‘Sex slave to my husband’: A Singaporean's 18-year ordeal in a Malaysian cult-linked group

SINGAPORE: She was just 17 when forced to marry the son of an influential member of Global Ikhwan Services and Business (GISB) Holdings, a controversial Malaysian conglomerate in global headlines for allegations of sexual abuse, human trafficking and religious deviance among others.

The Singaporean woman went on to face 14 years of what she described as abuse at the hands of her husband, while senior GISB members turned a blind eye and urged her to stay in the marriage.

Now a single mother to nine children, this abuse ranged from being beaten by the man — even while she was pregnant — to being forced upon up to five times a day.

“I was a sex slave to my husband,” Zoey, who wished to go by a pseudonym,told CNA in a sit-down interview. 

The 34-year-old is among a group of Singaporeanformer members of GISB, which since September has been under probe by Malaysian authorities.

Hundreds of arrests have been made in relation to the group's activities, with some senior executives nabbed and overseas assets identified. 

GISB has links to the Al-Arqam religious cult banned in Malaysia in 1994 due to its deviant religious teachings. Fatwa or religious ruling committees in several Malaysian states recently declared the beliefs propagated and held by GISB followers as deviant as well. 

Malaysian Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution said as recently as on Oct 15, however, that GISB members were still practising banned teachings linked to Al-Arqam, despite public claims to the contrary.

As early as in 1991, the fatwa committee of Singapore's Islamic Religious Council (MUIS) had declared some elements of Al-Arqam's teachings as potentially misleading. In 1994, the committee prohibited Muslims here from following Al-Arqam's teachings.

In