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In western society, as in the rest of the world, the vast majority of teenagers mould their identity by reacting to the world around them. However this sense of identity is unlikely in the early twenty-first century to be predicated by religion; music, sport, fashion and choice of friends are the elements by which schoolchildren and students define themselves and, with the notable exception of some members of minority religions, Faith is unlikely to play a major part in their formation of "self'. There is little understanding as to why immigrant Muslim, Sikh or Hindu communities place such a high value on their children remaining within the orbit of the local place of worship, as religion is seen by many of the white majority as a peripheral part of life.

Western society appears inordinately keen on outdated and stereotypical tropes of Islamic architecture, talking of a 'hidden world' of Islam in which women are seen and not heard as they live their lives incarcerated in the harem. This trope of Western Orientalism has become entrenched in our culture through travel accounts, the writings of historical voyeurs such as Sir Richard Burton and the romantic/erotic imagery of nineteenth‐century Orientalist painters.This paper aims to dispel many of the preconceptions that are held regarding the Iranian harem and the role of women in Safavid society by addressing the status of elite Iranian women, but also placing them in the wider context and considering the evidence for lower‐class women who could simply not afford to live a cloistered life. There is also the case of non‐Muslim women whose religions forbade polygamy and who were therefore immediately placed outside the harem and, although Safavid Iran included significant numbers of Zoroastrians and Jews as well a handful of Hindus, this paper will concentrate on one particular religious minority; the Caucasian Christians who were such an integral part of Abbas' great project that they were awarded a particular status in the city of Isfahan.