Quotes from Azadeh Moaveni

She fell asleep listening to Evanescence on her phone, mourning how disappointing men were, to judge a woman's faith in inches of skin covered.

In this way, she learned, Islamic law regulated the public sphere: if a couple committed adultery, they knew to keep their own betrayal private, so as to avoid gradually tearing away at the sanctity of marriage for others. It was inconceivable to her that a judge would have been able to meet the evidential standards required to correctly implement the punishment for adultery.

It was not so much, then, that people like the rapper Danis Cuspert and Dunya were brainwashed into an ideology of radicalism; they simply lacked the intellectual and psychological coping skills to channel their newly found beliefs into more productive and legal means: activism, charity work, human rights law, citizen journalism.

She knew at that moment that she was done. She knew it instinctively and also spiritually: she could not remain in Raqqa to become a permanent temporary wife, passed from fighter to fighter.

When you don't wear a hijab, you discourage other Muslim women from wearing it. Also, wearing hijab makes you a message. Imagine you are Muslim walking around this square and you see a woman in hijab and you feel happy!…You think to yourself, 'Look, there are Muslims here!' You become a happy signal.

By not wearing it," he continued, "you also make things harder for other Muslim women. They see you not wearing it and it plants doubt in their mind…they think to themselves, 'If others don't wear it, why should I?'

Women are taught from early childhood that their worth is proportional to their attractiveness.

Wearing the hijab has given me freedom from constant attention to my physical self. Because my appearance is not subject to public scrutiny, my beauty, or perhaps my lack of it, has been removed from the realm of what can legitimately be discussed.