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68 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read it--and then read it again, November 17, 2005
Full disclosure: I helped research the contents of chapter 7, concerning the effects of Islamic treatment of women in the West. I will confine my comments to the rest of this book.
In chapter four, Phyllis Chesler tells the story of her captivity in Kabul as the wife of an Afghan national. Although an Orthodox Jewish American girl, she married her college sweetheart in the summer of 1961 in New York state. He just happened to be a Muslim. In telling her story, she hopes to "help other westerners understand and empathize with Muslim and Arab women (and men) who are increasingly being held hostage to barbarous and reactionary customs."
This is not only a laudable feminist goal, the story that Chesler tells is a compelling one. When she returned from her captivity in Afghanistan on December 21, 1961, she literally kissed the ground at Idewild (now Kennedy) Airport. When she had landed in Kabul as Ali's new foreign, American and Jewish bride, officials confiscated her passport, which she never saw again. Upon her arrival, her westernized husband "simply became another person." He barely spoke to her, and treated her with annoyed embarrassment, coldness and distance.
Ali had never mentioned that his father was polygamous. But upon arrival in Kabul, Chesler was consigned to live with Ali's mother Aishah, or "Beebee Jan" (Dear Lady), whom his father had long since abandoned for his third wife. There came a time when Chesler was no longer allowed to slip out of her house unattended. She immediately went to the American Embassy, right next to the family compound. When she could not produce her passport, the Marines would escort her home, telling her that as "the wife of an Afghan national" she was no longer entitled to American protection.
Beebee Jan stopped the servants from boiling Chesler's drinking water and washing all the fruits and vegetables. She allowed the cooks to use only rancid ghee (animal fat). Chesler lost weight rapidly. She began to starve. She contracted hepatitis, turned yellow and vomited continuously. She kept demanding to see an American doctor. At last, she was sent to the new Tom Dooley hospital, where the English-speaking doctor told her "you are very sick and you have to get out of here." Her mother-in-law tried to pull out the IV prescribed to deliver vitamins and nutrients.
At last, her father-in-law was summoned. Seeing that her illness and departure would be a victory over his westernized son Ali, Agha Jan (Dear Master) told her he knew of her plans to escape with the help of a German wife. But he thought it best if she left with the family's approval, on an Afghan passport, which he handed her on the spot, along with a plane ticket. She flew via Aeroflot, via Tashkent, to Moscow, and finally on to New York. She survived, she now thinks, in part so she could "tell other westerners something about what it's like for a woman and an infidel to live under Islam." Islamists insist on religious freedom for themselves in the West but refuse it to westerners living in the East. And Islamists are now in "an accelerated jihad mode and are exercising all their trans-cultural options."
In effect, Chesler is concerned that while Islamists are beheading Jews and American civilians, stoning Muslim women to death, jailing Muslim dissidents and bombing civilians on every continent, feminists are stuck in a rut that blames all this violence on Israel and U.S. imperialism. For that, she should not be faulted, but applauded.
She also bemoans the Islamization of the West. This ongoing process "involves profound cultural, religious and class differences" that severely imperil "a pluralist, democratic, and modern but class-based and historically racist civilization." She worries what will happen to feminists, and indeed all of us, when "anti-modern, anti-western, and anti-tolerant class-based and historically racist cultures come to live among" us.
In one especially fine chapter, Chesler details what Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern women have to say about their lives today. She writes of Merry Merrell, a Syrian-American feminist, a poet and counselor who lives in Boston and London. According to Merrell, "It is vital for western feminists to say the truth about women living under Islam because of the new ways in which the Left's sympathies with Islamist perpetrators has confused and silenced to many." Chesler also discusses Egyptian-American Nonie Darwish, raised as a Muslim, whose father trained Palestinians to kill Israelis. Writes Darwish, "this graceful country allowed me to practice any religion and gave me human rights I could only [have] dreamed of under Islam." And she praises Homa Arjmand, who (subsequent to publication) defeated the adoption of Sharia law in Ontario family courts.
Many heart-rending stories of Muslim women elucidate these points. But where, Chesler asks, are western feminists in this fight against radical Islam? For the most part, she mourns, no where to be found.
This accurate, albeit at times personal, account of the current ills of the feminist movement is a critical study that cries out to be read, and read again.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Chesler takes a stand for what is right - again!, June 15, 2006
Chesler's no nonsense style is articulate, clear and free of the cliche-isms that mar a lot of feminist discourse. This important book personalizes the plight of women's status in the Islamic culture and shames a lot of western feminists for tunnel vision and indifference to this issue.
The story of her personal captivity (1961) as a wife in the family of a high status clan in Afghanistan is compelling both as a genesis of her feminist ideals and in understanding her sympathetic compassion that leads her to speaking out on this subject now. I appreciate that she neither belabors this frightening episode nor displays her views as an ongoing vendetta. Even more, I like her healthy balance and attempts at rapprochement across the political spectrum for the greater good. We could use more of that!
There is much to add to this subject. For example, Chesler touches on Muslim women who are speaking out. But to do it justice that's a subject of another book. This one is packed with enough to read it twice and I highly recommend you do!
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read this book!, August 9, 2006
Phyllis Chesler begins this book by explaining that feminists "have mounted brave and determined battles against rape, incest, domestic violence, economic and professional inequality, and local `cultural' practices such as honor killings, dowry burnings, female genital mutilation, and the global trafficking in women and children." That's a big accomplishment.
Nevertheless, there is a problem. In recent times, many feminists have become "morally blind to the clear and present danger of Islamic gender apartheid." And some are now more interested in (or obsessed with) supporting very repressive anti-American and anti-Zionist Islamic terrorists than they are in supporting feminist causes.
We see a surprising number of so-called feminists oppose those who tell the truth about Islamists, often calling such people "McCarthyists" and accusing them of silencing "free speech" and "academic freedom." However, as Chesler points out, while free speech and academic freedom are important, "professors are also supposed to teach the difference between the truth and a lie. The earth is round, not flat." I agree. The issue is not academic freedom; scholars now have the freedom to pursue the topics they choose. The issue is academic standards. And it seems that the pro-Islamists are the ones who are most guilty of silencing their political foes and restricting academic freedom.
The author says that there are social reasons for some women to be especially susceptible to pressure here. Namely, many girls learn at an early age that they need to be "nice" to have friends. And these "girls learn how to express themselves carefully, minimally, falsely, passively, cleverly, and indirectly as the best way to stay alive both psychologically and socially." Worse, they learn not to support those who are slandered or shunned, as to do so would risk the same fate. Chesler paraphrases Edmund Burke here: "evil flourishes when enough good women do nothing to stop it."
A few years ago, Chesler wrote a fine book, "The New Anti-Semitism." And she points out that a reviewer, Werner Dannhauser, praised her courage, saying "true courage does not so much consist in taking a stand against the majority as in taking a stand against one's peers." That's a good point. I would add, of course, that such stands ought to be based on facts and logic, not just on some illogical desire to oppose (or follow) some specific people or points of view. If one's peers say that the earth is indeed round, I'm not going to applaud anyone for having the "courage" to say it is flat.
I think readers will find Chesler's description of her captivity in Afghanistan unforgettable. And there is some fine material on "the one-sided feminist academy."
There's also an important discussion of Islamic gender apartheid in the West. This is a truly fundamental issue: when should European authorities be "tolerant" and avoid interfering in what will be claimed to be none of their business, and when are crimes being committed that society needs to deal with? I think we can see from this book that for some time, there has been a problem with over-tolerance on the part of authorities, to the detriment of European society as a whole and especially to Muslim women in particular.
I highly recommend this book.
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