British journalist Yvonne Ridley was detained by Taliban soldiers at the Afghan-Pakistani border for carrying a camera in September 2001.
Yesterday morning, the now-Muslim Ridley was stopped by airport security in Chicago for carrying a speech denouncing the war in Afghanistan.
Through it all, she has maintained a sense of humor and a determination to spread the truth.
Four years to the day after her arrest in Afghanistan, Ridley spoke about her experience and subsequent conversion to Islam during a presentation called "Ten Days with the Taliban," an event in the Muslim Students Association's seventh annual Islam Awareness Week.
College freshman Lisa Zhu attended because she "thought it would be interesting to hear a firsthand account that's not garbled by the media."
Ridley kept the audience of about 85 interested for more than two hours with her lively accounts of an infidel-sensitive donkey, dangerous and dramatic mountain passages and her flappy black knickers distressing the Afghan deputy foreign minister.
Biased media and misconceptions of the Taliban and women's roles in Islam were the evening's hot topics.
Ridley was imprisoned by the Taliban for 11 days and stressed the civil treatment she received. When denied a phone call, Ridley went on a hunger strike. Three times a day, her captors brought her food, pleaded with her to eat and addressed her as "sister."
After her release, journalists "wanted to hear about gang rape. I said, 'I'm sorry guys. There was none of that. They only treated me with respect and courtesy.'"
While Ridley's experience erased her misconceptions about the Taliban, she said she probably reinforced stereotypes of Western women, making rude comments and screaming and spitting at her captors.
"It was interesting that I pushed them as far as I did in various instances, and they didn't react in ways you would expect the so-called 'most evil regime in the world' to behave," Ridley said, adding, "I can't sanitize them. It's a very rough part of the world."
Ridley was released the day she was promised, though the previous night American and British bombs had begun dropping within a quarter-mile of her prison. She recalled the bombing as "a huge rip in the sky." In return for her captors' honesty, she kept the promise she had made to a moulana, a religious cleric, to study the Quran. This promise led to her conversion to Islam.
Ridley, who had fought for women's rights in the 1970s, was impressed by Islam's high regard for women. In her presentation, she said that the low status of women is some Muslim communities is cultural, not religious.
"It teaches you not to judge a woman's status by the length of her skirt," she said. "I'm here to try to lift the veil of bigotry and ignorance that I once wore."
"I could've come into this room four years ago and seen the Muslim women wearing the hijab and said, 'Oh, those poor, oppressed women.' I now know that the hijab is part of the Muslim woman's business suit. It says, 'I'm a Muslim woman, and I'd like to be respected for that.'"
College sophomore Abby Greenwald enjoyed the event.
Greenwald added, though, that "I can't say I'm entirely sure that what happened to [Ridley] is a way you could generalize the whole Taliban regime," she said.
