The Rev. Franklin Graham Saturday condemned the Islamic State and its practice of keeping and raping captured women, saying that the "god of Islam is not the one true God of the Bible."
"It has been released that Kayla Mueller, the 26-year-old American aid worker captured by ISIS and killed in February,
was repeatedly raped by ISIS top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and another senior IS member," Graham said in a
Facebook post Saturday. "This is a barbaric specialty of ISIS — they have a highly organized sex trade industry, even keeping an inventory of sex slaves."
ISIS said in February that Mueller, of Prescott, Ariz., was killed in a bombing raid by Jordanian fighter jets outside Raqqa, a stronghold in Syria of the Islamist militant group. Jordanian and U.S. officials have expressed doubt about Islamic State's account of her death, which came after she was held 18 months as a hostage.
Mueller was taken hostage in August 2013, while leaving a hospital in Aleppo in northern Syria, and al-Baghdadi personally brought her to be imprisoned inside the home of Abu Sayyaf, a Tunisian ISIS figure who was killed in a U.S. raid in May. Her parents said that they learned of her torture and repeated rapes in June.
On Saturday,
Graham pointed to a report in The New York Times that described how women and girls as young as the age of 12 are captured, while the males in their families are murdered, and used as sex slaves by ISIS fighters, who repeatedly rape and brutalize them.
"The report reveals that the men prayed before and after raping them, saying that the Quran gives them the right to do this and that it pleases their god," said Graham. "We need to pray for Christians, Yazidis, moderate Muslims, and all those across the Middle East who are persecuted and suffering at the hands of ISIS."