Guest House for Young Widows: the women of ISIS

Moaveni reminds us that the world is not black and white, which is what groups like ISIS want their supporters to believe. She shows us that the motives for joining ISIS come, in part, from complex social dynamics that make people dissatisfied with their current situation. She shows how ISIS exploits those vulnerabilities with promises of escaping to a world they sell as utopian, but ends up being a very different reality that is both terrifying and heartbreaking.

I was interested in the subject matter of this book, namely the motivations and stories of women who chose to joing ISIS. It is, however, very difficult to read because rather than dealing with one individual account at a time, it jumps between them. This might be OK if there are only two or three women, but there are many more than that and it becomes very hard to follow. Additionally there are side stories of other people who have become entangled with ISIS for a range of reasons. In addition the book contains long sections of academic analysis and opinion which make it even harder to follow what was supposed to be the central theme of the book, the stories of the women who joined ISIS. Because of this, the writing style changes; at times it is very academic and a few pages later we are reading a physical description of a young girl's eyebrows. This makes the book irritating and I admit I only scanned the last couple of chapters. I felt a bit conned by this book, it does not really deal with the young women and their tragic stories, but is a historical and at times highly opinionated account of the development and demise of ISIS, smattered with disjointed accounts of some women who joined. I think it's a shame, the women should have their stories told, but I'm afraid this does not do it.

This is an important, moving, but also annoying book. The author has interviewed a number of young women who left their various backgrounds – in Europe and North Africa – to join ISIS. Their stories are moving, and one can see how, for a range of different reasons, they were led to make the choices that they did, through a combination of religious idealism, reaction against the bad treatment of Muslims, and, above all, the difficult problems that they faced when tackling issues posed by social change and in some cases the strains of immigration by their families to Western countries from conservative agricultural backgrounds. ISIS did terrible things: it is striking from the author’s accounts how the regime combined the enforcement of petty rules disciplining aspects of women’s lives, with the callous disregard of major religious rules which they were themselves teaching. What is said, here, about the appeal of ISIS to these women also matches the analysis of the appeal of a lot of their internet material by The Quilliam Foundation (now ‘Quilliam’), which stressed its predominantly idealistic character. It is also clear that, when they found that things were very different on their arrival, they were not in a position to do anything. The author is, it seemed to me, right in her discussion of the complexity of the issues with which she is dealing, and in the complexity of the problems that these young women faced, and in her criticism of heavy-handed approaches to the these issues by some Western governments. But, at the same time, her own ideas seemed pollyannaish, and to under-rate the difficulty of dealing with the kinds of situation that these young women faced, and of the problems of making a transition (should people wish to do so) to forms of Islamic orthodoxy which would provide a range of modes of successful citizenship in the settings in which they are living. Not only would this involve inventing new ways of behaving (and tackling some difficult intellectual problems, to boot). But it would involve doing so against the difficult setting of lives in which young people make heavy use of social media. What the author has to say about the lives of these young people is fascinating, and is told with empathy. At the same time, she splits the story up into fragments which makes its continuity difficult to follow. She shows signs of not knowing much about the background about which she writes ((e.g. confusing Salafi Islam and Wahabi ideas in Saudi Arabia). And while she identifies problems about Western attitudes, her own positive views about issues seemed to me naive to the point of provoking the ‘annoying’ with which I started these comments. All told, this book should be read by anyone who is concerned about the aftermath of ISIS. All those from Western countries should be brought home and – when they ...

While not quite among the best books ever written, as are the author's two memoirs and the Shirin Ebadi memoir she co-authored, this is still a stupendous account of a universal phenomenon that we ignore or misunderstand at our peril: Why do people enthusiastically join movements that destroy them and their social group? The relevance for the US [and other places where people elect governments bent on their own destruction] is evident. Moaveni has interviewed women from relatively privileged "Western" countries who sacrificed greatly to join ISIS, an extremely misogynistic group. She also interviewed family and friends of these women, in order to afford us insight into the seemingly incomprehensible. We must understand these women, and their vast similarities to ourselves, to come to terms with them and us. Because Moaveni lets us see things from the standpoint of her subjects--inviting us into their objective and subjective worlds--we are left to make sense of everything ourselves; she offers insights, but does not lecture or hector them or us. Basically, we see how our "wonderful" and "feminist" societies totally fail many women, and drive them into searching for alternatives. This method encounters a structural problem which cannot be totally solved: she must either tell us the continuous story of each individual woman, or fragment their stories so that we can see the common developments over time. She chooses the latter, which breaks up every narrative but allows us to see how different personalities confront the same overall dilemmas and events. The situations of any one woman change over time, as history flows on. Reading about how the different women react to the same historical events occurring over time [reading together how different individuals reacted to event A, rather than sequentially how one woman responded to events A,B, D, And D], presents a different perspective than pondering how one women, and then another, and then another, experience events A,B,C, and D. Our solution is to read the book as written, but then go back and read the accounts of each individual over time at once, without interruptions by other narratives. A tiny improvement: the author could indicate at the beginning all the pages concerning each individual, [say, author A's life is discussed on pp 10-14, 45-59, 70-74 & etc] thus encouraging us to read their accounts in both fashions. As it is, we can do this with very little effort, but we are not reminded of this. Absolutely necessary reading.

I wanted to know more about the Women of Isis, b/c I only read sporadic reports in the paper or on TV. I learned so much about not only these women (and their families), but also about the war torn countries they live in. As the author explains,' living with constant conflict and repression gives space for extremism to thrive.' The author gives us a historical context. She also helps us remember the heart and soul of teenage girls everywhere. Most of the ISIS women are teenage girls. I plan to present this at my monthly book club. Highly recommend.