Book review Nadia Murad The Last Girl, My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State

The book “The last girl” is a biography of Nadia Murad, a human rights activist who was captured by members of the Islamic state. The book narrates the story of how a young girl and her whole village were captured by ISIS militants. However, Nadia escaped her ISIS captors and was able to portray not just her own story but that of many young girls from the Yazidi community who met with similar fates. The last girl is a story of how she battled against torture and abuse without losing hope.

The story revolves around the capture of Mosul by the Islamic State. On 3^rd  August 2014, ISIS captured the town of Sinjar in Northern Iraq. While vanquishing the town, ISIS captured young girls and mothers who were assaulted while men were being killed. Nadia was forcefully taken to Mosul along with other Yazidi girls and sold as sex slaves. The book goes on to narrate the unfortunate circumstance where she was offered to certain men, how they assaulted her and finally how she figured out the way to escape from the tyranny. The book encapsulates the numerous obstacles faced not just by Nadia but also other young Yazidi women in their battle against the ISIS for justice and freedom.

The Yazidis have been a victim of grievous violations committed by the ISIS for a considerable length of time. The ISIS considers Yazidis as infidels because of their convictions and their religion, justifying their assault on them. In fact, the genocide of Yazidis in Iraq has been occurring since the Ottoman era. While a peace loving community they have traditionally been depicted as venerating the devil. The ISIS wanted to convert them to Islam and as Nadia explains in her book, when the men in her village refused to convert to Islam, the ISIS militants either forced them to flee to Mount Sinjar or were killed by the ISIS in an attempt to eradicate them.

This story about a brave woman who confronted the ISIS and managed to escape is an exceptionally moving one. She was a young girl brimming with dreams and wanted to become a teacher or open a beauty salon. Her dreams were destroyed when one day she ended up under the imprisonment of her ISIS aggressors. The ISIS caught her family and mass scale genocide meant that she lost everything including her mother, six brothers and a hope to fulfill her dreams. Everything changed suddenly as her beautiful village and the Yazidi people were torn apart.

Nadia attempted to state her story through a book which reached millions and alerted the global community about the atrocities committed against the Yazidi community through the ages. The book explores ethnic violence but also emphasizes the vulnerability of women where rape is used as a weapon of war. Even though Nadia figured out how to get away, there are still hundreds of women who are trapped and need to be rescued. Nadia’s escape became a beacon of hope to her community and the means of making the global community aware of the problems encountered by her community. An inspiration to many, she broke her story before the world and gave a deep insight into the ISIS community.

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted, “The fact is that [ISIS] kills Christians because they are Christians; Yazidis because they are Yazidis; Shia because they are Shia” (March 17, 2011). The philosophy of ISIS is such that it doesn’t think about this as a transgression. As Nadia narrated in her book, the ISIS were distorting the Quran for justifying their heinous actions. The ISIS research and fatwa department declared Yazidis as an agnostic minority so they could be justifiably tormented and constrained to change them over to Islam.

The ISIS referred to the young girls as Sabaya, which means slave and the book portrays numerous occasions when young girls were assaulted and tormented. Nadia’s book is an attempt to ensure that the world is made aware of these atrocities and action taken against them. As she herself says,” I need to be the last young lady on the planet with a story like mine”.

Nadia Murad with Jenna Krajeski, The Last Girl, My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State, New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017

Anisha Patiri

Intern AGA