We have had many wars with other countries and when a prisoner comes back they get many benefits, they get a house, they get a salary and I want the Iraqi government to do this for the Yazidi women so that they can have the social status that would allow a good future, a good family and a good status in society.
Yanar MohammedIn the beginning, in 2003, there was the Iraqi resistance, which didn't want the US occupation, then they developed Al Qaeda, but even then it was never this monstrous, this inhumane and as misogynistic as what we're seeing now under ISIS.
Yanar MohammedThe leading members of ISIS were either tortured in US military prisons or in the prisons of the Shi'a government which the Americans put in place.
Yanar MohammedPolygamy was not a problem in the '80s. I do not remember one single woman in Baghdad who was the second or third wife. Now it's a very common story. Sometimes two wives living with a man in a 5 by 10 foot room. It's a very miserable economic situation.
Yanar MohammedIn Iraq, we did have dictators, we did have times of war but it never reached the point where one person, or a group, would be attacking another group and would be enslaving all the women of that group.
Yanar MohammedThe constitution has put women in a position where no one will protect them from religious cliques. If a woman is the third or the fourth wife and she has no rights inside her home and, on top of that, there is domestic abuse in her house, she is doomed. Under Islamic Sharia law a woman must accept beatings from her husband. Under Islamic Sharia, she must not revolt because she is the third or fourth wife.
Yanar Mohammed