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The most terrible event in their recent history took place in August, 2014, when ISIL militants attacked Sinjar, the northern Iraq home of tens of thousands of Yazidis. About 5,000 were killed and 7,000 taken away. Males were shot. Women and girls were turned over to markets where they were sold into sexual slavery. A UN report speculates that about 3,200 women and children are still held by ISIL or the slave owners who were the customers of ISIL.

The bosses of ISIL justify slavery by scripture and manage the profits with bureaucratic thoroughness. As Fawaz A. Gerges of the London School of Economics writes in his recent book, ISIS: A History, the Islamic State has a Department of War Spoils. It governs slavery sales and specifies the contracts that are notarized by Islamic courts. Aside from raising money to pay for guns, bombs and drones, the offer of female slaves “has become an established and increasingly powerful recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies.”

Yazda, an international organization that advocates for the Yazidis, estimates that at least 35 mass grave sites of Yazidis have been identified. Those who escaped killing or enslavement eventually reached ramshackle refugee camps in Turkey and Greece.

The Yazidis speak a version of Kurdish. Their religion combines elements of Christianity (baptism, for instance) and Islam and Judaism (circumcision). They worship a Peacock Angel, one of the seven angels they consider important. Those who call them pagans claim they are devil-worshippers. They have no holy book and pass their doctrine down by word of mouth. They don’t accept converts and marry only within their religion, two rules that make it harder to maintain a sustainable population.