When ISIS Rules

At first, Lattif said, ISIS treated civilians “gently,” even assuming some of the civil administrative duties that had been handled by volunteers and the FSA. They fixed damaged roads, planted flowers in the street, cultivated gardens, and cleaned the local schools. But not long thereafter, Lattif said, ISIS instituted Sharia law, forcing women to wear what he called “the Daesh clothes”—the niqab or full head-and-face covering. “They banned hairdressing. Beard shaving is also forbidden. No woman can leave her house without a male escort now. There’s no smoking, no shisha [flavored tobacco smoked in hookahs], no playing cards. They’ve made everything bad for civilians now. They force the people to go to the mosque for prayers, to close their businesses. No one can walk in the street during prayers. They kidnapped almost everybody working in the relief centers. About a month ago [November 2014], they closed the school. If you want to study now, you have to go to the Daesh school in the mosque.”

Torture is common, too. ISIS has taken to arresting members of the FSA, whom they accuse of being agents of foreign intelligence services. Sentences for various ISIS-designated crimes are carried out publicly in al-Bab’s town square. These range, depending on the offense, from dismemberment to beheading. “They cut off heads and hands in the square. Do you remember the hookah place?” Lattif was referring to a popular cafe in central al-Bab where, in 2012, he had outlined his vision of a free and democratic Syria. “The beheadings are taking place now in front of there. They shut down the hookah place, of course.”

Source: ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (2015) by Michael Weiss.

Beard shaving is forbidden? The male cast of Duck Dynasty would fit in nicely except for being Christians. The ISIS thugs wouldn’t like that at all.