Did Boko Haram Just Win?

The media only ensure that there will be more such incidents.

Nigerian Air Marshal Alex Badeh announced Monday that the Nigerian military had discovered the location of the nearly 300 girls abducted by the jihadist group Boko Haram.

However, he said there were no plans to rescue them, because Boko Haram would certainly kill them all should any such attempt be made: “we can’t go and kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back.” Negotiations to trade them for imprisoned Boko Haram members, meanwhile, have broken down. So, at this point the girls and their families have little hope — even these options of killing or ransoming them are delineated by the Koran and Islamic law.

Islam’s holy book directs Muslims to wage war against unbelievers, killing them by beheading and taking captives who may be freed or ransomed: “Now when ye meet in battle those who disbelieve, then it is smiting of the necks until, when ye have routed them, then making fast of bonds; and afterward either grace or ransom till the war lay down its burdens” (47:4). It also refers to slave women belonging to the Islamic prophet Muhammad as spoils of war: “O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war” (33:50).

Islamic law has elaborated from these passages four options for the treatment of captives: “As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first, to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, ‘When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [Islam] then strike [their] necks’ (Qur’an sura 47, verse 4)” (Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, The Laws of Islamic Governance).

The first of these options, putting captives to death, is such a live possibility that it is stymieing a rescue operation; as for exchanging them, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau offered to exchange the girls who have refused to convert to Islam (90% of the abducted girls were Christians) in return for Boko Haram prisoners held by the Nigerian government. Regarding enslaving them, Shekau has gloated in a video: “I abducted your girls. I will sell them on the market, by Allah…There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell.” That is in line with the option of enslaving captives. It has also been reported that they were sold off to Boko Haram members for $12.45 each, and then forcibly married to them — in accord with the Qur’an’s allowance of the sexual enslavement of “what your right hands own” who were taken as spoils of war:

If you fear that you will not act justly towards the orphans, marry such women as seem good to you, two, three, four; but if you fear you will not be equitable, then only one, or what your right hands own; so it is likelier you will not be partial. (Koran 4:3)

The twentieth-century Koran commentator Maulana Bulandshahri explains the wisdom of this practice, and longs for the good old days:

During Jihad (religion war), many men and women become war captives. The Amirul Mu’minin [leader of the believers, or caliph — an office now vacant] has the choice of distributing them amongst the Mujahidin [warriors of jihad], in which event they will become the property of these Mujahidin. This enslavement is the penalty for disbelief (
kufr).

He explains that this is not ancient history:

None of the injunctions pertaining to slavery have been abrogated in the Shari’ah. The reason that the Muslims of today do not have slaves is because they do not engage in Jihad (religion war). Their wars are fought by the instruction of the disbelievers (
kuffar) and are halted by the same felons. The Muslim [sic] have been shackled by such treaties of the disbelievers (
kuffar) whereby they cannot enslave anyone in the event of a war. Muslims have been denied a great boon whereby every home could have had a slave. May Allah grant the Muslims the ability to escape the tentacles of the enemy, remain steadfast upon the Din (religion) and engage in Jihad (religion war) according to the injunctions of Shari’ah. Amen!

This is by no means an eccentric or unorthodox view in Islam. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that as they waged jihad warfare against infidels, Muslims would take slaves. He clarified what he meant in a subsequent interview:

…Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels. Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars — there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.

When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name milk al-yamin, “that which your right hands possess” [Koran 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The
milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a
wali. All scholars agree on this point — there is no disagreement from any of them. […] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.

Around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.

…A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth. I brought up (this man’s) situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?”

The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”

“Is this forbidden by Islam?” I asked.

“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not — she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”

While the savage exploitation of girls and young women is an unfortunately cross-cultural phenomenon, only in Islamic law does it carry divine sanction. Here is a human rights scandal occasioned by Islamic law that the international human rights community and the mainstream media cravenly ignore: the media has been full of articles assuring the world that what Boko Haram has done is un-Islamic; however, none of them addressed the passages of the Koran and provisions of Islamic law that the group uses to justify its actions.

The abduction of the Nigerian schoolgirls could have been an opportunity to call upon Muslim leaders to work for genuine reform, so that the justifications for this savagery are removed. Instead, Western leaders and the mainstream media are doing what they always do: pretend that this is an isolated incident and there is no problem.

And that only ensures that there will be more such incidents.

Robert Spenceris the director of Jihad Watch and New York Times bestselling author of Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We’re In.