Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS

by Azadeh Moaveni

In 2015, the government redefined its thinking around counterterrorism, declaring that radicalism wasn’t fueled by economic marginalization or political grievances, but by the ideology of conservative Islam. Prime Minister David Cameron set out the new approach in a speech that year: Britons who rejected “liberal values” were “providing succor” to violent extremists. Suddenly, wearing the hijab, being socially conservative, belonging to a family that hadn’t yet made the transition from village patriarchy to modern independence—each of those traits marked a person as being extreme. And, warned Cameron, “the extremist worldview is the gateway, and violence is the ultimate destination.” By 2017, Louise Casey, an official overseeing integration, was arguing that “oppression of women in Muslim communities” was linked to extremism and Islamist terrorism. She went even further, blaming Muslims for the rise of the far right in Britain, outlining the causal relationship like this: Muslims’ religious conservatism led to their poor integration; their poor integration together with their conservatism led to terrorism; their terrorism fueled the far-right and white supremacist movements. Soon, there was almost no aspect of daily Muslim life and religious observance that was considered out of bounds for scrutiny by officials. Though most recent UK governments had resisted the European trend of banning face veils, by early 2016 both the ordinary hijab and face veils rose to become nation...