With the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fast moving towards Baghdad after its most recent victory over the strategic Shiite town of Tal Afar, the terrorist group has started targeting woman, forcing them to marry or sleep with the militants.
ISIS, which wants to establish a strict Islamic country, has already started its reign in the captured towns.
ISIS has now taken over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit and has reportedly ordered the families to hand over their daughters to the militants. Mirror reported that in the captured towns, the militants have been distributing leaflets which state: "Women virgin or not must join jihad and cleanse themselves by sleeping with militants."
ISIS fighters now have the religious right to rape woman as a Saudi-based cleric has issued a fatwa - a religious order that allows the militants to rape women in captive towns.
The invading militants warned that those who disobey the dictate are violating God's will, and hence will receive beatings or can even be killed.
Reports from Baiji - another town fully under ISIS control - state that the residents are living in fear as the militants are conducting door-to-door checks for unmarried women.
"They said that many of their mujahedin were unmarried and wanted a wife. They insisted on coming into my house to look at the women's ID cards [which in Iraq show marital status]" local resident Abu Lahid told The Independent.
Though ISIS claims its members have been asked specifically not to bother anyone in captured towns especially if they are Sunnis, the ground reality is entirely different.
The group has already started imposing its puritanical social norms in the towns they captured. In some of the captured towns, fanatical ISIS militants have ordered restrictions on women, with rules being set on their clothing, watching TV in coffee shops and smoking.
In Mosul, a woman was reportedly whipped, along with her husband, because she was only wearing a headscarf rather than the niqab covering the whole body.
Similarly Twitter is awash with reports of ISIS killing a woman, who denounced the ISIS rule in the country. It is reported that the woman's body was hanged on an electric pole in Kirkuk for three days, before her body was allowed to be taken down for burial.
Alarmed by the radical rise of Sunni militants, who have conquered one city after another and is now swiftly moving towards Baghdad, US Secretary of State John Kerry rushed down to Iraq on Monday to meet Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who the rebels want to be ousted. Kerry also met with other key Iraqi ministers, suggesting a possible move to form a new government in the country.
