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Title: Nine Parts of Desire : The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks ISBN: 0-385-47577-2 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 December, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.59 (106 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Should be required reading for politicians everywhere
Comment: Brooks has written an engaging, informative and lively book abt Islamic women. She crosses class and ethnic boundaries to interview women throughout the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Jordan). My only minor complaint is that she confines herself to the Middle East---as she argues that Saudi Arabian culture has spread and changed the Islamic world throughout the Middle East I wanted to know what was happening in the Islamic world outside of the Middle East (Indonesia, the former Soviet Republics, Africa etc).
That said, I would still recommend this book highly. Brooks' interviews with women---especially those who opted to wear the hijab and to advocate a restricted life for women in the name of radical/revolutionary Islam---are deeply insightful. I found the picture she painted of the Middle East incredibly tragic. This is a region where oppression of women is rampant. As Brooks herself points out if half of the male citizens of any country were denied their basic human rights, frequently subjected to genital mutilation or death after being raped, there would be an outcry throughout the world. But because we are talking abt Islamic women (many of whom live in oil-rich countries) there has been a reluctance on the part of the US and other industrialized nations to criticize the Middle East.
Brooks' book is not a flat-out criticism of Islam---in fact, she shows through a discussion of 7th century Islamic beliefs and culture that Islam has the potential to create a world where women truly are equal to men and where women and men can enjoy the same rights and privileges. In many ways, Christianity and Judaism lack this potential and so Brooks' insight is especially interesting.
This book should be read by politicians everywhere---not just women. Anyone who cares about human rights will benefit from reading this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Why Saudi Arabia?
Comment: Other reviewers have lamented that Brooks focused on the Middle East in general and on Saudi Arabia in particular to the detriment of providing insight into Muslim societies outside of the Arab world. Perhaps a quote from the book explains why Brooks made this deliberate choice:
"...Saudi Arabia is the extreme. Why dwell on the extreme, when it would be just as easy to write about a Muslim country such as Turkey, led by a woman, where one in six judges is a woman, and one in thirty private companies has a woman manager?
I think it is important to look in detail at Saudi Arabia's grim reality because this is the kind of sterile, segregated world that Hamas in Israel, most mujahedin factions in Afghanistan, many radicals in Egypt and the Islamic Salvation Front Algeria are calling for, right now, for their countries and for the entire Islamic world. None of these groups is saying, "Let's recreate Turkey, and separate church and state." Instead, what they want is Saudi-style, theocratically enforced repression of women, cloaked in vapid cliches about a woman's place being the paradise of her home..."
Brook's book was published in 1995. Nine years later, her assessment of Saudi Arabia's corrosive influence beyond its borders is still valid. Today, Wahabbi extremism, funded by Saudi backers, has spread out even further into the Philippines, Chechnya, Western Europe and the US in its most virulent and deadly form, terrorism. 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta's last written words requesting that no woman attend to his dead body betrays a poisoned philosophy that hates life as much as it hates women.
Yes, Brooks expresses her opinion in every chapter. She is no more objective about religiously inspired misogyny than one can be about Nazis. To expect a completely neutral essay about either topic denies an understanding of the subject's inherent evil.
Rating: 1
Summary: This is such a farce!!!
Comment: I am a Muslim women - a convert, from Catholicism, converted right after Sept. 11th,2001 so for about 3 years - and I have been on 'both sides of the fence' (being a Muslim woman, and being a non-Muslim woman), and this book is - like another reviewer mentioned "touches the surface". Brooks does not even go into the REST of Islam, she doesn't provide the hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (SAWS), who in Islam is our up-most example of the perfect Muslim), or the ENTIRE CONTEXT of the Qur'anic verses; she simply quotes [out of context] the parts that help her cause (bashing Islam and the way women are treated). If you want a real book that explains how women are treated in Islam pick up a translation of the Noble Qur'an, or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Islam (no, I'm not joking, it's a real book). This is absolute crap and she should be ashamed of herself for writing something so prejudice, baseless, and imcomplete!
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Title: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks ISBN: 0142001430 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 30 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi ISBN: 081297106X Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society by Fatima Mernissi ISBN: 0253204232 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: April, 1987 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Foreign Correspondence : A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over by Geraldine Brooks ISBN: 0385483732 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 19 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam by Fatima Mernissi, Mary Jo Lakeland ISBN: 0201632217 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: November, 1992 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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