Baghdad: Although the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant says that it has ordered its men not to bother local Sunni people in the Iraqi towns and cities they’ve captured, residents in militant-held Baiji town say that say they are most frightened by ISIL militants going door to door asking about the numbers of married and unmarried women in the house.
“I told them that there were only two women in the house and both were married,” said Abu Lahid, a resident of Baiji. “They said that many of their fighters are unmarried and wanted a wife. They insisted on coming into my house to look at the women’s ID cards and check marital status.”
According to a report in The Independent, militants are imposing rules about women’s clothing, watching TV in coffee shops and cigarette smoking in many captured towns.
Interestingly, when al-Qaeda had similarly insisted on local women marrying their fighters during the Sunni-Shia civil war between 2004 and 2008, they had alienated much of the Sunni community.
