The author of Emma’s War offers a compelling account of the link between Muslim women’s rights, Islamist opposition to the West, and the Global War on Terror, as explored through the experiences of two fascinating female champions from opposing sides of the conflict: Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali and neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui. With Emma’s War: An Aid Worker, A Warlord, Radical Islam and the Politics of Oil, journalist Deborah Scroggins achieved major international acclaim; now, in Wanted Women, Scroggins again exposes a crucial untold story from the center of an ongoing ideological war—laying bare the sexual and cultural stereotypes embraced by both sides of a conflict that threatens to engulf the world.
Wanted Women
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Review
“Scroggins, with her journalistic doggedness, does a remarkable job of reporting and reconstruction, and WANTED WOMEN serves as a valuable contribution to contemporary history, recounting two ways in which a modern woman’s identity can be hers for the making—even if the outcome is tragic.” (New York Times Book Review )
“Scroggins attempts to give a thorough biographical treatment to two women who remain enigmas, despite their status as public figures. The book alternates between each woman’s story, making for riveting suspense. . . . A fascinating story that reflects this polarized era.” (Washington Post )
“Gripping and finely textured. . . . By flipping between the two lives, the book cleverly shows how both women were influenced by successive events in history. . . . It does add greatly to the understanding of several interlocking conflicts, some grand and geopolitical and others intimate and personal.” (The Economist )
“While the parallels are fascinating, the book’s strength is in its clear-eyed yet sympathetic storytelling. Somehow Scroggins manages to convert a mountain of research into a fast-paced, truly gripping pair of stories.” (Boston Globe )
“Riveting.” (Marie Claire )
“Scroggins’ research is wide-ranging and impeccable, and she keeps readers on the edge of their seats with her compelling prose. If we can understand Siddiqui and Ali, then we will have a better chance of understanding the war on terror.” (Booklist (starred review) )
“This meticulously researched, skillfully narrated account offers a nuanced look at political Islam and the “war on terror” through the eyes of two women on the front lines.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )
“Wanted Women reads like a mystery as one event unfolds into another. . . . Thought-provoking and thorough, Scroggins’s comprehensive book offers a unique perspective on the tensions between Islam and the West as seen through the life stories of two very different and influential women.” (Christian Science Monitor )
“Scroggins attempts to give a thorough biographical treatment to two women who remain enigmas, despite their status as public figures. The book alternates between each woman’s story, making for riveting suspense. . . . A fascinating story that reflects this polarized era.” (Washington Post )
“Gripping and finely textured. . . . By flipping between the two lives, the book cleverly shows how both women were influenced by successive events in history. . . . It does add greatly to the understanding of several interlocking conflicts, some grand and geopolitical and others intimate and personal.” (The Economist )
“While the parallels are fascinating, the book’s strength is in its clear-eyed yet sympathetic storytelling. Somehow Scroggins manages to convert a mountain of research into a fast-paced, truly gripping pair of stories.” (Boston Globe )
“Riveting.” (Marie Claire )
“Scroggins’ research is wide-ranging and impeccable, and she keeps readers on the edge of their seats with her compelling prose. If we can understand Siddiqui and Ali, then we will have a better chance of understanding the war on terror.” (Booklist (starred review) )
“This meticulously researched, skillfully narrated account offers a nuanced look at political Islam and the “war on terror” through the eyes of two women on the front lines.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )
“Wanted Women reads like a mystery as one event unfolds into another. . . . Thought-provoking and thorough, Scroggins’s comprehensive book offers a unique perspective on the tensions between Islam and the West as seen through the life stories of two very different and influential women.” (Christian Science Monitor )
From the Back Cover
A riveting look at militant Islam, Muslim women’s rights, and the war on terror—brought into focus through two lives on opposite sides: activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and religious extremist Aafia Siddiqui.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born former member of the Dutch Parliament and the author of the international bestseller Infidel, was raised as a Muslim fundamentalist in Kenya. A feminist, political analyst, writer, and fierce critic of her former religion, she champions the West in what she insists must be a war against Islam. Hirsi Ali’s personal tale of courage in the face of constant threats from violent, fanatic enemies has won the admiration of millions in America and around the world.
Aafia Siddiqui, a native of Pakistan, moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate in neuroscience. A decade later, she returned to Pakistan, where her involvement with al-Qaeda, including her marriage to one of the 9/11 plotters, led the CIA to regard her as one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world. Her disappearance, capture, and conviction in a New York City courtroom for attempted murder have earned her, too, admiration across the globe—from millions of radical Islamists.
Reconstructing the histories of these two women, award-winning author and journalist Deborah Scroggins weaves a provocative true-life thriller from two separate but strangely parallel lives in a time of bitter battle. Based on remarkable original research and reporting, Wanted Women traces their origins to explain why they chose opposite paths and how each has risen to become revered and reviled as an international symbol of her beliefs. Scroggins reveals controversial details about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui, and about the political machinations that have transformed them into emblems of a civilizational struggle. Wanted Women provides an illustrative take on our time, stripping away the illusions—about women, war, faith, and power—that have distorted the conflict on both sides.
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70 of 98 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The topic of "political Islam", always a magnet for reader's attention since September 11, has been cleverly and cynically trotted out for assessment and relative-values dissection in "Wanted Women", a "dual biography" of two women raised in the culture and the creed, but who espoused diametrically opposite postures on the matter. The author, Deborah Scroggins, is supposedly a "veteran reporter" but, in "Wanted Women", she abandons objectivity and adopts the more lofty position of Grand Inquisitor. The book is a terrible screed and is remarkable only for the cynicism of the author.
Unfortunately for large segments of the Arab and non-Arab Muslim worlds, their "star" has followed a rapid trajectory from the firmament. During the glory days of the caliphites, when Islamic giants strode the world, large chunks of the globe fell under the Islamic ambit, both intellectually (astronomy, math, etc) and politically. The Empire falls; the trajectory until the relatively recent past has been one of precipitous descent. Crash phase finally happened with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.
As Western colonial empires collapsed and the Islamic world searched for a new direction, various ideologies captured Muslim public and elites' attentions, pan-Arab Nasserism being one well-known example. Apart from the fortuitous presence of oceans of oil, the social, economic and political economies of most Islamic (and all Arab) countries languished in the doldrums under various authoritarian regimes: check reports from Freedom House, United Nations Development Report for particulars (if needed).
Not surprisingly, this situation presented fertile ground for the newest (or oldest) panacea: religion, in this case political Islam. In "Wanted Women", two avitars of reaction to Islam (the religion and the culture) are chosen for scrutiny. One is Aafia Siddiqui and the oher, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The book profiles these two women in biographical form and then proceeds to render judgment on the relative "worth" of each referenced to Scoggins' peculiar standard.
Once the biographical sketches are over, the Scoggins book degenerates into little more than an undignified polemic and crudely tendentious diatribe against Ali. As an example of the author's intellectual rigor, ponder this inane and grossly insulting "insight", "Like the bikini and the burka or the virgin and the whore, you couldn't quite understand one without understanding the other." If you can grasp that formulation, it shouldn't require a giant leap of logic to accept that Ali is the "bikini baby" (whore) and the crown was bestowed on the ethnically true (and therefore politically valid) burka-wearing Siddiqui.
Consider Sididiqui's diverse virtues according to Scoggnis. They include Hitlerian-style anti-Semitism (despite attending Brandeis University), adopting the burka and, the zenith (the triple crown-achievement) becoming the unique female operative in Al Qaeda. Hirsi Ali, on the other hand, decided that genital mutilation, male-dominance, complete surrender (or subjugation, if you will) to a set of edicts, strictures and sundry limitations on life didn't fit her style. Accordingly, she moved West. She became a parliamentarian in The Netherlands, moved to the US (after receiving credible Islamist death threats, sweetened in "Godfather Part 1" fashion by the illustrative murder of her friend and Dutch collaborator Theo van Gough, replete with a death threat directed against her, pinned to his chest with a knife). Adding to Ali's sins, she took up residence at a "right wing" American think tank. Adding to this indictment, her books (including the excellent "Infidel") are, in author Scroggins' view, guilty to inciting "racial hatred" ("Islamophobia" in the jargon), thereby eclipsing Siddiqui's sins by a light-year's distance. Amongst other damning particulars marshaled against Ali: she had her hair straightened (gasp!) and supposedly used a ghostwriter (the horror!!!)
This book is intellectually insulting and entirely unconvincing in its assessments and conclusions. If Scoggins really believes what she wrote (and isn't simply manipulating for publicity), her pervasive prejudices and crude judgments disqualify her as a "serious" reporter...but they do nicely qualify her as a simple polemicist.
Viewed from another perspective, Scoggins herself is redolent of patronizing racism, denying for the individual (the Muslim dissenter) the same sort of freedom she extends to the group (Islamists). This is the argument made by French "New Philospher" Pascal Bruckner (in "La Tyrannie de la Penitence") both in the general form and in the specific as applied to none other than Hirsi Ali, this being written years before Scoggins published her book. Bruckner noted, amongst other things about some Western commentators that, "This was the inability to draw even the most elementary of distinctions. In the post-modern idea, the Enlightenment has come to be looked upon as merely one more set of cultural prejudices, no better and very likely rather worse than other sets of cultural prejudices...From this point of view, someone like Hirsi Ali, who grew up in an atmosphere of Islamist radicalism and the Muslim Brotherhood in Africa and has taken up a new outlook committed to rationalism and individual freedom, has merely gone from one fundamentalism to another...But this means that Hirsi Ali's critics have lost the ability to distinguish between a fanatical murderer [van Gough at the time Bruckner wrote this; Siddiqui in the Scoggins book] and a rational debater." Q.E.D.
Dumas wrote, "Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because sometimes they take a rest." It will be interesting to see if the author takes a rest.
Unfortunately for large segments of the Arab and non-Arab Muslim worlds, their "star" has followed a rapid trajectory from the firmament. During the glory days of the caliphites, when Islamic giants strode the world, large chunks of the globe fell under the Islamic ambit, both intellectually (astronomy, math, etc) and politically. The Empire falls; the trajectory until the relatively recent past has been one of precipitous descent. Crash phase finally happened with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.
As Western colonial empires collapsed and the Islamic world searched for a new direction, various ideologies captured Muslim public and elites' attentions, pan-Arab Nasserism being one well-known example. Apart from the fortuitous presence of oceans of oil, the social, economic and political economies of most Islamic (and all Arab) countries languished in the doldrums under various authoritarian regimes: check reports from Freedom House, United Nations Development Report for particulars (if needed).
Not surprisingly, this situation presented fertile ground for the newest (or oldest) panacea: religion, in this case political Islam. In "Wanted Women", two avitars of reaction to Islam (the religion and the culture) are chosen for scrutiny. One is Aafia Siddiqui and the oher, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The book profiles these two women in biographical form and then proceeds to render judgment on the relative "worth" of each referenced to Scoggins' peculiar standard.
Once the biographical sketches are over, the Scoggins book degenerates into little more than an undignified polemic and crudely tendentious diatribe against Ali. As an example of the author's intellectual rigor, ponder this inane and grossly insulting "insight", "Like the bikini and the burka or the virgin and the whore, you couldn't quite understand one without understanding the other." If you can grasp that formulation, it shouldn't require a giant leap of logic to accept that Ali is the "bikini baby" (whore) and the crown was bestowed on the ethnically true (and therefore politically valid) burka-wearing Siddiqui.
Consider Sididiqui's diverse virtues according to Scoggnis. They include Hitlerian-style anti-Semitism (despite attending Brandeis University), adopting the burka and, the zenith (the triple crown-achievement) becoming the unique female operative in Al Qaeda. Hirsi Ali, on the other hand, decided that genital mutilation, male-dominance, complete surrender (or subjugation, if you will) to a set of edicts, strictures and sundry limitations on life didn't fit her style. Accordingly, she moved West. She became a parliamentarian in The Netherlands, moved to the US (after receiving credible Islamist death threats, sweetened in "Godfather Part 1" fashion by the illustrative murder of her friend and Dutch collaborator Theo van Gough, replete with a death threat directed against her, pinned to his chest with a knife). Adding to Ali's sins, she took up residence at a "right wing" American think tank. Adding to this indictment, her books (including the excellent "Infidel") are, in author Scroggins' view, guilty to inciting "racial hatred" ("Islamophobia" in the jargon), thereby eclipsing Siddiqui's sins by a light-year's distance. Amongst other damning particulars marshaled against Ali: she had her hair straightened (gasp!) and supposedly used a ghostwriter (the horror!!!)
This book is intellectually insulting and entirely unconvincing in its assessments and conclusions. If Scoggins really believes what she wrote (and isn't simply manipulating for publicity), her pervasive prejudices and crude judgments disqualify her as a "serious" reporter...but they do nicely qualify her as a simple polemicist.
Viewed from another perspective, Scoggins herself is redolent of patronizing racism, denying for the individual (the Muslim dissenter) the same sort of freedom she extends to the group (Islamists). This is the argument made by French "New Philospher" Pascal Bruckner (in "La Tyrannie de la Penitence") both in the general form and in the specific as applied to none other than Hirsi Ali, this being written years before Scoggins published her book. Bruckner noted, amongst other things about some Western commentators that, "This was the inability to draw even the most elementary of distinctions. In the post-modern idea, the Enlightenment has come to be looked upon as merely one more set of cultural prejudices, no better and very likely rather worse than other sets of cultural prejudices...From this point of view, someone like Hirsi Ali, who grew up in an atmosphere of Islamist radicalism and the Muslim Brotherhood in Africa and has taken up a new outlook committed to rationalism and individual freedom, has merely gone from one fundamentalism to another...But this means that Hirsi Ali's critics have lost the ability to distinguish between a fanatical murderer [van Gough at the time Bruckner wrote this; Siddiqui in the Scoggins book] and a rational debater." Q.E.D.
Dumas wrote, "Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because sometimes they take a rest." It will be interesting to see if the author takes a rest.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
In addition to being a fascinating, detailed biography of two women, Wanted Women is a thoughtful meditation on the dangers of fundamentalism. Scroggins clearly argues that Aafia and Ayaan are opposites, not moral equivalents. And yet, both women's fundamentalist, "Us vs. Them" view of the world makes for an interesting comparison. After finishing the book, the irony of the immoderate "US vs. Them" attacks from Ayaan's camp by book reviewers is heightened. They could not have read the same book I did. If they had, they would know that moderation, not fundamentalism, is the key to retaining credibility. As Scroggins does, throughout Wanted Women.
19 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Deborah Scroggins multi-year investigation of the lives and actions of two women deeply involved in "The War on Terror" began from the author's premise that "suppression of women was as basic to the ideology of radical Islam as racism had been to the old American South or as anti-Semitism was to Nazi Germany."
The role of radical Islam in the lives of the Wanted Women's two principal protagonists is at the core of this book. Scroggins' remarkable investigative journalism brings both Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui alive in the pages of "Wanted Women," and provides readers with a gripping narrative that details how these two women -- each born in strongly patriarchal Muslim societies -- moved far beyond the roles to which women in most Muslim societies are usually relegated.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect is how Scroggins seeks to unravel how one women, Hirsi Ali, a self-made exile, became a powerful and uncompromising crusader against all of Islam, while the other, Aafia Siddiqui, educated at America's finest universities, turned increasingly radical and apparently to an active role in terrorism directed against the United States. Scroggins' long, painstaking and risky investigation of Al-Qaeda networks in Pakistan is gripping, and reveals the serious threat that Islamist radicals can still pose.
The book's discussion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is equally absorbing. With the encouragement of Dutch officials to claim that she was fleeing Somalia, she was able to claim refugee status in Holland after leaving her home in Kenya -- a bureaucratic lie that later helped see her leave the Dutch parliament. Hirsi Ali's meteoric rise to a proponent of women's rights and her adoption as an avatar by anti-Islam movements in Europe and then the USA is deeply connected to both Dutch and US politics... and Scroggins tells the story of how Hirsi Ali fit her times very well.
This book is an important for anyone who wishes to better understand how politicians and movements in the US, Europe and Pakistan have used these very different women to advance very different agendas in "The War on Terror." Scroggins concludes that Hirsi Ali "fought with words" while Siddiqui was actively planning terrorism. And the author's detailed reporting reminds us that in her words Hirsi Ali has been an ardent proponent of US invasions of Iraq, and now Iran, and that she fiercely condemns not only radical Islamists, but all of Islam.
Scroggins is willing and able to make the distinction between radical Islamists, like Aafia Siddiqui, whom her dogged reporting reveals as fanatical and a very likely terrorist, and the religion of Islam as a whole. This will certainly not be welcome to extremists of any persuasion, whether Islamists who wish to impose their intolerance on Muslim women and the wider world, or Islamophobes who seek to promote an unending clash of civilizations. This book will surely be attacked by extremists of various persuasions.
"Wanted Women" is important to anyone interested in how faith, and lies about faith, can be perverted to political ends, and how women are used and abused in the process. A must-read.
The role of radical Islam in the lives of the Wanted Women's two principal protagonists is at the core of this book. Scroggins' remarkable investigative journalism brings both Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui alive in the pages of "Wanted Women," and provides readers with a gripping narrative that details how these two women -- each born in strongly patriarchal Muslim societies -- moved far beyond the roles to which women in most Muslim societies are usually relegated.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect is how Scroggins seeks to unravel how one women, Hirsi Ali, a self-made exile, became a powerful and uncompromising crusader against all of Islam, while the other, Aafia Siddiqui, educated at America's finest universities, turned increasingly radical and apparently to an active role in terrorism directed against the United States. Scroggins' long, painstaking and risky investigation of Al-Qaeda networks in Pakistan is gripping, and reveals the serious threat that Islamist radicals can still pose.
The book's discussion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is equally absorbing. With the encouragement of Dutch officials to claim that she was fleeing Somalia, she was able to claim refugee status in Holland after leaving her home in Kenya -- a bureaucratic lie that later helped see her leave the Dutch parliament. Hirsi Ali's meteoric rise to a proponent of women's rights and her adoption as an avatar by anti-Islam movements in Europe and then the USA is deeply connected to both Dutch and US politics... and Scroggins tells the story of how Hirsi Ali fit her times very well.
This book is an important for anyone who wishes to better understand how politicians and movements in the US, Europe and Pakistan have used these very different women to advance very different agendas in "The War on Terror." Scroggins concludes that Hirsi Ali "fought with words" while Siddiqui was actively planning terrorism. And the author's detailed reporting reminds us that in her words Hirsi Ali has been an ardent proponent of US invasions of Iraq, and now Iran, and that she fiercely condemns not only radical Islamists, but all of Islam.
Scroggins is willing and able to make the distinction between radical Islamists, like Aafia Siddiqui, whom her dogged reporting reveals as fanatical and a very likely terrorist, and the religion of Islam as a whole. This will certainly not be welcome to extremists of any persuasion, whether Islamists who wish to impose their intolerance on Muslim women and the wider world, or Islamophobes who seek to promote an unending clash of civilizations. This book will surely be attacked by extremists of various persuasions.
"Wanted Women" is important to anyone interested in how faith, and lies about faith, can be perverted to political ends, and how women are used and abused in the process. A must-read.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely interesting
This parallel biography of 2 women who went on very different path is very interesting all the way through. Read more
Published 6 months ago by D Walls
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping read
The histories and backgrounds of these two 'Muslim women' are fascinating to read. Although a difficult topic, the writer Deborah Scroggins researched as carefully as possible... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Carrie in Holland
4.0 out of 5 stars
A must read for people interested in acquiring more cultural...
Journalist author has been amazingly thorough in collecting information about these two young women, sometimes almost tedious in her determination to include every bit of... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Margaret Cross
2.0 out of 5 stars
Miscarriage of Justice
Disappointing read - it is what the author failed to write or research that lets down the content. Although I get several mentions the most significant omission was what was... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Yvonne Ridley
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scroggins has done it again, but twice as good.
Deborah Scroggins has done it again. She's given us a meticulously researched and documented account of not one (as in "Emma's War") but two extraordinary women, who are... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Amazon regular
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful and rich - well worth the read!
Wanted Women is one of those books which you pick up and then just can't put down. It provides an insightful and, in my view, balanced look at women in islam but goes beyond that... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Niels Petiet
1.0 out of 5 stars
Do not buy this book unless you support terrorism
"Don't bother reading this morally hollow book. If you do, keep water and plenty of soap nearby." This from an excellent demolition of this piece of trash. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Yossarian
1.0 out of 5 stars
Author With A Spurious Agenda?
In summary this books is a painfully torturous attempt by the author to somehow opine or rationalize a similarity or parallel between one of the really incredible self made... Read more
Published 15 months ago by M. Hatfield
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Must read.
This book reads like a novel. A fascinating and balanced study of two completely different Muslin women who became important to the war on terror. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Marta
4.0 out of 5 stars
The truth of night and day...
Having lived in Syria for two years, and experiencing first hand the polar opposites of Islamic women in that country, Scroggins correctly depicts the mystery of how women respond... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Father Bob
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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