Yet another Islamic cleric recently made it permissible for the Islamic fighters waging a jihad in Syria�??politely known as �??the opposition�?��??to rape the nation�??s women.

Salafi Sheikh Yasir al-�??Ajlawni, a Jordanian of origin who lived in Damascus, Syria for 17 years, posted a YouTube video last week where he said he was preparing to issue a �??legitimate fatwa�?� making it legal (in the eyes of Islam) for those Muslims fighting to topple secular president Bashar Assad and install Sharia law to �??capture and have sex with�?� all non-Sunni women, specifically naming Assad�??s own sect, the Alawites, as well as the Druze and several others, basically, all non-Sunnis and non-Muslims.

The Sheikh used Islam�??s legitimate Arabic term for these hapless, non-Muslim women, melk al-yamin, a phrase that appears in Islam�??s sacred book, the Koran, and which is simply a reference to non-Muslim sex-slaves. For example, Koran 4:3 commands Muslim men to �??Marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four�?� or what your right hands possess.�?� Islam�??s ulema, or �??scholars,�?� are unanimously agreed that �??what your right hands possess�?� is, according to Islamic law, simply a sex-slave. Linguistic evidence further suggests that she is seen more as an animal, a possession than a human�??hence this inhuman fatwa.

Jordanian Sheih Yasir al-�??Ajlawni is certainly not the first cleric to legitimize the rape of infidel women in recent times. Calls to capture and rape non-Muslim women are appearing with increasing frequency and from all corners of the Islamic world.

A few months earlier, Saudi preacher Muhammad al-Arifi also issued a fatwa allowing jihadi fighters to engage in �??intercourse marriage�?� with captive Syrian women that lasts for a few hours �??in order to give each fighter a turn�?��??also known as gang-rape.

Then there is Egyptian Sheikh Ishaq Huwaini, who once lectured on how infidel captives, or to use another term from the Koran, ghanima, the �??spoils of war,�?� are to be distributed among the jihadis and taken to �??the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold.�?� He, too, referred to such women as �??what your right hands possess,�?� saying: �??You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate�??though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff�??and this is agreed upon by the ulema�?�. In other words, when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.�?�

Indeed, even some Muslim women advocate the enslavement and rape of fellow (non-Muslim) women. Kuwaiti political activist, Salwa al-Mutairi, for instance, is working to see the institution of sex-slavery return. In a video she posted online, she explained how she once asked Islam�??s greatest authorities living in the city of Mecca, the city of Islam, about the legality of sex-slavery and how they all confirmed it to be perfectly legitimate. According to Mutairi:

A Muslim state must [first] attack a Christian state�??sorry, I mean any non-Muslim state�??and they [the women, the future sex-slaves] must be captives of the raid. Is this forbidden? Not at all; according to Islam, sex slaves are not at all forbidden. Quite the contrary, the rules regulating sex-slaves differ from those for free women [i.e., Muslim women]: the latter�??s body must be covered entirely, except for her face and hands, whereas the sex-slave is kept naked from the bellybutton on up�??she is different from the free woman; the free woman has to be married properly to her husband, but the sex-slave�??he just buys her and that�??s that.

The Kuwaiti activist went on to offer concrete suggestions: �??For example, in the Chechnya war, surely there are female Russian captives. So go and buy those and sell them here in Kuwait; better that than have our men engage in forbidden sexual relations. I don�??t see any problem in this, no problem at all.�?�

One can go on and on with more examples. The point is that last week�??s fatwa permitting the jihadi-led �??opposition�?� to target and rape non-Sunni Syrian women is in good company, and certainly not an aberration.

The only aberration seems to be the United States�?? wholesale support for self-professed rapists and terrorists�??quite laughably, in the name of �??democracy.�?�

Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam�??s New War on Christians. He is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.