Excerpt:
Dear Linda Sarsour,
The news broke on Friday, August 14, 2015. That day would have been Kayla Mueller's twenty-seventh birthday.
The breaking – and heartbreaking – news: Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the Islamic Studies PhD who heads ISIS, had repeatedly raped Kayla Mueller. "He owned her," news accounts report. Kayla was al-Baghdadi's "sexual slave." She was tortured. Kayla had been 24 years old when ISIS first took her captive in 2013.
Kayla Mueller was from Prescott, Arizona. She was an idealist. She had worked for many causes, including Tibetan refugees, Amnesty International, Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Save Darfur Coalition. Kayla was taken captive by ISIS in 2013 while leaving a Doctors without Borders hospital in Syria. She was there helping war refugees. Kayla died in captivity in February, 2015. Kayla's fellow hostages report how kind and self-sacrificing she was.