IS have released a propaganda video showing 250-300 IS recruits undergoing training in what appears to be preparations to defend Anbar Province in Iraq. It won't be easy for the coalition to regain Anbar's populated districts without a serious ground offensive.

Great interview by Al Jazeera with Tariq Ramadan, a respected Islamic scholar. He has provided straightforward answers to some of the questions asked here before without the usual religious defensiveness/goggles we see here:

http://www.aljazeera.com...2014101015462542487.html

1. Did God instruct or permit the soldiers to rape the women, and
2. Did the soldiers actually rape them?

It's clear that God didn't intend for the soldiers to rape the women, but rather to take them captive.
1. The law God had given to the Israelites condemned rape, in some cases punishing it with death (Deut 22:25-27).
2. Also, immediately following the command to spare the virgin women, the soldiers were instructed to purify themselves and their captives (31:19), and rape (or consensual intercourse) would have violated this command (Lev 15:16-18).
3. The women are usually referred to as people (using the masculine adam), not women or virgins, underscoring the notion that they were seen as captives rather than sexual objects. (Unlike Muslims and the sexual jihad stuff, or the virgins of the afterlife).

It's theoretically possible that some of the soldiers raped some of the women, but given the circumstances it seems very unlikely. Not practically possible.

1. The soldiers would have known that rape was a violation of both the law and the instruction to purify themselves, as shown above;
2. they had also seen God punish such violations with death during their travels in the desert. For example, they experienced a plague and executions resulting from their relations with Midianite women (25:1-9), as Moses reminded them. At that time, all those who had sexual relations with the Midianites were killed.

It's highly implausible that the soldiers would have wanted to have anything to do with the women given this context.

So what did happen to the women (and children)?
1. God gave the Israelites permission to marry women they took captive, but they were to treat their wives with respect.
2. the women were to have time to mourn their families first, and were not to be mistreated (Dt 21:10-14).
3. Those who didn't marry would have become servants, but there were rules against mistreating them as well (Ex 21:26-27, Dt 23:15-16).

No indication is given how they were determined to be virgins but all indications are given that they were nonetheless treated with respect, dignity, and consideration, aspects of humanity foreign and unknown to Muslim men on their treatement of muslim women. Muslim men who only think of rape, sex, virgins as did Mohammed.

How they were treated rules out possibility of violation. Simple. Comprende?

I hope your brain can process all this information I have presented to it.

So easy it is to answer Alphdoti. If only it were easy for him to answer me when I bring questions about the Qur'an.

Your whole reply tried to answer whether God instructed soldiers to rape, but you did not answer the question: how did the soldiers determined virginity?

The other question whether God instructed the soldiers to kill little children?
Bible Numbers 31:15-17:
Kill all boys: "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones."
Kill all little girls: "And kill every woman who has known a man intimately, kill."
Keep young women only: "But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately."

At least you should have tried to read that part.

Like I feared, your brain is or was not capable of 'complex' processing.

Sad. Lamentable.

To someone who has just confessed that virginity is no big deal to you the interest you show in it is exceptional. Your mind just revolves around it. You dream of it, think of it and is all you want to talk about. Just like Mohammed.

Now you want to move to other issues without exhausting the initial ones. Have you understood yet that Allah ransomed a certain boy with a great sacrifice?

@muriel, so the murdering of girls who have known a man intimately is "treatment" with respect of the abducted virgin girls, eh?

It is 'respectful treatment" indeed for the abducted girls after murder of their young sibling brothers and sisters together with their parents.

Are you for real? How is killing somebody's young boys and girls and those who have known a man intimately "dignity, and consideration, aspects of humanity"? You do that to somebody then you abduct them and call it "dignified"?

Alphdoti!

You are a funny guy, you know that?

You are so full of fallacies you are the poster boy for madness.

What you are saying is the fallacy of Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Read briefly about it here

Ati because the ones alive were treated well therefore the dead ones were also treated in like manner! And you proceed to formulate hypotheses over it!