why has it come to light suddenly

It took her a long time to take the decision to talk and when she did, she would only meet in a public place.

She was an ordinary Damascene, dressed in a long coat and a scarf that completely covered her hair. Light skinned and brown eyed, there was nothing outstanding about her – nothing outstanding until she told her story.

Lina is not her real name, but this is the name she wants to be called in this tale. Thirty-eight-years old, divorced and a mother of three, she lived at her parent’s house and worked for a meager salary, aluminum foil tape so when a sheikh broached the subject of marriage and introduced her to a man near her age, she snapped at the opportunity in the desperate hope that her life would change for the better. In true Damascene style the engagement period lasted for one month, during which she was only allowed to meet her fiancée in her parent’s house.

She married and they moved to Jaramana a large mixed suburb of Damascus. However, Lina’s husband came from Ain Tarma, an eastern suburb of Damascus now in the hands of the Islamic fundamentalists. One day he asked her to accompany him there. It proved to be  a visit that changed many things in her life and altered many of what she had thought were rocklike beliefs.

When Lina entered Ain Tarma, it was like walking into a ghost city with no water, no electricity and the complete destruction of private and public property. It was inhabited by men who looked different to most Syrians. They wore knee-length robes and hennaed hair. They carried machetes, knives and handcuffs. She saw cars with no license plate numbers and a hospital

ambulance that had obviously been stolen. Even worse,  she felt as if she were dressed in a bikini, as all the other women there were completely covered from head to toe and wore long gloves.

It was in Ain Tarma that Lina had a heart-to-heart conversation with her husband and it was that conversation which made her reconsider the very essence of her core beliefs – her vey faith.  For Lina, Islam had always been there for her – to fall back on in times of need – to follow and be guided by in times of anguish and despair. It served as her protective clothing and the heart of her hearts.

But she heard a different Islam from her husband, one that was alien, dark and perverted. The sheikh, who lived in Ain Tarma had urged everyone to Jihad, her husband told her, but Jihad apparently took on many faces.  One could take arms and fight or one could help finance the fight and if neither were possible, then one could still do Jihad –”Jihad Al  Nikah,” which translates roughly into English as sexual Jihad. One could and indeed should marry the young widows of all the men who had lost their lives in the fight. In “Jihad Al Nikah” a man must marry up to four women. He could then divorce them in a short time, only to marry others! The divorced women , would also in turn, marry different men and so on and so on…

Lina listened aghast to her husband’s explanation of Jihad and then she asked him a question which had irked her from the beginning, “What about Al Adeh?’’ she asked. Al Adeh is a period of approximately four months, where a divorced or widowed women isn’t allowed to marry in case she is pregnant with child. “Oh,” replied her husband flippantly. “The sheikh will find a fatwa for this.”

So what is the point of Jihad Al Nikah and why has it come to light suddenly and particularly in Syria? In the case of Ain Tarma, Lina was able to offer an answer. The people who lived in Ain Tarma belonged to the armed groups or were their families and supporters nearly everyone else had fled. It was very important to keep the population of Ain Tarma stable, for it not to decrease. Turning Ain Tarma into a “hot spot ‘’ where free sex  was not only legalized but was given a holy cloth to wear was one way of insuring that its people did not leave it.
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