Islamic State militants claim that the capture, enslavement and sale of thousands of Yazidi women and children had been ordered by Allah in a magazine purportedly published by the Muslim terrorist group

The latest issue of Dabiq attempts to justify the militants' snaring of thousands of innocent Yazidis during an assault on the Iraqi city of Sinjar in August 2014. Explaining why Yazidis have been sold into sex slavery while those from other groups have not, the magazine claims that Islamic Sharia law allows the enslavement of innocent "polytheists and pagans" but not of those the militants regard as simply heretical. Tens of thousands of Yazidis were forced to flee for their lives - many of them into the nearby Sinjar mountains and then into Kurdish-held regions of northern Iraq. However many were captured by the Muslim militants, resulting in the massacre of hundreds of men and the selling into slavery of women and children, after they were first divided up between ISIS fighters.