The terrorist group has combined its signature medieval brutality with a sophisticated push for pregnancies within the territory it controls in Syria and Iraq. Propaganda touts a new nursing school, a pediatric facility and specific doctrine on the responsibility of fighters and their brides to procreate. An ISIS propaganda video released earlier this year featured Dr. Tareq Kamlehan, an Australian physician who joined ISIS, running a pediatric ward, boasting about the “good system that they’re running here” and urging medical professionals to join. “The idea of creating families to live within their Islamic State also provides further validation of ISIS vision as a legitimate nation unto itself,” said Clinton Watts, Fox Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “ISIS believes the more people they can create in their image the better, and those born into violent ideology are usually the most committed to the course of their life.” “They have massive problems paying the doctors and keeping the facilities running with power, equipment and medical supplies.” - Daniel Koehler, German Institute on Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies
In a recent ISIS propaganda video, Australian Dr. Tareq Kamleh was shown working inside a purported ISIS maternity ward in Syria, and urging other medical professionals to join him.
In an attempt to show legitimacy as a professional and orderly government, ISIS is reportedly issuing birth certificates and related medical documents. ISIS leaders also have established specific guidelines for pediatric care for mothers giving birth within the caliphate, sources told FoxNews.com. One such directive forbids Caesarean births, calling them “un-Islamic” and asserting they could hinder future reproduction. Twisted tweets believed to come from within Islamic State show babies sleeping sweetly -- with guns, grenades and the ominous ISIS logo displayed beside them. How to raise a “jihadi baby” has also been a key feature of ISIS publications, with one article, “Sister’s Role in Jihad,” underscoring that the “most important” role a female can play within the caliphate is to indoctrinate her offspring as early as possible. Mothers should encourage boys to play with toy guns and steer clear of TV, as it “mostly teaches shamelessness, anarchy and random violence.”
Many of Islamic State’s mothers are sex slaves captured from Christian and Yazidi populations, as well as Western women who have traveled to the region to join the terrorist army. Syrian activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently reported in April that the terrorists had opened a nursing school in the Syrian city that serves as its headquarters, complete with standardized entrance exams and a mandate that nurses must speak fluent English so as to not put their patients’ lives at risk. A member of the activist group, a collective of underground Raqqa residents who report from the city at great risk, told FoxNews.com ISIS had opened a medical school for both male and female students, ages 18 to 30, “on condition that they must earn an average about 80 percent” in their final high school grades. Experts say the message shows that ISIS sees itself as much more than a terrorist group. “ISIS is not only a terrorist group, but in the business of state building,” Anne Speckhard, a Georgetown University professor of psychiatry and security studies and author of “Talking to Terrorists” and “Bride of ISIS,” told FoxNews.com. “One of the central tenets of ISIS recruitment is their promise to build a utopian state where citizens will be able to live by Islamic ideals.”
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