“The 31-year-old Frenchwoman wore her long hair down over a black shirt and flowy zebra-print skirt; she liked to dress fashionably, she told the court, while answering questions about how she became radicalized.”
She is wearing all that instead of a niqab to try to impress upon the court that she really is a “Frenchwoman,” and not a citizen, above all, of the umma. Yet when she decided to travel to the Islamic State, she made it clear that she didn’t consider herself French at all. She is only back in France now because the Islamic State caliphate failed; otherwise, she would still be there, dressed no doubt in a niqab and doing who knows what evils in the name of Allah and in accord with his teachings.
“Frenchwoman who joined Islamic State in Syria faces trial in Paris,” by Lily Radziemski, Courthouse News Service, September 23, 2026:
PARIS (CN) — On Wednesday at a Paris court for terrorism cases, Sarah Talib stood behind the glass barrier of a dock.
The 31-year-old Frenchwoman wore her long hair down over a black shirt and flowy zebra-print skirt; she liked to dress fashionably, she told the court, while answering questions about how she became radicalized. In 2014, when she was 19 years old, she traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State — now, Talib is charged with participating in a terrorist criminal organization.
“I started praying, I started going to the mosque, I started wearing the veil… and it was a crescendo,” she told the court on Wednesday evening.
Talib was born in the Paris region in 1995. Her father was a violent alcoholic; he was found dead in the Seine in 2008 with alcohol in his system. After switching schools in middle school, she was harassed for the way she dressed in heels and makeup.
In high school, she met a friend who convinced her to start wearing a veil. In the years that followed it was a “crescendo,” a word that she repeated multiple times, into radicalization. By the time she was 19, she was married and pregnant, and the couple began watching propaganda videos for IS.
“For me, what I saw around me, it was a search for identity, also the fact of being in a community, to be part of something,” Talib said on Wednesday. “There was self-esteem.”
The couple traveled to Turkey in 2014, when smugglers brought them into Syria. On Wednesday, the court didn’t question Talib’s time there, which will likely be addressed during hearings on Thursday.
She was arrested in Turkey in 2021….
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