This is a compelling and fascinating account of the lives of a number or women who either joined or tried to join ISIS in Syria. It’s surprisingly gripping, often very moving, even-handed and endlessly illuminating. The stories are well chosen, complex political and religious concepts are clearly explained and the writing is almost beautiful at times.
It seems to me that the lure of extremism is one of those subjects that’s both important and rarely taking about. Azadeh Moaveni absolutely does it justice.
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"Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS" by Azadeh Moaveni is a worthy read for anyone with an interest in Western foreign policy, the effects of social media, politics in the Middle East, or the many forms of extremism. It is not a straight forward read but it is not complicated or confusing, either.

Moaveni focuses on nearly a dozen young women - many of them teenagers - who developed an affinity for the so-called Islamic State in Syria and Libya, starting around 2014. Although social media greatly shaped the decisions of the young women, The author finds other motivating factors: disaffection with their communities, lack of family support, and an inability of Western countries (and secular Tunisia) to integrate conservative social values, among other reasons. There are gaps between the actions of the young women and Moaveni's reasoning, but she is quite convincing.

The stories of the young women are broken up and shuffled into the book as short chapters. The jump around geographically. I don't think there was a particular reason to break up their stories other than to put events in a chronological order, but that order falls apart in the middle and the end of the book as the young women get to Syria, marry near-strangers, and witness the collapse of the so-called Islamic State. It all muddled together although Moaveni tried to provide context by giving short one-page descriptions of world events.

Moaveni does a wonderful job describing how the young women find themselves swayed by propaganda. What is missing is what they think of their actions after the state's collapse. Where are they now? Because they knew of the atrocities, are they remorseful? What do their families - the focus of many chapters - think of them now? By 2017, the so-called Islamic State was mostly defeated and the book was published in 2019, so perhaps there wasn't enough time to gather this research, but even some clues as to what happened to them would have been very helpful.

Although some facts are repeated throughout the book, it is very readable. Moaveni's editorializing on what drove the young women to extremism is needed and will hopefully be understood by not only national policy makers, but local community activists as well. ( )

(39) This was an excellent, detailed telling of young Muslim women throughout the world who ultimately chose to travel to Syria to join ISIS circa 2013-2016 during the Syrian Civil War. It reads like fiction; gripping! During this time offshoots of Al-Queda and Islamic insurgents that rose up during the Arab Spring & joined forces (kind of) to create a caliphate in territory that spanned Iraq and Syria. Moaveni interviewed hundreds of people in Britain, Tunisia, Syria, Germany to put together a detailed narrative of these girls lives as well as the regional politics and living conditions that gave rise to these seemingly outrageous decisions to join ISIS. The author does an amazing job of pointing out the complexity of each individual's situation and cautions one against sweeping generalizations regarding binary good versus evil interpretation of Islamic uprisings. I thought it was a brilliant piece of work, though I have to admit I am fairly naive to the subject. I can see perhaps where many would find her too sympathetic to her subjects and blame it on her Iranian background. But honestly, I thought her handling of this subject matter was deft and nuanced and I honestly did not realize she was of Iranian descent as I can pay little attention to the front cover or other superfluous pages when reading on a Kindle.

I felt so devastated regarding the Bethnal Green girls. They were so young and naive. Rebellion has taken lots of different forms over the centuries for young adults - I think that a desire to appear a mujahadir is not much different then being a hippie War protester, or joining the circus, dressing like a gangster with your underwear showing, or moving to the Soviet Union and embracing communism. The only difference of course is actually torturing and or being complicit in violence against innocent civilians which I suspect only a minority of these girls participated in. But the desire to sport the attitude, look the part, talk the talk, participate and perhaps be groomed and lured in to these on-line communities is very understandable. And even many of the men were young, stupid, idealistic, and thought they were fighting a just War.

I found myself googling a lot of the people and events mentioned in this book; astounded that these things did not make it part of my permanent memory despite being so recent. As I finished the book, I heard that the US negotiated a treaty between Israel and the UAE to normalize relationships. I wonder how that is perceived in the Arab world. I wonder about the UAE and its uber-rich ruling class. Is it a dictatorship? Is this another Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Tunisia? Is this something to celebrate or . . . is it not? It is so complex and as the author cautions so effectively - there are no easy answers and danger lies in oversimplifing.

Anyway, this was great - very readable, affecting, relevant, and educating for me. It only narrowly misses my highest rating as I could not at times keep the characters straight and would have preferred a list of personages at the beginning to refer to, some pictures, and an epilogue that did a better job of - 'where are they now?' as opposed to introducing yet more new characters. I can appreciate she had a ton of material but I think there was a tiny bit of an overreach re: subjects. Overall, Bravo! One of the best non-fiction selections I have read (ever.) ( )

"The caliphate suffered an abundance of widows, and widows, as everyone knows, are especially prone to envy. If the widows were widows twice or even thrice over, as was the case with many women, the problem of envy took on monstrous dimensions. To be a widow in the Islamic State was to be condemned to a rough, deprived existence in a guest house for widows."

I read this whole book thinking it was written by a man. Wrong. A young Californian/Iranian woman wrote it. And it's brilliant. I mean absolutely brilliant. I knew so little about ISIS and the war in Syria that you'd think I never read the news. But I do read the news. Pretty much everyday. And yet I didn't know sooooo much.

Do any of you remember seeing video in 2014 of some very young Muslim women in Heathrow getting ready to board a plane to Turkey and eventually arrive in Syria to participate in the war as part of the Islamic State? I saw the video many times. It never occurred to me to sympathize with the mothers of those very young girls. It never dawned on me that anyone so young could up and leave home and go to war. But they did. Unbelievably that's exactly what they did.

They weren't the only ones. Moaveni traces the lives of several of these young women. They came from Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, London, Germany, Turkey and Syria. They end up being forced into marriage, and having as many children as they could, and waiting, then, for the return of their husbands from the battlefield, or, worse, the notification that their husband was killed on the battlefield. And then, when they no longer had a husband, the grueling life of a widow, with children, who will be expected to marry the next ISIS soldier who is "assigned" to her. Horrible suffering.

And in the end, guess what? They're stuck in a camp in Turkey or Iraq living with their children because their country will not take them back. Some of them end up in prison. It's all pretty awful. And the author tries to detail why it all happened, the poverty and disrespect that many of them felt they could no longer tolerate and forced them to move on to the battlefield where they hoped to make a better life for themselves.

As I said, absolutely brilliant. Narrative non-fiction at its best. And very highly recommended. ( )

ISIS, Syria. They came from everywhere, Libya, Tunisia, Great Britain Germany, these young women came to join a new group that was supposedly creating a new state, a state where being Muslim was accepted, the true and honest way. Why did they come, traveling so far into an unknown future? For a variety of reasons. Some to follow a loved one, some like the Puritans who left England, came for the right to worship their religion in their own way. Some came from radicalization from social media, some from message in their own mosques, some in anger at the Wests treatment . Some were highly educated, some just idealistic, some thought they were striving for a better future, most ended up disillusioned as what started out idealistic, turned to violence and terror.

Following several of these women, the author details their fate, the heartbreak of the families they left behind, and the girls reasons for leaving and what instead they found. Syria, has been much in the news lately, and as I hope many have by now realized, the media only prints or shows the terror, but not what led them to this point, never is the whole story disclosed, until now. This book show the how and why we have gotten to where we are now, with ISIS currently defeated, but now with the US withdrawal from Syria, maybe not down and out. Only time will tell.

While the author shows compassion for some of these women, she is also brutally honest, even at times critical. Like those who were indoctrinated into cults, so too were these same tactics used by ISIS. What will happen to these girls, yes many are still teenagers, women is still to be told. Now held in camps, their home country's evoking their citizenship, not wanting any of the former ISIS fighters or women back. A terrific book if one wants to know exactly what is happening and what went so wrong and why.

ARC from Netgalley. ( )