Testimony of an Islamic State slave

Muslims and Christians.

For this reason, the IS allowed (some) Christians to escape to Kurdish territory in return for a fine, but would not permit Yazidis the same freedom. Under the IS manual, “kuffars” must be either killed or enslaved if they are unwilling to convert to Islam.

On August 15, 2015, the IS assembled the villagers in the local school and separated the men from the women and children. In batches of 20 to 25, they loaded the trucks with the men and took them some distance away before shooting them. Old women met the same fate.

Ms Murad – along with other girls and young women – was captured and made a slave (“sabayya”). In the book under review, she recounts the horrific tale of her enslavement under an IS commander who repeatedly raped her.

The atrocities committed by the IS have made international news since 2014, yet the effect of Ms Murad’s raw testimony jolts the reader anew. Her captor, Hajji Salman, treated her like an object, expecting her to pretty herself up for him. When she tried to escape, unsuccessfully, he unleashed his guards on her.

With the help of a local family, Ms Murad finally managed to escape Mosul, where she was held captive, to Kirkuk, where Yazidis had found shelter in a camp. From there, she travelled to Germany where she presented her story to human rights lawyers. Today she makes appearances at various forums to focus international attention on the atrocities committed by the IS.

Ms Murad’s story makes for disturbing reading but her grit ensured that she ultimately triumphed. She astutely calculated her risk-reward ratio at every juncture and followed her instincts. She is grateful to the family that helped her but recognises that they may have done so because it gave them a chance to protect their youngest son – who acted as Ms Murad’s husband during the trip to Kirkuk — from the prospect of being recruited by the IS to become a fighter.

Many Sunni Muslims celebrated when Mosul was finally liberated, criticising the IS for the hardships the group wrought. But Ms Murad remembers a different city during her captivity, one where locals went about their lives even as unimaginable horrors took place in their midst. “Did they agree with the IS and consider the idea of a caliphate a good thing? If life had continued to get better, as the IS had promised them it would, would they have let the terrorists kill whomever they wanted?” she wonders.

The IS has been evicted from Mosul and is on its way out from most of Iraq but Ms Murad’s story is a cautionary tale about the ravages of political Islam. To those who criticise the IS for perverting Islam, The Last Girl makes clear that, if anything, the group follows a puritanical strain that derives sustenance from the Koran.

The most striking – and despicable – aspect of this is the IS manual that provides detailed instructions on how to treat enslaved women. Yazidi women were routinely traded between IS commanders and the rape was justified on the grounds that as “kuffars”, the slaves were less than human, present for the express purpose of satisfying the commander.

Ms Murad finally found refuge in Germany, but her tale throws into relief the urgent need to scan refugees from West Asia pouring into the West. Colonial guilt and multiculturalism have engendered a willingness in the West to permit immigrants to follow their own customs.

This, The Last Girl reminds us, would be a disaster over the long term. From petitioners seeking polygamy for Muslims in Canada to the contretemps over the burqa ban in France, the West needs to urgently hark to its Enlightenment roots and assert the universality of human rights irrespective of faith/community rules.

Finally, the book also brings out how deeply this dichotomy, between Enlightenment values and political Islam, is entrenched. Indians, for instance, routinely pat themselves on the back for belonging to a society whose Constitution recognises it as secular. We are better than Pakistan, we tell ourselves.

But being secure in one’s virtues does not change the nature of the neighbourhood in which we live. If a non-Muslim seeks asylum in India to escape forcible conversion in Pakistan – mirroring what Ms Murad went through – can we look the other way due to our secular polity? Should we?

The Last Girl is one girl’s moving journey to hell and back but it raises questions that all societies must, sooner than later, address. My Story of Captivity and My Fight against the Islamic State Nadia Murad (with Jenna Krajeski) Hachette; 306 pages; ~399