The Real War on Women
There’s a war on women going on all right, but not the one we hear so often about in the media. It’s not a war on “income inequality.” Not a war on “bodily integrity.” It’s an actual war where thousands upon thousands of women are raped, brutalized, and even killed because they’re considered of no more value than cattle.
It’s a war being waged against Christian, Yazidi, and Shia Muslim women – the women of minority faiths in the Middle East – at the radical hand of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Halls are packed with victims who are subjected to hours of torture as one ISIS soldier after another rapes them time and time again. Where girls as young as 8 years of age are brutalized by men four and five times their age – one report even indicating that a poor 9 year-old girl died from the injuries she sustained from “being raped by so many men.”
Sex slavery is all too common and is in fact encouraged, where ISIS fighters earn more money for each additional sex slave, forced wife, and child they “own.” Females as young as one year of age are sold into slavery – the younger the girl, the higher the price.
It’s a fate worse than death, as ISIS sex slave survivor Nadia Murad stated. After the Islamic State massacred her six brothers and mother, she was taken as a sex slave. She was devastated by the death of her family but soon “forgot my mother and brothers,” as the daily torture she endured was a far worse fate than that of her family’s.
After nearly 2,000 women were captured in August of 2014, “Women were throwing their children from the mountains and then jumping themselves because it was a faster way to die.”
That is the real war on women.
I am in my thirties. I’m a young mother of a young daughter. I am an American. I am endowed with equal opportunity, as is my daughter. I’m worth more to the culture I live in than a cow or a goat. I’m not subjected to rape on a daily basis. I am not someone’s property.
I don’t know suffering. In fact, I can’t even begin to fathom the fear, the terror these women face. The minority women of the Middle East, they face true inequality.
Here in America, we lose sight of what truly matters, and we don’t posses s the understanding of what true suffering is. As a result, we place labels such as “war” on situations that don’t even remotely come close to the meaning of the word.
Wake up women and men of America. We must take action to defeat this evil, to put a stop to the ISIS torture, devastation, and destruction. These women deserve better.
Here at the ACLJ, we’re fighting back to stop this type of persecution against Christians and other minority faiths. We’ve successfully pressured the Obama Administration to recognize the “genocide against Christians,” and now we’re launching a massive new multi-pronged legal advocacy effort demanding the U.S., U.N., and world leaders implement the Genocide Convention. We’re mobilizing around the world, but we need your voice. Take action. Please add your name to our petition to stop the genocide.