Yazidis displaced by ISIS violence, in August 2014. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed, File)

(CNSNews.com) – Yazidi girls kidnapped by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria jihadists were given the chance to convert to Islam but told if they refused they would automatically become Muslims anyway the moment an ISIS fighter raped them, U.S. lawmakers heard on Wednesday.

During a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on ISIS’ war on religious minorities, a representative of a California-based, non-profit organization recounted the testimony of some of the Yazidi girls she met and counseled during recent trips to Iraq.

“In one night [in Sinjar town in northern Iraq] ISIS came and took all these girls,” said Jacqueline Isaac, vice-president of the group Roads of Success.

“And they told them first – they gave them an option. They said, ‘Will you become a Muslim? Will you convert to Islam?’

“And many of them said no,” Isaac continued. “And they told them, ‘You are going to be Muslim regardless, because we are going to sleep with you. And the moment that we do that, once we rape you, you will be Muslim.’”

Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) asked whether the kidnapping and sale of women and girls from religious minorities was “an outcome of lawlessness, or is it part of a more deliberate ISIS policy to destroy and to subjugate those who do not share their fanaticism.”

Isaac replied that it was the ISIS philosophy, with regard to Yazidis in particular, not only to torture, but to destroy them. “They want them off the face of this earth.”

Isaac said while the ISIS atrocities had begun with the Yazidis, they would ultimately affect not just Christians but “every woman that doesn’t fit within their philosophy.”

She described the region as a nerve center of a “menace” that needs to be stopped.

“Right now all the crazies from all over the world are coming to this center point, to this nerve center,” she said, adding that the “snake” had to be destroyed at the head.

“Their sex trafficking is systematic and will continue,” Isaac warned. “And it can reach our families if we don’t do something about it.”

Yazidis are ethnic Kurds whose religious practice predates Islam and Christianity and has links to Zoroastrianism. Historically based around Sinjar, the community was an early target of ISIS, along with minority Christians, as the terrorists captured territory across the traditional Christian and Yazidi heartland in the Nineveh plains, last summer.

Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the ISIS advance sought shelter, many in the nearby Kurdish autonomous region.

In her written testimony, Isaac said she had spent time during her most recent visit last March with people displaced or affected by ISIS violence in Iraq as well as in Egypt.

“It is clear to me that ISIS aims to eliminate all religious minorities in the region,” she said. “ISIS continues to destroy the towns and livelihoods of the ancient Yazidi, Christian and other religious minority communities. The survivors are calling on the world to save their ancient communities from complete destruction.”

She called in particular for more U.S. military and humanitarian support for the autonomous Kurdish region, which she said had become a haven for many fleeing minorities – “a place of equality, religious freedom and most importantly, safety.”

“The Kurdistan Regional Government’s track record proves that the people of Iraqi-Kurdistan are reliable friends to the United States and standard bearers of decency in the region,” Isaac said. “They have acted with humanity and bravery to protect innocent civilians fleeing from terror – regardless of race, creed or religion.”

Isaac conceded that the U.S. could not do everything, everywhere, but argued that defeating ISIS, “both as an idea and as a military movement” was a U.S. national security interest, while preserving human life and property was “commensurate with our highest ideals.”