“There is no compulsion in religion” (Qur’an 2:256), but that statement is all too often honored in the breach. Agam Goldstein-Almog was perfectly free to choose to die rather than to recite the Islamic prayers.
“Freed hostage recounts torture of women in Gaza’s terror tunnels – Washington Post,” Jerusalem Post, January 18, 2024:
As soon as Agam Goldstein-Almog (17) was abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7 in Gaza, she was forced to put on a headscarf and a long dress, commanded to look at the ground, was forced to recite Islamic prayer, and her abductors gave her a name from the Quran, Salsabil, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
In an interview with international media, Agam described the horror she experienced for nearly two months as a hostage inside Gaza while speaking from a kibbutz in central Israel that has largely become a temporary refuge for displaced Israeli civilians.
In the interview, Agam addressed the female hostages still in Gaza. She asked, “Have you eaten enough today? Are you together, or have they separated you? Has he harmed you again? Has he asked you, again, if you’re married, if he could set you up with someone from Gaza? Has he entered your shower again, stripped the pajamas that he gave you, touched the would [sic] from the bullet that he shot, that really hurt you? But his control hurt more.”
Agam was taken to the Hamas tunnels underneath Gaza, to apartments and a school that was also a rocket launching site. Her captors allowed her to shower five times in the 51 days she was in Gaza, the Washington Post reported.
Some hostages had been kept alone in small rooms with their captors. They told Agam and her mother that they had been sexually assaulted “with great difficulty and tears.”…