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Muslim clerics acting like pimps.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
Undercover in Baghdad,
we expose a secret world of sexual exploitation.
Widows of war, forced to become halal prostitutes.
Men of God, giving religious
guidance on how to abuse children.
In this holy sex trade even children are for sale.
(mysterious music)
I'm in Kadhimiya, Central Baghdad,
one of Shia Islam's most important pilgrimage sites.
Millions visit this holy shrine,
and many couples come here to get married.
Just walking around the shopping arcade,
across from the main shrine,
I've come across multiple marriage offices.
We've come here because of increasing concerns
among Iraqi Shias that some clerics
are abusing an ancient marriage practice
to exploit women and girls.
It's called mut'ah or (speaking in Arabic),
pleasure or temporary marriage,
and it allows a man to pay for a short-term wife.
But it's illegal in Iraq.
I have to be discreet filming this,
but we're here to investigate allegations
that some of the clerics here
are grooming women for halal prostitution,
and even acting like pimps.
Pleasure marriage, or mut'ah, is a Shia practice.
But Sunni Islam also recognizes
another type of informal marriage, which it calls misyar.
Many Iraqi clerics say pleasure marriages
are sanctioned by Islamic law,
and can even be good for couples.
This is Faris al-Musawi.
Tell me about mut'ah marriage.
What are the rules behind mut'ah marriage?
The man pays for a sexual relationship.
But the cleric said, if the woman was poor,
the man would be helping her.
But what's the difference between
mut'ah marriage and prostitution?
(mysterious music)
Fifteen years of war have had a
devastating effect on Iraq's women.
More than a million have been widowed,
and 1.5 million people are still displaced.
Clerics had told us pleasure marriages
were a way of helping vulnerable women.
But we'd started to hear stories of abuse.
We're concealing the real names of the women we spoke to.
When the so-called Islamic State took her city,
Rana fled to Baghdad.
Soon after, her husband left her.
(background market noise)
The man took Rana to one of the marriage offices in Kadhimiya.
(sombre music)
Rana says she trusted her new husband,
and didn't read the marriage contract.
She thought she was starting a new life.
(sombre music continues)
(suspenseful music)
After a few days, Rana's husband
took her out shopping.
Then, she says, without any warning, he vanished.
(street noise)
She'd thought her husband was sincere.
In fact, he'd tricked her into a temporary pleasure marriage.
When Rana's family found out the marriage
wasn't genuine, they rejected her.
Unable to support herself, she became a prostitute.
(suspenseful music, street noise)
During a year-long investigation,
our team spoke to around 25 women and girls
who said pleasure marriages had been used to exploit them.
All feared reprisals if they showed their faces.
Iraqi lawyers, journalists and human rights workers
told us that abuse of the practice
was a significant and growing problem,
but warned us it would be difficult to expose.
One of our reporters went undercover in Kadhimiya
with a secret camera.
If discovered, he risks being detained
by one of Iraq's feared Shia militias.
We're concealing his identity.
When I arrived, I was really scared.
First checkpoint was really scary because
I had a secret camera.
If they found this, no way I can run away.
Only clerics can run marriage offices here.
While many go through years of religious education,
it's possible in Iraq to become a cleric
with little formal training.
Posing as a potential client,
our reporter arranged to meet several clerics.
I just went to many of these offices
and started asking them
if you do a temporary pleasure marriage.
Some of them they said yes.
One of them was Sheikh Hussein.
This is Hussein al-Musawi.
His office is opposite the main shrine.
He has authorization from the Ministry of Shia Affairs,
and a licence to conduct marriages
from the Ministry of Justice.
My cover story was I am Iraqi, living in London
coming to Baghdad for a short trip.
Our reporter pretended he'd met a girl,
and wanted to have sex with her.
He asked if the cleric would do a pleasure marriage.
The cleric said it was better not to have a written contract.
Without a contract, he said,
it's easier to cover your tracks.
The cleric was giving advice on how to use
a girl for sex, and then get rid of her.
We had evidence they said this but to
see it for myself was really shocking.
I couldn't believe he was telling me have sex
with her and just leave her in the street, basically.
His services came at a price.
Seeking to understand more about mut'ah marriage,
we approached more than 20 senior Shia clerics
to take part in this program.
Only one agreed to talk to us on camera, Ghaith Tamimi.
In Iraq, he'd been a high ranking Shia cleric.
But he started speaking out
against the clerical establishment.
After receiving death threats,
he's now living in exile in London.
Ghaith told me this cleric was breaking Islamic law,
and his advice could put a woman in danger.
If she were caught with a man,
she risked being charged with prostitution.
Despite being illegal in Iraq,
we found pleasure marriage was widely available in Kadhimiya.
Out of 10 clerics we spoke to, 8 said they performed them.
One such cleric was Sayyid Raad.
Our reporter met him outside the main shrine
and went with him to his nearby office.
Raad said he had two offices in Kadhimiya,
and employed four other clerics.
Our reporter saw his licence to conduct marriages
from the Ministry of Justice.
His title, Sayyid, means he claims
descent from the prophet Mohammed.
He agreed to do a pleasure marriage
if our reporter brought a girl to him.
Our undercover reporter met him again
in an upmarket shopping center.
Our reporter said he'd found a girl
and now wanted to do a pleasure marriage.
He said pleasure marriages allowed a man
to do pretty much whatever he wanted.
It's illegal to rent a hotel room in Iraq
unless you're properly married,
but Sayyid Raad said this was no problem.
(Atmospheric music)
Our team spoke to more than 20 men
who said they did brief temporary marriage to get sex.
All of them told us the practice was widespread.
Ali, not his real name,
agreed to give an interview if we didn't show his face.
To me, it sounded like prostitution.
But Ali said he wanted it to be Halal.
As we talked, Ali revealed some men were paying
clerics for pleasure marriages with children.
(suspenseful music)
We were discovering one of Iraq's darkest secrets.
Clerics making money helping men
who wanted sex with very young girls.
Sayyid Raad was prepared to talk about it.
Our reporter had told him, he'd met a 13 year virgin
and asked whether a pleasure marriage would be Halal.
Vaginal sex was forbidden, according to the cleric.
But other things he said, were permissible.
Ghaith Tamimi says that most Shia Muslims would be horrified
at mut'ah marriage being used to enable men to marry children.
Sayyid Raad said he was a follower
of Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani,
Iraq's most senior Shia cleric.
Like some other Shia leaders in Iraq,
Ayatollah al-Sistani has in the past written
that if a child under nine was promised
in a marriage or temporary marriage
sexual touching was religiously permitted.
We approached the Ayatollah's office to
clarify his religious advice on this matter.
In a statement, he said, times had changed.
And this had been erased from his current books.
(building string music)
To continue our investigation, we've come to
the most important site for Shia Muslims.
(muffled loudspeaker)
This is Karbala. It's the biggest
Shia pilgrimage site in the world,
tens of millions of pilgrims come here every year.
We'd already seen how clerics were helping men break the law,
and even doing pleasure marriages with minors.
We wanted to know whether the religious authorities
in this holy city condoned the practice.
I spoke to Sheikh Emad Alassady.
So we heard about pleasure marriages, mut'ah marriages.
Do you do them here?
He said they do still happen in secret,
and are allowable under Sharia Law.
Don't you think these pleasure marriages
exploit vulnerable girls?
In the streets around the shrine,
our reporter asked four clerics
if they would conduct a pleasure marriage.
Two said they would.
One of them was Sheikh Salawi.
(suspenseful music builds)
Sheikh Salawi said he had completed
extended religious studies, and was a member of one of Iraq's
powerful and well-armed Shia militias.
Our reporter pretended he'd met a
young girl who was still a virgin.
We showed this footage to Yanar Mohammed, who
runs a network of women's shelters across Iraq.
Nine years old...
they are just opening a shop for paedophiles,
inviting them from all over the world.
The girl is looked at as a piece of merchandise,
and using the merchandise in specific ways is allowed,
but the virginity is kept for that big sale
that they will do in the future.
(traffic sound)
The 'big sale' is marriage.
Yanar told me that some families
see girls as a financial burden,
and want to marry them off.
But parents can only find a husband if
their daughter's virginity is guaranteed.
Pretending he had a real girl in mind,
our reporter asked Sayyid Raad what would happen if he did
take the girl's virginity during a pleasure marriage.
They are speaking of how a man can get away
with the crime of raping a young girl.
So 'just leave her and go',
what does this mean for the girl involved?
If the males of the family are aware of what happened to her,
they will be killing her,
and then the honour of the male patriarchs is preserved.
It is always the girl and the women who pay the price.
(tense music)
I interviewed a girl who is at grave
risk of violence from her relatives.
She lost her virginity in a pleasure marriage.
We'll call her Mona
and for her safety,
we filmed an actor telling her story, using Mona's exact words.
A few weeks later, the man took Mona to a cleric in Kadhimiya.
She was only 14.
Her parents knew nothing about it.
So the Sheikh knew you were a virgin?
Did he ask for your parents consent?
When she tried to stop seeing the man, he turned to blackmail.
Mona had been groomed by a sexual predator,
with the help of a cleric.
We wanted to see how difficult it would be
to get a cleric to do a pleasure
marriage with a very young girl.
It turned out to be easy.
Sayyid Raad took our reporter to a waiting taxi.
Our reporter had told him he wanted to do a
pleasure marriage with a 13 year old virgin.
He didn't ask to meet the girl in
person, or talk to her family.
He agreed to do the ceremony over the phone.
Basically another colleague of mine, she was in the hotel and
when he ring the phone my female colleague,
she was on the other end of the phone
and she was ready to answer.
(phone ringing)
I'm not thinking this marriage would be that simple.
The only question he asks is, what is your name?
And he began the ceremony without any questions.
In just a few minutes, Sayyid Raad had made $200 for a
pleasure marriage with a girl he believed to be only 13.
For Mona, the consequences of her teenage
pleasure marriage have been disastrous.
(sullen string music)
Her family are now pressuring her to get married.
She told us something similar had happened to her cousin,
with fatal results.
(sad string music continues)
Mona's in such an impossible situation,
what she thought was her teenage love story
has ended up ruining her entire future.
And if it wasn't for the cleric convincing her that
it's religiously OK, this would have never happened.
(suspenseful music)
In Iraq today, Conservative Shia clerics
give more than just spiritual advice.
After years of sectarian conflict,
they've gained political leverage
often with the backing of armed militias.
Activists say they're pushing women's rights back decades.
There were laws that protected women,
some protection for us in our marriages.
It seems that all the things that we gained in decades of
hard work of the generation of our mothers were just lost.
Once the Islamic clerics rule the first losers are the women.
(tense music)
Our findings show that Iraqi law is failing to protect women.
To try to understand what's happening,
I've come to the courthouse in Sadr City.
(indistinct talking)
Just outside, I see the clerics I'd met earlier.
They're operating a parallel religious legal system,
conducting Sharia marriages and divorces.
Faris al-Musawi is doing a Sharia divorce.
It only takes 5 minutes.
Divorce under Sharia law
is easier than under Iraqi civil law.
And leaves women with fewer rights.
Sharia also allows child marriage.
What's the youngest age that you'll marry?
Under Iraqi law a girl must be 15 to marry.
But this doesn't seem to bother some clerics.
Inside the court, they're dealing with the consequences.
Iraqi law doesn't recognise Sharia marriages.
So to be legal, couples must have
their marriage signed off by a judge.
The law on the minimum age for marriage should be enforced.
But that's not happening.
(talking)
Haneen is getting her marriage registered.
She's dressed like a grown woman,
but actually she's only 13 years old.
(sad music)
A cleric married Haneen to her husband
under Sharia law six months ago.
Now she's pregnant.
Because she got married underage,
Haneen's father and groom could get two years in prison.
Instead they've been fined $50.
It's up to the judge. And these days, many are lenient.
(indistinct talking)
There's a queue of fathers waiting for their
daughters to get married before the judge.
Sami Okaybi is here with his 14-year-old daughter.
He didn't want her face shown.
Why are you marrying your daughter off so young?
Is there anything you're going to miss from your previous life?
(indistinct talking)
The court's social worker is registering
the teenage brides and their grooms.
She's processed 126 underage marriages in the last six weeks.
She predicts almost all these teenagers will end up divorcing.
If you're a divorced woman you don't have a future.
You're looked at as a tainted person.
You become very vulnerable to that cleric
who whispers in your ears that he has the solution.
They call it temporary marriage,
being thrown off from one man to the other
to the third, to the fourth,
until you find out that you're a prostitute,
with a religious cover.
(ominous music)
Far from pleasure marriage helping women,
we'd found that clerics were using it to exploit women.
Preying on the most vulnerable,
recruiting them and pimping them out.
Rusul is 16.
For her safety, an actor is speaking her exact words.
Rusul was married off at twelve and divorced at thirteen.
Then she did a pleasure marriage to survive.
But soon after, the man left her.
(sorrowful music)
The cleric told her that now she
would never find a real husband.
With a sister to support,
Rusul says she had little choice
but to start working for the cleric.
Rusul's now pimped by the cleric,
forced to have sex with more than a dozen men.
(dramatic music)
Ali, who does pleasure marriages for sex,
says he always pays clerics to find him girls.
We already had evidence
the clerics we'd been secretly filming
would perform pleasure marriages.
But would they also procure the girls?
Our reporter went back to Kadhimiya
to Sayyid Raad's office.
(sad music continues)
In Karbala, Sheikh Salawi hadn't seemed to think
he was doing anything wrong either.
A few days later, our reporter rang the Sheikh
to ask him if he too would provide girls.
He told our reporter he could offer him a choice of women.
(wings flapping)
Many of the young women pimped out are destitute.
They're vulnerable to clerics
who distribute charitable donations.
Ghaith Tamimi says he's seen clerics
luring women into the sex trade.
Our undercover reporter had been
promised girls by the Sheikh Salawi.
Now he was about to meet him in Baghdad.
The Sheikh said he had a girl waiting.
The Sheikh said he had arranged a place where
our reporter could have sex with her.
We have enough proof he can provide girls,
so we left it there.
OK.
(dramatic music)
The Sheikh had proved himself willing
to break the law and sell women.
By now, we had evidence this practice was widespread.
I was about to meet a widow whose story revealed a senior
cleric running what appeared to be a prostitution ring.
Reem's husband was killed in an IS bombing.
Soon after, she and her two children lost their home.
When the cleric contacted Reem a few days later,
he made a suggestion.
(dramatic music)
Reem says the cleric started charging his friends money
to do pleasure marriages with her.
It began one night when he brought three men.
(ambient sounds of town square)
We can't identify which cleric Reem alleges abused her.
But she says that she was raped in one
of these offices in Kadhimiya.
The lucky ones reached our shelters.
The ones that are not lucky...
What happens to them?
They end up in brothels, and they don't live long.
I would say their life expectancy is like 35.
We...
so many who were about to throw themselves
off the bridge, into the river.
(tense music building)
We had evidence clerics had ruined
women's lives with pleasure marriages.
We'd filmed a cleric boasting he had girls for sale.
Now, after months of preparation,
we were about to try
to catch a cleric in the act of pimping.
Our undercover reporter set up a meeting with Sayyid Raad.
Once he felt safe, he signaled to a
young woman in the back of his taxi.
She says she's 26.
To protect her, we've disguised her identity.
Our reporter makes it clear he's only here to talk.
It was a very difficult meeting
but it was important to prove Sayyid Raad he brings girls.
Sayyid Raad took charge of negotiations.
Sayyid Raad seemed keen to get the
deal done as quickly as possible...
We had the evidence we needed.
It was time to end the meeting.
Our reporter took Sayyid Raad aside and said he
wouldn't go ahead with the pleasure marriage.
But Sayyid Raad wasn't ready to give up on the deal.
We'd captured evidence that a cleric
was prepared to pimp a young girl.
The cleric wanted his $400.
He was willing to bring as young as he has to,
he just didn't want to let that deal go past him.
It's a good franchise for these vampires.
They suck the life out of young girls.
And leave them to deal with their miseries.
We wanted to put our allegations to the clerics we'd filmed,
but it was too dangerous to do it in person.
I phoned Sayyid Raad from London.
(speaking in Arabic)
He hung up.
We also called the other clerics we'd secretly filmed.
Sheikh Salawi didn't respond.
Hussein al-Musawi denied agreeing
to do a mut'ah marriage.
We put our evidence to Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani,
one of the most senior clerics in Shia Islam.
In a statement, he said:
He said the abuses we'd seen were happening because
the authorities were not enforcing the law.
We took our evidence to the Iraqi ministry of Shia affairs.
They said they had no oversight over marriage offices
in Kadhimiya, and declined to give an interview.
The Ministry of Justice,
which issues licences to conduct marriages, also declined.
An Iraqi government spokesman told BBC Arabic,
"if women don't go to the police with
their complaints against clerics,
it's difficult for the authorities to act."
But for many young women across Iraq,
there's no hope of justice.
Mona can never let her family find
out about her pleasure marriage,
so going to the police seems impossible.
Since we spoke to Mona, she's run away from home.
Rusul is still working for the cleric.
She feels she has no choice.
Reem escaped the cleric in Kadhimiya.
She's still traumatized.
(weeping, heavy breathing)