Lawmakers decry ISIS crackdown on women

Lawmakers are worried that the growth of Islamic extremism is creating a brutal situation for women in the Middle East, and that the U.S. isn’t doing enough to stop it.

Experts shocked members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday by reciting dozens of graphic stories illuminating the sexual exploitation, brutalization and displacement of women at the hands of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

{mosads}Documentary filmmaker Edward Watts told of a woman who received 50 lashes for accidentally revealing her big toe, and of a pregnant 9-year-old who had been raped several times.

“I’m just so horrified frankly, at the details of this,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.). “How can a family — how can a village be so susceptible to such a barbaric, suppressive culture, whether you’re female or male?”

“You’ve been describing the lowest level of humanity,” added Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.). “We cannot turn our back on this.”

In order to combat the violence, lawmakers sought to understand the unprecedented surge in female ISIS recruits from Western countries.

Social media plays a critical role in the extremists’ popularity, analysts said. 

“We are watching 21^st century media, which we see as a form of freedom of expression, being used as a tool for extreme propaganda and violence,” explained Kathleen Kuehnast, the director of gender and peacebuilding at the U.S. Institute of Peace. 

In contrast to ISIS’s media success, the State Department has floundered to respond effectively to Islamist extremism on the web, said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.).

“I’ve spent some time in this room talking about how our State Department can’t possibly respond to the ideological threat of ISIS because they refuse to hire anyone on the basis of their understanding of Islamic law, history and jurisprudence if they don’t have a certain number of Western academic brownie points,” he said.

“We’re fumbling around in the dark and yet we’re doing a lot of unsigned advertising on the Internet designed to appeal to folks who have an extremist and motivated connection to Islam.”

Sherman’s colleagues seemed to agree.

“If we’re going to counter it, we need to know a lot more than we know right now,” Connolly said.