Islamic State members have been knocking on doors of unmarried women in areas they control since July to ask for their hands in marriage, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights .

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic state, also known as ISIS or ISIL, recently ordered grants of US$1,200 to militant members who wished to get married, Syrian Observatory officials said.

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In July, before the announcement of the grant, the militant group opened a marriage bureau. at al-Bab town in Aleppo, northern Syria, reports said. The marriage bureau caters to "single women and widows" who wish to marry militants in their territories in Iraq and Syria.

Marriage bureau officials reportedly ask interested women and families to provide their names and addresses for follow-up contacts. Militants then knock on their doors and officially ask the women for their hands in marriage.

Residents of Baiji, an ISIS-controlled town in Iraq, tried to hide single women from the militants. It didn't matter to the militants. They came knocking on doors whether women submitted their names or not.

"They said that many of their mujahedin [fighters] were unmarried and wanted a wife," an unnamed woman told the British Independent newspaper. "They insisted on coming into my house to look at the women's ID cards" to find out which women were unmarried."

Moreover, ISIS members asked some of the Yazidi women they kidnapped in early August to marry them.

According to witnesses, the women of the ethnic minority were divided according to age. They were not threatened to convert, but some women were asked into marriage.

"They beg us," The woman told The Indendent. "They promise us everything." Militant suitors promised them houses and that they "will lead happy lives," the woman added.

ISIS currently controls large parts of Iraq and Syria and had caused deaths and displacement of Iraqis and the Yazidi ethnic minority.

TagsISIS, Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, marriage grant, Yazidi, Baiji town