Religion in Iraq

A 21-year-old Yazidi woman, who was kidnapped by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq more than a decade ago, has been freed from Gaza in a coordinated operation involving the United States, Iraq, Israel, and Jordan. The woman, named Fauzia Sido, is from the Yazidi religious minority, which has faced brutal attacks from ISIS.

One eight-year-old was repeatedly sold and raped, while another girl set herself on fire to make herself less attractive to her jihadist captors. These are only two of the more than 1,400 horror stories German doctor Jan ?lhan K?z?lhan has heard first-hand from Yazidi women and girls once enslaved by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists in Iraq.

Terrifying photographs show the suffocating spaces where dozens of Yazidi women were trapped underground in an ISIS prison in horrifying conditions.

Small panels on the surface of northern Syrian desert are the only sign of the horrific prison where the women were forced to live.

Ameena Saeed Hasan says that she has made it her mission to rescue as many Yazidi women as she can from ISIS captivity. ISIS fighters captured Sinjar despit it not having oil reserves for them to steal. Their goal was to take the region’s people. They captured thousands of women and children after killing them men in what the United Nations has criticized as genocide.

Turkish security forces have halted hundreds of ISIL-fleeing Yazidis from crossing into Europe. Here are photos of the tragic cat and mouse game taking place

If the “non-believer” Yazidi women weren’t being mistreated inhumanely enough, the dehumanization of the whole ordeal has moved on to yet another level. There is now a contest amongst ISIS terrorists that anyone supremely well-versed in the Quran will receive a Yazidi female sex slave as a prize.

Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East' by Gerard Russell (Basic Books, 352 pages, $29)

The campaign of ISIL militants against Iraq's Yazidi minority may be attempted genocide

ISIL militants enslaved and sold Yazidi women and children, a magazine purportedly published by the extremists claimed

The number of refugees from Iraq's Yazidi religious minority who have fled to Turkey from the advance of jihadists has risen to 16,000 and may rise further, a top provincial official was quoted as saying Aug. 30.