Guest House for Young Widows

Starred review from July 29, 2019
In this searing investigation, Moaveni, an Iranian-American journalist (Honeymoon in Tehran), explores the phenomenon of Muslim women—many of them educated, successful, and outwardly Westernized—choosing to travel to Syria in support of jihad. She follows 13 women and girls who were radicalized by news, by recruiters on social media, or within their social circles. Many of them naively dreamed of handsome warrior husbands, “camels trudging through a glowing vermilion sandstorm and Moorish palaces set against the moonlight.” In Syria, many found that “the militants no better than the tyrants they claimed to oppose” and their new husbands, assigned immediately upon arrival by ISIS, were often alarming (some described as “swiping through phone apps for sex slaves”). The guest house of the title, which most women come to know well, since the men die so quickly, “was a place of such deliberate uninhabitability that few women could stay long without going mad. This was precisely the intention.... Refusing to marry was recalcitrant behavior that would not be enabled by a comfortable private room with en suite bathroom.” In concise, visceral vignettes, Moaveni immerses her readers in a milieu saturated with the romantic appeal of violence. The result is a journalistic tour de force that lays bare the inner lives, motivations, and aspirations of her subjects.

September 1, 2019

Moaveni (Lipstick Jihad) explores the reasons young women join the Islamic State (IS). Expanding on her 2015 New York Times story, Moaveni focuses on 13 women from varying socioeconomic statuses and countries. Their reasons for joining IS are complex: some follow husbands or boyfriends, some are seduced by the promise of a "pure" form of Islam, some are unable to leave their homes in the war zone. Alongside the personal narratives, Moaveni presents a compact history of the Syrian conflict and expands on the political and socioeconomic situations that gave rise to extremism in Europe and North Africa. The author pays special attention to the factors behind the women's choices and where interventions could have been made, as she hopes that by addressing the underlying causes, future occurrences will be prevented. Moaveni's tone gravitates toward compassion and understanding, given the young age of many of these women, but she also provides more critical counter-narratives, never glossing over or avoiding the gravity of her subjects' decisions nor the brutality of the IS regime. VERDICT A compelling read that imparts important lessons about religious extremism. Recommended for readers interested in women's issues and current affairs.--Rebekah Kati, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Iranian American journalist Moaveni (Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran, 2009, etc.) recounts the stories of women who have joined the cause of the Islamic State group. According to the current presidential administration, IS is a failing cause, but it remains strong in places such as Iraq and Syria, battling government forces and controlling large territories. Working with 20-odd women involved in IS and their families, the author shows them to be a diverse group with various motivations. "Many thought they were saving themselves, or saving others, from unspeakable harm," she writes, although on the battlefront of the caliphate, the women would find themselves in grave danger themselves. One of her subjects is a young Tunisian woman whom Moaveni, who uses pseudonyms throughout, calls Nour. She, like many of her compatriots, took up wearing the niqab as an instrument of protest: "For many, being religious became a language through which to demand freedom from the state's intrusion into daily life." Salafism, the extremely conservative, Saudi-funded movement, is a rebuke to liberal Tunisians in a secular state; although separated by dress and other strictures, the young women who became Salafi felt "not constrained but empowered." Just so, IS appealed to young women in secular Britain, some of whom became "true believers" and took up arms. Some died, and some, on returning (or being returned) to their homeland, became wards of the court: "Had she been a young American woman in similar circumstances, caught by American authorities," observes Moaveni, "it's likely she would have been prosecuted...and forced to serve a years-long prison sentence." The author adds that it is not just the children of the dispossessed, but the well educated and affluent who join the cause; regardless of their status, however, "no country wants its ISIS citizens back." Writing sympathetically but not uncritically, Moaveni helps readers understand why these women join IS.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

September 1, 2019
Journalist Moaveni (Honeymoon in Tehran, 2009) investigates the reasons that young women in the West and Middle East joined ISIS in the early 2010s. She follows teenage and young adult women from Tunisia, the U. K., Germany, and Syria as they experience the rise of ISIS and the war in Syria. Moaveni was originally inspired by the media coverage of four 15-year-old girls from Bethnal Green, London, who left their families to join ISIS. She hoped to explore the complexity behind their recruitment and attraction to extremism. During her reporting, she met other women who had been involved, through varying degrees of willingness, in ISIS, and found their stories to further complicate the picture of radicalization and collaboration. Peeling back layers of gender, Islamophobia, faith, loyalty, and socialization, Moaveni situates the women's stories within the larger historical and sociopolitical context of the time. Following 13 women in total, Guest House for Young Widows is an ambitious attempt to understand the attraction of ISIS for many disaffected youth who were ready to believe.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)