Sexual Jihad? Muslim girls reportedly travelling to Syria to have sex with jihadists

Women are reportedly traveling to Syria to have sex with jihadist fighters following a call to do so from militant clerics. Many of these women are returning home pregnant following temporary marriages that last as little as a day. Some women are marrying and having sex with dozens of men, sometimes up to a hundred.

TUNIS, TUNISIA (Catholic Online) - Young women traveling to Syria are being stopped and told to turn back. Fatwas, religious edicts circulating online, are calling upon young Muslim women to travel to Syria for purposes of having sex with jihadist fighters.

Known as "sexual jihad" the women are hoping to get pregnant with the baby of a jihadist fighter so they may go home and raise their own jihadist child. Many of the young women are devout Muslims and are only seeking to fulfill the obligations of their faith.

In at least one case, a husband divorced his wife, then traveled with her to Syria where she entered into a series of temporary marriages for the purpose of becoming pregnant. Following her impregnation, the couple returned home.

Nobody has any idea how many women have traveled to Syria for sexual jihad. The Tunisian government reports they have turned back literally thousands of young women.

Women who succeed in traveling to northern Syria, where the practice is most common, they enter temporary marriages with fighters. Those marriages last as little as a day. Following sex, and hopeful impregnation, the man divorces the woman who then marries another.

The practice provides sex for men who are far from their families and is allowed under certain interpretations of Sunni Islam. It may also breed a generation of fatherless children whose mothers may raise them to be jihadists in turn.

The juhadists are being supported by Saudi Arabia and the clerics there who espouse an especially conservative strain of Sunni Islam known as Salafist Islam. Known as 'jihad al-nikah,' or sexual holy war, the practice is considered legitimate.

It actually can be interpreted to legitimize mass rape. The exception in this case, is that the young women appear to be traveling willingly.

Parents are reporting that their children are disappearing to Syria and returning pregnant.

Most Islamic scholars and clerics say the fatwas are inconsistent with Islam and shouldn't be obeyed. Feminists and moderate Muslims are also condemning the fatwas.

The presence of Islamist extremists in Syria has the U.S. and other nations reluctant to intervene on behalf of the Free Syrian Army, which has recently had its own clashes with jihadists. The jihadists would like to establish a caliphate, a rigid, authoritarian Islamic state in Syria a nation which, until recently, was considered relatively secular under the dictator Bashr al Assad.

Now, the forces of the regime and the jihadists are fighting a war of attrition which ultimately serves western interests. However, the sexual jihad threatens to create a new generation of sympathizers with this version of islamist ideology. Governments are being asked to stop the travel of any unattended young women to Syria.

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