Females: the Islamic State's most brutal enforcers

Do you think of women as peacemakers? ISIS doesn't. They are recruiting women from all over the world to help them spread their violence. Nina Easton writes at Fortune,

Two of the world’s leading experts on ISIS describe women as a central part of the terror group’s brutal machinery. Female recruits are the morality enforcers, the propagandists, even the overseers of rape against captured non-Muslim women.

ISIS “enslaves non-Muslim women and children,” says Haykel. “That’s what the early Muslims did.” And rape of one’s “property,” be they wives or captives, is perfectly acceptable under ISIS theology.

Here’s where it gets even more warped. Young women recruited to ISIS are the ones running those rape brothels. Women also form the core of the terror group’s brutal “morality police,” enforcing strict codes of dress and behavior for female Muslims. “Women are doling out punishment to women,” says Haykel.

And don't forget hypergamy:

But for women there is an added allure—the prominence gained by marrying an ISIS fighter, a status that grows even larger if her husband is killed. “To be the wife of a martyr brings you great status in that community, and it brings you a pension,” notes McCants. “You can become powerful as a spouse; there is a long history of that” in Islam.

Read more here.