Rape as a tool of war is a centuries-old phenomenon. During times of conflict, it is used frequently as a means of psychological warfare in order to humiliate the enemy. The civil war in Syria is no exception.

Recently, Islamic Cleric Salafi Sheikh Yasir al-Ajlawni, a native of Jordan who then resided in Damascus for seventeen years, sent a message to the Syrian Rebels via YouTube: “It’s a ‘legitimate fatwa’ for [Syrian Rebels] waging war against Mr. Assad and trying to put in place a Sharia government to ‘capture and have sex with’ Alawites and other non-Sunni, non-Muslim women.” The merciless practice has become epidemic in the region. Syrian refugees fleeing Syria into Jordan bring with them horror stories, but are hesitant to speak:

“Few women and girls are speaking out. In Jordan, nearly every Syrian refugee has a story about rape the vast majority at the hands of the regime. Stories that begin with the refrain ‘I heard’ are common. ‘I heard’ that girls are being dragged off the street by the pro-regime “shabiha” thugs, drugged and raped. ‘I heard’ they are raping girls in prison cutting up their bodies and sending them back to their families. It is difficult to know how many are talking about their own experiences but refusing to admit it.”

It’s an exceedingly effective tool. In an Arab culture that demands purity of its women before marriage, the victims are shamed for the remainder of their lives by the stigma of rape, the blame often placed on them for not protecting themselves.

“I am destroyed inside…I will never marry again.’ But a single woman living alone is an object of scorn…. Sometimes she knocks on her neighbours’ doors to ask for help, but they do not answer.”

Recently, the Obama Administration promised the Syrian rebels $250 million in “aid,” whose ranks many believe include members of both Al Qaeda, the target of the professed War on Terror (as if somehow the sanctioned rape of women is not a form of terror), and the Muslim Brotherhood. This figure is double what was originally pledged, “which may include for the first time armored vehicles, body armor, night vision goggles and other defensive military supplies.” The Syrian rebels, whom the Obama Administration was already likely covertly arming (possibly linked to the September 11th Benghazi attack) are demanding even more. How the Obama Administration can assert on one hand that it’s pro-woman, while with the other fork over hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to Al Qaeda-linked rebels purposefully waging a real war on women, smacks of blatant hypocrisy.

Committed Leftists, as witnessed currently amid their rabid defense of the Boston Bombing suspects as poor, misunderstood lone wolves, blindly defend everything Muslim, including Radical Islam. For an ideology that claims gay rights and women’s issues of utmost importance, Leftists, including those in the not-so-main stream media, continue to support a culture that routinely imprisons and executes homosexuals as part of its legal system, practices extreme oppression of women, and harbors clerics sanctioning rape as a weapon of war. They fail to acknowledge that gays and women would be the first exterminated should Radical Islam ever make it to our shores. The irony of that truth is indeed bitter.