The murderous militant group that calls itself the Islamic State purports to be the ultimate radical Islamist force, out to permanently reshape the world's civilizations. But the actual minutiae of how ISIS arose, and what it devotes itself to on a day-to-day basis, is often less impressive. A case in point: In 2008, back when it was called al Qaeda in Iraq, the group placed a ban on women purchasing cucumbers.
Reuters shared that detail with the world in an August 2008 report on Iraqis turning against al Qaeda in Iraq because of the way it ruled over them.
"They regarded the cucumber as male and tomato as female," Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, a Sunni tribal leader, told the news agency. "Women were not allowed to buy cucumbers, only men."
Reuters and other analysts have suggested the cucumber rule was rooted in the extremists' view that the nourishing vegetable is too sexually suggestive for women to safely handle.