Listen: Life in the Islamic hellhole of Mosul

Imagine living in a modern city but with only two hours’ electricity per week and with no running water.

You complain to the authorities, but they tell you there’s no need for electricity. After all, in the Prophet Muhammad’s time 1,400 years ago there was no electricity, so get used to living like people lived then, they add.

You go to the hospital only to find that most of the doctors are no longer there.

Your child falls sick, but there are no paediatricians anymore. Only some nurses remain – if you’re lucky.

As for what passes for schools, they can no longer teach mathematics or biology. No music, no singing, no children’s rhymes. It’s all forbidden.

And the courts? They’ve all been closed down and replaced by Islamic, or sharia, courts. There are no judges anymore. They’ve been replaced by the legal equivalent of quacks. In one case, the sharia judge is someone who not long ago spent his time herding sheep and goats. He now decides who lives and who dies.

In the report below, the BBC’s Mark Thomson talks to people who escaped from Mosul, Iraq’s second city which has been turned into a hellhole by the cutthroats of the so-called “Islamic State”, formerly known as the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) or the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL). It was broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s “Today programme” at 06:53 on 9 October.

“Today programme”, BBC Radio 4, 06:53, 9 October 2014

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