Patriarchal Oppression, Religion, and Female Resistance in “The Girl Who Escaped ISIS: This Is My Story” by Farida Khalaf

Abstract

This article analyzes how Farida Khalaf’s memoir The Girl Who Escaped ISIS deals with the issues of language, religion, patriarchy and resistance. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis is used to explore the connections between language, religion, patriarchy and resistance. Farida Khalaf’s self-narrative is based on the argument that the Yazidi identity is traditionally vulnerable and she tried to reveal ISIS’s gendered violence with references to religion and military force. At the textual level the religious, educational, feminine, independent and courageous being identities are constructed by using narrative techniques of oppositions, evaluative labels, as well as narrating religious practices. At the discursive level, the narrative exposes the struggle between dominant ideology and a counter voice of resistance, and at the social level Khalaf discloses ISIS’s structural patriarchal violence, forced religious conversions, and objectification of women. This article also relies on the theories of smith and Watson to demonstrate how the autobiography of Khalaf serves as an act of discovering and reclaiming ones’ own self. Khalaf’s memoir is not just a survival testimony but also a strong counter-discursive narrative, which confronts and opposes the ideological violence of ISIS.