“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” she said in an interview at a refugee camp in Qadiya, Iraq, to which she escaped after 11 months in captivity. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God.”

In much the same way as specific Bible passages were used centuries later to support the slave trade in the United States, the Islamic State argues that the Quran or other religious texts and rulings justify their human trafficking, experts say. Scholars of Islamic theology disagree, however, on the proper interpretation of the texts.

An Organized Slave Trade

The trade in women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority who are bought and sold, given as gifts between fighters and offered as prizes in competitions, is widespread in areas that the Islamic State controls, and highly organized. There are warehouses where the victims are held and viewing rooms where they are inspected by prospective buyers.

A 19-year-old victim who also escaped described a slave market where she was kept with at least 500 other unmarried women and girls, the youngest around 11 years old.