Rating: 
Summary: This book made me cry
Review: I read this book at the suggestion of my sister, and after the attack on the United States by fundamentalist Muslim terrorists (the book was written several years before the destruction of the World Trade Center). I agree with other reviewers that Geraldine Brooks' insightful, thoughtful, provocative book functions as more of a condemnation of the interpretation of Islam by a loud minority of men who are apparently so deeply insecure of their intellect and masculinity that they must legislate and reduce the role of women in society to invisibility than as a condemnation of the religion itself.Readers will gain great insight into the current dilemma of women in Iraq, who are finding that they had MORE rights under the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein than under the Sharia law of fundamentalist clerics. What I find especially provocative is that the tenants of Islam are applied unequally to men and women: men seem to have some leeway in adapting to modern times and customs, whereas women have had their freedoms truncated from those available to them in the seventh century. Anyone interested in the history of the Middle East and how human rights abuses hide under "cultural sensitivity" should read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative, but very biased.
Review: I have major problems with this book. The author obviously went in with the pinion that women were being mistreated in the Islamic world, a perception she "supports" with various unrelated examples. The book is obviously biased toward the author's western viewpoint of the status of women, and she applies her cultural standards to other cultures--something no self-respecting anthropologist (or journalist, in her case) should do. I will say one thing in the book's defense, and it is that through it all, she tries to remind readers that what goes on is some countries is in direct opposition to the example set by the prophet Muhammad. She makes an effort to separate what Islam requires/suggests regarding women, and what certain countries and people do to women in the name of Islam, and for that I thank her. Beyond that, I think this book is the story of an author who went out looking for information to support a theory she had already formed. So much for unbiased journalism.
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Summary: Islam Revealed
Review: ....No doubt there will be those who will post that this book only reflects the cultural misfortunes of the Arab world, but it does more. Combined with the book, The Book Seller of Kabul, it exposes Islam, and it's prophet (I hesitate to give him that title) as a mind destroying theology, whose sole purpose is to crush human nature. Both books show the intolerance of Islam and the fractured thinking it produces. The author tells of one educated woman who speaks of kindness and peace one moment and hatred for the Jews in the next, without missing a beat. This line of thinking has its origins in the koran and the hadiths. One can read it in the directives given to mohammad to a group of his warriors who wished to have sex with a few captive women (the men were married), mohammad ok'd the assualt as long as they practiced coitus interruptus. Thus one can do wrong as long as you didn't intend to do a greater wrong!!! Welcome to Islam.
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Summary: After reading this book, I finally get it...
Review: ...the spectrum of Islamic society, the dynamics within it, the power that Saudi society is employing across the swath of islamic countries, and the absolutely different values these societies have from our Western norms. Read this and you will understand what George Bush means when he talks about people who hate freedom. Read this and you will understand why democracy is not appealing to those who are allowed to speak in these societies. I found the author's final thoughts particularly compelling: what if it were not the subjugation of women but the subjugation of a race we were talking about, would cultural relativism still be appropriate? What if it was boys and men rather than girls and women who were systematically kept out of public life and in extreme cases killed by their own families for falling in love with the 'wrong person', would cultural relativism still be appropriate?
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Summary: Sheds light on the 'religion of peace' and Womans rights
Review: This is an amazing book that answers lots fo questions and leaves one with many new views of Islam and its treatment of Women. The author originally set out to simply observe and learn about the 'women behind the veil'. This is something many of us in the West would like to do since we dont often see Islamic women, instead we ususally are confronted by Imams and Islamic groups telling us how we shoudl view Islam. The author spent time among Islamic women learning of their toils and their hardship as well as their joy. THis book takes one on a ride through Islamic history and culture as it pertains to women. The author looks at Mohomed and his treatment of women, his polygamy and the cutting off of womens hands ordered by his successor. The book looks at Iranian women in the time of fundamentalism. How they were not allowed to touch 'unrelated' men and how this was embarrasing when one met Michael Gorbachev. She sheds light on the barborous nature of fundamentalism which frequently twists religion to suit its chauvinistic theories. The author looks at Islamic Queens and leaders like Benezir Bhutto who challenged the Koranic 'a people led by a women shall surely fail'. The author then takes us on a tour of the evils of fundamentalism as its ignorance was applied to Rushdie and even towards calls to tear down the 'idolatrous' pyrimids. Lastly the author takes stock of Islam and women. She cites the fact the women married to Muslim men are 8 times more likely to be killed by their husbands. She cites female circumcision, the veil, noneducation of women, Polygamy and the murdering of women who dare go without the viel to show the fundamentalism has warped what should have been a beautiful religion. This book is an insightful, intelligent and unbiased account of the lives of women in Islamic society. The author shows how our own prejudices make it so that musim men who murder their wives actually get shorter sentences because we judge them 'deranged' rather then 'premeditated'. This book opens the viel on Islam and is essential reading for the Westerner.
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Summary: a tale of two worlds
Review: This is not a simple book that tells us that all women who wear hijab are miserable; far from it. Here we have Leila, an American, who chooses the Islamic-Iranian way over the American one because when she was ill and her family was too busy to drop everything for her busy she kept thinking "if I were in Iran the family would drop everything. As soon as I was cured, I came back here and it really is a good life" (103). And Geraldine Brooks takes pains to point out that for many women like American-born Queen Noor it is, indeed, a good life. But she also points out that for other women: the women who suffer honor killings, clitoridectomy, inability to drive, inability to move around without a male relative's permission, inability to have a job that either their husband or the "politeness police" find inappropriate-it is not a good life. And that these women live not only in some exotic Middle Eastern country; they are also our next-door neighbors. And even as she finds it very agreeable to take a break from her own male-dominated world of journalism while "squatting on the floor of a Kurdish friend's kitchen, helping the women with the bread-making... surrounded by women [and doing] a task that was ours alone" (235), she is not at all pleased that a little boy is able to come in and break off tiny morsels of the bread while his sister is already "part of our bread-making assembly line. Why should he learn so young that her role was to toil for his pleasure?" (235) Indeed, why should he learn that at all? For in such a world; a world where women are behind a curtain; where they must do things for their husbands' or brothers' pleasure, there is not one world but two. In a book that looks at the lives Muslim women lead all over the world from Iran to Britain, Geraldine Brooks points out how the curtain segregating the men from the women has created in Islam "a dual society of male and female stranger to one another and unaware of each other's anxieties" (182). She writes of women who find this arrangement relaxing, of professional Muslim women who look for a perfect husband "for babies" and nothing else and she writes of families who struggle to find ways of doing things together in strictly segregated societies. She writes as much of happiness as of pain. But most of all she writes of segregation. Of two worlds: one for women and one for men and never the twain shall meet. And, in the end she asks us all, is this what we really want? Or will we make a stand against segregation based on sex? Should we not say even "in an era of cultural sensitivity that certain cultural baggage is contraband in our countries and will not be admitted" (238)?
Rating: 
Summary: Very Timely
Review: Although numerous reviews are already at hand I feel compeled to add a few words about this excellent book. I would like to remind readers that this book was published in 1995, several years before 9.11 and the subsequent US examination of the Muslim world. The strength of this book is first of all in the quality of writing. The chapters go down as easily as water without losing any poignancy or relevance. While Ms Brooks was certainly dismayed by much of what she found in the countries she visited she has made a sincere effort to understand the women that she met and their Islamic position. She has not written caricatures for us but real life storis that are completely credible. They speak for themselves. An intersting insight for example is how strict enforcement of Islamic dress in Iran effectively liberated many village women while at the same time virtually imprisoning others. If she has a case to make it is that certain MEN, not Islam is harming women in many Muslim countries and this need not go hand in hand. This book is highly recommended for any man or woman who is interested in the situation of women and wishes greater insight into this facet of the Muslim world.
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Summary: fascinating, helpful reading
Review: For those of us who have a newly kindled (or revived) interest in the lives of Islamic women in the Middle East, this book is a welcome read. I found it as easy to devour as a novel, but full of glimpses into the lives of real women the author has encountered during travels and journalistic expeditions in the Middle East. From relationships between women in multi-wife and/or multi-generational households, to attitudes on women in education, business and sports, this book gives you a little of everything. While I still find myself confused about some of the terminology and apparel, this book made me feel like I had some grasp of the issues facing women in Islamic countries. I was particularly interested in the accounts of the author's experiences with the family of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and in the descriptions of the teachings of Mohammad as she sees them played out in the lives of Islamic women. I felt she did a pretty good job of remaining non-judgemental, especially being Jewish herself. I didn't think she was critical of Islam, as much as the way certain cultures have interpreted or distorted Koranic (?) teachings.
Rating:
Summary: incredible fascinating
Review: I just finished this book and found it to be an engossing and well written book. The previous reviewer who claims author bias needs to exaim her own bias!
The role, and persecution of women in the name of religon is a subject happily ignored by most authors and goverments. The author wanted to write a positive book about living confined in an Islamic society, but in the end, there is not a lot of positive news to report, much more chilling news of "honor killings" and female castration.
Read this book for its well written, thought provoking, conclusions on Islamic extremism "one vote, one chioce, no choice".
I love travelling in the middle east, and this book is a must read.
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Summary: Hijab Issues Aside . . .
Review: This is a fascinating book about the socio-political status and impacts of women throughout the history of Islam. I found the chapter that discusses the women in the Prophet's life VERY interesting, especially how it relates the ways in which those women (particularly Fatima and Aisha) still affect Islamic society's views of women. Contrary to what other reviewers would have you think, this book is not an indictment of Hijab, nor is it an indictment of women's status in Islamic culture; rather, it is an examination of how the status of women differs among the Islamic cultures of North Africa, Iran, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula. More particularly, it is an examination of how the modern-day status of women in those particular areas compares with and contrasts to what the status of women should be as set out in the Koran and various Hadiths. This is rather interesting when Brooks addresses FGM, and various (not all) leaders' silent consent of the practice in certain areas. All in all, this is a fascinating book that addresses several interesting points of women's status and women's roles in Revolutions and other fights. I gave this book 4 stars instead of 5, because Brooks does show some amount of bias in her writing; however, keep in mind that this book is also a memoir of her experiences in North Africa and the Middle East. This is not a text book, so you can't expect it to be completely free of bias.
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