Backgrounder: Yvonne Ridley

By Mallory Potosky

Yvonne Ridely

British journalist Yvonne Ridley.
Photo courtesy of the Islam Channel.


At the age of 14, Yvonne Ridley wrote a letter to a local newspaper in England’s County Durham, which was printed. This early brush with fame sparked a lasting passion for journalism. Skipping university and formal journalism studies, Ridley opted to go directly from high school into the field.

Ridley, now 47, landed her first journalism gig at the British newspaper, The Durham Advertiser Series, almost 30 years ago. “[This was] back when bylines were earned,” she said in an interview with dotJournalism in 2004. “I had to wait six months for my first [byline]. Now they are used more as style devices.”

Ridley eventually became an investigative reporter. In this role, she spent her time exposing “criminals and crime syndicates, as well as sleazy politicians and corrupt officials,” she told this reporter in a March interview. Back then, “newsrooms employed many more journalists, so there were more investigative units,” Ridley told dotJournalism. “Now investigative journalism is regarded as more of a luxury, which is a great shame.”

September 2001 was a traumatic year for the English journalist. As a staff reporter for the British newspaper The Sunday Express, Ridley crossed the Pakistan border into Afghanistan, disguised in a burka. Near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, a camera hidden in her clothing fell from beneath her robes in direct view of a Taliban soldier. Since cameras and foreign correspondents had been banned by the Taliban regime, Ridley was arrested. She spent the next 10 days in captivity, the first six at intelligence headquarters and the remaining four at Kabul prison.

“I was horrible to my captors,” she has told BBC News Online in September 2004. “I spat at them and was rude and refused to eat. It wasn’t until I was freed that I became interested in Islam.”

Ridley first read the Koran while in Taliban custody in the hope that doing so would earn her captors’ sympathies, perhaps moving them to release her. After being freed, Ridley became increasingly interested in the Koran as a means of understanding her experience. She was struck by how applicable the teachings of the 1,400-year-old book were to the modern world.

A former Protestant Sunday school teacher, Ridley had always been deeply religious. In August 2003, she converted to the Muslim faith where, she told BBC’s Inside Out, “it was crystal clear that women are equal [to men] in spirituality, worth, and education.” Some questioned her rationale for her conversion. According to BBC News Online, “it has been suggested [she] is a victim of Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages take the side of the hostage-takers.”

In the years following Ridley’s release, the reporter’s newfound faith led her to accept an editorial position with Al-Jazeera, writing for the Qatar-based Arabic news network’s English-language website.

In 2003, Ms. Ridley published two books about her experiences covering the Middle East. The first, In the Hand of the Taliban: Her Extraordinary Story, a collection of Ridley’s articles from The Sunday Express, is an account of her days in captivity. The second, Ticket to Paradise, 2003, is a novel based on her experiences as a Muslim and a female foreign correspondent.

Mallory Potosky is a senior studying print journalism at NYU. After graduation, she hopes to write for an entertainment- or movie-related publication.

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