Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS

by Azadeh Moaveni

The 2010s have been the decade of feminist reading of militancy, based on the laudable aim of being less sexist and stereotypical in assessing Muslim women’s involvement in supporting, developing, and sustaining jihadist groups. But this effort has not involved a great willingness to examine old beliefs about the causes and roots of violent conflicts, or dualistic certainties about enlightened secular liberalism versus regressive patriarchal Islam. Progressive analysis certainly helps us see how women distinctly experience repressive political orders, where they are marginalized and disempowered by their social status, religious sect, political affiliation, or identity mosaics of all these things. But the focus seems to dwell excessively on the manner of their experience rather than confronting the wider structural causes and realities that brought about that experience in the first place. What I mean to say, more simply, is that I hope the events recounted in this book will show the crucial importance of context: understanding how Nour experienced Ben Ali–era Tunisia as a woman is crucial to the arc of her life, but ultimately her story is embedded in a world she shares with Walid and Karim, her fellow Tunisians.