While horrific stories of torture and inhumanity are not uncommon when it comes to Sunni militant group Islamic State, tales have also started trickling in on how the deadly jihadists often use offer of 'virgins' as a recruiting norm.
Reports emerged last week on how the extremist group was using social media to lure Western girls to their self-declared "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq for the sheer purpose of procreating with jihadists. Most of those women recruited are from Britain, Australia and the United States, terrorism experts said earlier in September.
But now, stories have surfaced on how these women, along with other Muslim women, were used as sex-tools to lure foreign recruits– an instance that opens the world's eye to the most depraved and sickening practice the hardliner group seems to resort to, all in the name of God and religion.
"We were told that as martyrs we would have 72 eternal virgins in heaven and we can save dozens of our close relatives from hell too," ex-IS member Sherko Omer, who escaped from the militants earlier this year, told Your Middle-East in an interview.
The man, who claims to have worked as a technical professional with the group, said that every new recruit was promised women in heaven and on earth, based on IS jihadist teaching of the verses of some Suras of Quran and hadits by prophet Muhammad.
"We were told all non-Muslim women prisoners will be our wives and God wills it," he said, adding that in the holy Islamic war, one couldn't kill enemy women and children under any circumstances. They could, however, be taken as prisoners and raped.
"It is permissible to have sexual intercourse with the captive women even if jihadists are married. You can buy and sell these women but for the children you have to raise them as home workers or teach them to become jihadists." IS openly and proudly said "they are carrying out these acts as implementation of Islamic Sharia, he added.
Also, there are Muslim women who willingly offer their bodies to the militants or jihadists and that is called "Sex for Jihad", Omer told the publication. These women are also told they would be compensated in heaven.
This comes weeks after it was known that women from Western countries were being recruited in order to make babies for the jihadists. Monitoring of extremists' social media accounts and other writings showed that male jihadists regard woman as little more than mating partners, the Reuters reported citing experts.
"ISIS is recruiting these women in order to be baby factories. They are seeing the establishment of an Islamic State and now they need to populate the state," Mia Bloom, from the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell said.
Hundreds of European Muslim woman, mostly from Britain and France, have joined IS in the Middle East to fight alongside the jihadists.
