Baghdad- The Islamic State of Iraq is battling for control of Iraq's largest refinery outside Baiji, north of Baghdad. But in the town of Baiji, completely under the control of ISIS, residents fear ISIS militants who are going door to door asking about the number of married and unmarried women in the house, British media reported today.

"I asked them that there were only two women in the house and both were married," Abu Lahid told The Independent. "They said that many of their mujahedin (fighters) were unmarried and wanted a wife. They insisted on coming into my house to look at the women's ID cards."

ISIS says its men have been ordered not to bother local people if they are Sunni, but in many places they are imposing their puritanical social norms in the towns they have captured. In Mosul, people were at first jubilant that ISIS had removed the checkpoints that for years had made movement in the city extremely slow.

Merchants and farmers were ordered to reduce the prices of their goods. But tolerance and moderation on the part of ISIS is intermittent and may be temporary. In one case, a woman in Mosul was reportedly whipped, along with her husband, because she was only wearing a headscarf rather than the ‘niqqab’ cloak.