Muslim advisory organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), has issued a religious ruling supporting FGM on Islamic grounds.

All of this demonstrates that although FGM is undeniably a problem among certain non-Muslim communities and is not exclusive to Muslims, it nevertheless remains primarily and overwhelmingly an Islamic problem.

Coming soon: The Islamic theological basis for FGM.

Female Genital Mutilation: An Islamic Or "Cultural" Practice? (Introduction)

It has been revealed today that new cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Birmingham have increased by nearly a third, according to new figures.

The number of incidents increased from 52 between October and December 2015 to 67 from January to March this year – a 28 per cent rise. The statistics were released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

In total 1,242 newly recorded cases of FGM were reported across the country in the same time period. Back in February, it was revealed that more than two cases of female genital mutilation were being reported in Birmingham and the West Midlands every day.

According to the 2011 census, Birmingham is over 20% Muslim. Does this have any bearing on the alarming figures reported today? Aside from a handful of blinkered cultural relativists, most people appear to agree that FGM is medically unnecessary, misogynistic, and barbaric. Reacting to today's news, an NSPCC spokesman said:

There are no medical reasons to carry out FGM. It doesn’t enhance fertility and it doesn’t make childbirth safer. It is used to control female sexuality and can cause severe and long-lasting damage to physical and emotional health. FGM or female circumcision is usually carried out for religious, cultural or social reasons. But let’s be clear – it is child abuse and it causes long-lasting physical and emotional damage. The practice must stop.

And yet despite the prevalence of this practice throughout the Islamic world, there have been persistent attempts to claim that it has nothing to do with Islam at all, and is merely a “cultural” practice that carries no sanction in the Qur’an and hadith.

A forthcoming series of posts here at Eye On Islam will explore this issue in depth, establishing whether or not Islam encourages FGM, and the extent to which it is practised in Muslim communities around the world. The first part will be published tomorrow, and will examine whether FGM is really just an "African problem", as characterised by the likes of Islamic apologist Reza Aslan.

TIME's Anti-Trump Hit Piece Is Just More Terrible Counter-Terror Analysis

I am no Donald Trump fan, but I think he deserves credit when it's due. He also deserves defending when people lie about him or make flimsy arguments against him.

And we get both in a new piece in TIME, authored by Alyssa Sims, a policy analyst in New America's International Security Program. It deals with Trump's suggestion to form a "radical Islam commission", headed by Rudy Guiliani, to investigate...well, radical Islam.

Sims first cites Trump's Muslim immigration moratorium as evidence of his "Islamophobia" - although as I have argued previously, it is a perfectly sensible suggestion that its opponents have not come up with a remotely viable alternative to. She then claims he "also suggested a mandatory registry of American Muslims". Actually, he did not. Watch the video here: he was asked by a journalist about creating a database of Muslims in America (the journalist, apparently, came up with the idea), and he responded about the need for a registry of all immigrants entering the US (i.e. not just Muslims) to ensure that people aren't entering the country illegally. Despite the journalist repeatedly mentioning Muslims, Trump is clearly talking about illegal immigrants the entire time - and he even seems to have gone back on that as well, as evidenced by the Tweet he posted just after the controversy:

Trump does this all the time: he doesn't listen to the questions he's asked, and just answers his own question inside his head. A few weeks ago, during an interview on MSNBC, he was asked whether abortion should be made illegal in the US. He replied: “The answer is there has to be some form of punishment." When the interviewer asked, "For the woman?" he responded instantly in the affirmative. It was clear to me upon seeing the interview that he hadn't listened to the question properly, and just butted in with an answer without thinking. That became clear the following day when he completely retracted his answer and said: “If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed – like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.”

The message here is that Trump is incoherent and incapable of giving a solid answer or maintaining a strong position on almost anything. He proposed a temporary ban on Muslim immigration, but now seems to be softening on it, and even offered to make an exemption for the new extremist-linked Muslim Mayor of London, which would completely belie the point of his original proposal. Any "analyst" should be able to see this easily and so shouldn't be peddling the "Muslim registry" lie.

Sims then moves on to her criticism of Trump's "radical Islam commission" plan, by asserting that since there have been terror attacks in the US committed by American-born Muslims, such as the San Bernadino shooting and the Fort Hood attack, therefore a "commission on foreign-born Muslims would not have been relevant."

Which is true, except that Trump wasn't calling for a commission on foreign-born Muslims. Here's the quote from the CNN article Sims links to:

"It's a real problem, so we'll figure it out and we will get it going but we have to be extremely careful," Trump said Wednesday on Fox News, in response to a question about his proposed ban on allowing Muslims to enter the U.S., before switching to the subject of "radical Islamic terrorism." "In fact, I'm thinking about setting up a commission perhaps headed by Rudy Giuliani to take a very serious look at this problem. But this is a worldwide problem and we have to be smart."

So once again, we can see that Trump was asked a question, and responded by answering a different question - in this case, he was talking about dealing with Islamic jihad terrorism as a "worldwide problem", and not just investigating Muslim immigrants.

Sims next says that such a commission would be ineffective in dealing with terrorism, because it "dismisses tragedies such as the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooting and the Charleston Church shooting, both which took place in 2015 and were carried out by individuals motivated by ideologies that are non-jihadist in character—specifically Christian conservatism and white supremacy." She also claims that "[s]ince 2001, right wing extremists have claimed more victims in terror attacks than jihadists."

This is a highly misleading and tendentious piece of analysis, based on an equally flawed study. Firstly, it leaves out 9/11 for some reason, which would drastically alter the balance of deaths between Islamic jihadis and "right-wing extremists". Secondly, it also ignores scores of foiled Islamic terror plots that would have killed thousands Americans if they had not been stopped by intelligence and law enforcement. Thirdly, the figures ignore a large number of actual Islamic terror attacks on American soil and do not count them in the analysis. Fourthly, it ignores the implications of the fact that even if the data is accurate, this means that Muslims account for about the same number of terror attacks in America as right-wing extremists, despite the fact that Muslims make up 1% of the US population, and right-wingers considerably more. Finally, the "right-wing extremists" being compared to Islamic jihadis are mostly paranoid loners who are not connected to any larger movement with a clearly articulated goal. In contrast, Islamic jihadists are members of or ideologically aligned with groups that have declared their intention to destroy the U.S. and the free world, and all draw their inspiration from a fourteen-century old belief system that has been the driving force behind over 28,000 terror attacks since 9/11. A scattered handful of individuals with incoherent opinions (note to Alyssa Sims: having opinions on certain issues such as race is not the same thing as an ideology) really cannot be equated to a global movement of loosely aligned groups and individuals acting in accord with a clearly defined established corpus of law and thought (i.e. Islamic law).

Finally Sims argues that "[c]reating an anti-terrorism program specifically targeting 'radical Islam' perpetuates an on-going narrative that the U.S. is at war with Islam, a religion practiced by more than a billion Muslims around the world," and that since ISIS themselves also perpetuate this myth, such a thing would therefore be counter-productive.

Firstly, it takes someone clearly interested in bending the truth to fit their argument to assert that setting up a panel on "radical Islam" somehow gives the impression of targeting all of Islam. Would my mission here to discredit Alyssa Sims' poor analysis really give off the impression that I am against all analysis? This line of reasoning is absolute nonsense.

But there is a deeper issue at play here. Sims' assumption is that any attempts to investigate the serious problem of Islamic terrorism just leads to more terrorism, and that ISIS and their ilk are just waiting around to see what Islamophobes say about Islam before determining their policy. It never occurs to her that the terrorists might have their own source of policy - i.e. the Qur'an - that will guide their behaviour regardless of what we say about them. An ISIS statement - loaded with Qur'an quotes - released a couple of years ago said:

And so we promise you by Allah’s permission that this campaign will be your final campaign. It will be broken and defeated, just as all your previous campaigns were broken and defeated, except that this time we will raid you thereafter, and you will never raid us. We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us; He is glorified and He does not fail in His promise. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.

It really does not sound to me from this as if there is anything we could say to them that would cause them to dispel their misconceptions about a war between Islam and the West. It is also worth mentioning that although Sims states that Trump's rhetoric is the reason for Islamic State's increased recruitment, ISIS propaganda videos actually frequently feature Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama more often than Donald Trump, demonstrating that their attempts at appeasement by calling Islam a Religion of Peace clearly are not working very well.

All in all, it's another piss-poor piece of analysis designed to weaken our attempts to defend ourselves against Islamic jihad terror. Donald Trump may be all over the place and self-contradictory, but a crude sort of common sense apparently causes him to get the right end of the stick on these issues quite often. But even that seems to be beyond the capabilities of Alyssa Sims.

There Are None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See

Yesterday, the Independent - a hotbed of jihad denial - published an article about a journalist who infiltrated and secretly filmed an ISIS cell planning a terrorist attack in France.

The journalist - who uses a pseudonym to protect his identity - contacted the group on Facebook and spent six months with them while they plotted an attack on a nightclub.

His account of what he experienced contains some important details, reproduced below (emphasis mine):

The man, who is using the pseudonym Said Ramzi to protect his identity, said he “easily” contacted the group who called themselves the Soldiers of Allah on Facebook. 

... 

“We must hit a military base,” Ossama says during the meeting at a park in Châteauroux. “When they are eating, they are all lined up...ta-ta-ta-ta-ta...or journalists.  

“BFM, iTélé [French broadcasters], they are at war against Islam. 

“Like they did to Charlie [Hebdo]. You must strike them at the heart. Take them by surprise. They aren't well protected. The French must die by the thousands.” 

He urges Mr Ramzi to join him on the “path to paradise” in a suicide attack, adding: “Our women are waiting for us there, with angels as servants. You will have a palace, a winged horse of gold and rubies.”

Having apparently spent these six months with his eyes closed, this insightful journalist proclaims as his conclusion:

"One of the main lessons was that I never saw any Islam in this affair. No will to improve the world. Only lost, frustrated, suicidal, easily manipulated youths."

Indeed, of all the content in the article, the Independent decided to make that bolded passage their headline for the article.

For those interested, that last part from the jihadi about the luxurious delights of Paradise is a truncated, adapted view of the afterlife as presented in the Qur'an, which says that the inhabitants of Paradise will be adorned “with bracelets of gold and pearls” (22:23) and “dressed in fine silk and in rich brocade” (44:53). They will recline on “green cushions and rich carpets of beauty” (55:76), sit on “thrones encrusted with gold and precious stones” (56:15), and share in “dishes and goblets of gold”, on which will be “all that the souls could desire, all that their eyes could delight in”, including an “abundance of fruit” (43:71, 73), such as “dates and pomegranates” (55:68). For the carnivorous, there will be “the flesh of fowls, any that they may desire” (56:21).
   
The "women" granted to Muslim men who reached Paradise are mentioned multiple times in the Qur'an, too: “voluptuous women of equal age” (78:31), “those of modest gaze, with lovely eyes” (37:48), “fair women with beautiful, big, and lustrous eyes” (44:54), “like unto rubies and coral” (55:58), to whom men will be “joined” (52:20). These women will be “maidens, chaste, restraining their glances, whom no man or Jinn [spirit being] before them has touched” (55:56). Allah “made them virgins” (56:36), and according to Islamic tradition, they will remain virgins forever.

So the ideas this ISIS jihadist had about the reward he would receive for "slaying and being slain for Allah's cause" (Qur'an 9:111) came from the Qur'an. But apparently, the Qur'an is not Islam anymore.

No one can say modern journalism lacks informational value.