January 15 2020

The Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS (2019)
By Azadeh Moaveni

The author interviews young Muslim women from various countries - modern UK and Germany as well as Tunisia and war-torn Syria.  Some are very young and naive, some are college-educated, and some are married to husbands struggling to find work.  Some, but not all, come from poor or broken families.  All are taken in by the promise of an Islamic nation-state dedicated to the Muslim faith.  They make their way to Syria, alone or with a spouse, boyfriend, or sister. They are married or will marry an ISIS fighter and - in most cases - have children and become widowed; some will die, some will lose their children to disease.  Eventually, all come to see that this glorious war to create an Islamic state has long since denigrated into a brutal, lawless society whose proponents were obsessed with power rather than the tenets of Islam.

• Emma lives with her single mother in a Turkish neighborhood in Frankfort.  Though ethnically European, she feels welcomed by her Muslim friends and converts.  She follows her boyfriend Selim to Syria.  Ten years later (in 2017) she is stuck in Syria, regrets her decision to leave Germany, realizes the war has "devolved into an orgy of spectacular violence" (p 286), and wonders if she'll ever see Selim (now her husband) again.

• Kadiza is one of four teenage friends, who leave school and family behind in East London.  At age 16, she has been widowed and wants to go home, but is killed in an airstrike.

Unfortunately for those women and their peers, some of whom were too young to realize what they were signing on to when joining the war, most of their countries of origin do not want them back - and they end up in this "guest house" north of Racca, where the author interviews them.  Many women coming from outside Syria look down on the local women who, likewise, resent these snobby foreign women interfering in their country, acting like colonizers.

While ISIS started in Iraq, Al-Baghdadi had moved to Syria, where he urged jihad against the authoritarian Assad.  Key states (e.g., Turkey, Saudi, US) help the rebel fighters battle ISIS while Russia and Iran back Assad.  By 2015, ISIS has become a global menace and millions are fleeing Syria.

From a Christian perspective, I would want to tell these women that they have a loving heavenly father who wants them to live in peace, not in fear.  But I can see - in a perverted sort of way - how the Christian leaders of the middle ages used their faith as a front to persecute and attack Muslims during the Crusades.

I learned a lot about the start of the war in Syria and the various parties involved.  Moaveni's interviews with the young women accompanying the jihad fighters are fascinating.  The book is less interesting when the author draws conclusions or makes assumptions (e.g., when a young British woman, Sabira, is intercepted at the airport trying to fly to Syria, the UK govt works with her to give her another chance, whereas "had she been a young American woman...it's likely she would have been prosecuted under vaguely defined statues about 'material support for terrorism' and been forced to serve a years-long prison sentence" (p 270).  Well...maybe not, since she changed her mind and decided to stay put and cooperate with law enforcement.  In any case, this book provides valuable insight into the formation of ISIS, Assad's regime in Syria, and the unfortunate young women caught in the crossfire.

Listed among the New York Times' "100 Notable Books of 2019"