By Marco Gombacci
It was 2014. In the silence of the Western media, the black flags of Isis in Iraq and Syria were carrying out a real genocide against the Yazidis of the region.
First, they were intimidated by any means possible. Then they rounded up all the villages, separated the men from the women and sold or divided up those who were not killed and immediately thrown into a mass grave. Just as they would do with goods.
Their homes were destroyed and emptied, stripped of everything: souvenirs, newspapers, photographs, personal items, jewellery, tools, clothes. Their fate depended on their sex, their age and sometimes even their looks and attractiveness.
They were described as infidels, unbelievers, promiscuous, devil worshippers and worshippers of darkness. Little remains of their villages, as many buildings have been destroyed, including some important religious buildings and places of worship (which were destroyed and then patiently rebuilt by those who managed to return). Many houses no longer have their owners, either because they have died or because they are scattered throughout Syria, Iraq and Turkey. And in the refugee camps there.
Girls and even little girls have suffered an even worse fate: sold as sex slaves, they have been subjected to daily violence and rape. All this is documented in a series of testimonies from survivors.
Among them was Nadia Murad, a young Yazidi girl who was kidnapped in 2014 when Islamic State thugs came to Sinjiar, a small country between Iraq and Syria, home to a Yazidi community. A few months after being used as a sex slave, Nadia managed to escape from the clutches of Daesh. After taking refuge in a liberated part of Iraq, she began to tell of the conditions that Yazidi women had to live under the Islamic State, the abuse, violence and rape she had to endure on a daily basis, with no one to turn to.
Since her freedom, she has been writing books, participating in international conferences and speaking at the United Nations. In 2018, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her reporting on Islamist violence and campaigning to raise awareness about violence against women.
All these activities, titles and awards were not enough for the Taliban of political correctness. The supporters of the cancellation culture have ignored the suffering and violence that she experienced and the importance of her testimony in ensuring that this never happens again.
The Toronto school board censored her and cancelled a meeting between Canadian students and a Yazidi activist. “The risk is fuelling Islamophobia,” they ignorantly apologised.
It is not known whether they were pressured by the Canadian Muslim community or whether this decision was due to their own ignorance. Until now, the culture of denunciation has focused on erasing past history in order to rewrite another history, a more politically correct history, and to erase references to the Christian faith, the epic deeds of leaders, statesmen, writers and poets who were guilty of nothing more than being male, white and living in a different era from the present one. And now we are witnessing the first attempt to erase ‘recent history’. It is no secret that women in many Muslim countries live in difficult conditions, do not have the same rights as men and are discriminated against in everyday life. Under the aegis of the Islamic State, women have been humiliated, nullified, degraded and insulted.
And now that history wants to be erased by that cowardly and cowardly West, which has done nothing (or almost nothing) to save them from the clutches of Islamic terrorists? And now, in the West, which wants to present itself as a defender of human rights, schoolchildren are being denied the opportunity to tell their stories? Is it fear of ‘political incorrectness’? This is madness. Even more insane and hypocritical is the deafening silence of Western feminists, who are prepared to stand up and point the finger at everyone except the Islamist communities, which have no regard for women. We would have liked to have seen some #MeToo activists speak out against the evil decision of the Toronto schools, but they seem to have chosen ignorance and political correctness rather than the opportunity to stand out from the herd and defend a real feminist, a real woman who is genuinely fighting for more rights for women, Nadia Murad.
Marco Gombacci is a columnist of Demokracija and Middle East expert.