Rating: 
Summary: Excellent look at experiences of some Islamic women
Review: Nothing in life is un-biased, we view the world and its events and filter them through our own set of values and customs. This book is full of stories and experiences recounted by Brooks. Of course this book will be tinged by her perspective, but she does her best to show the stories as they actually happened. For others to deny these accounts as select extremes is to discount the fact that they actually happened and still happen to this day. In addition, not all the narratives in this book are negative. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it to be very enlightening without being overly judgemental.
Rating: 
Summary: Enough of the religious debates!
Review: This book is NOT a Islam vs. other religions debate. I think what the author intially set out to do was capture the ill treatment of women in Middle Eastern countries, because - let's face it- it appears that most of them practice pretty nasty customs. However, she questioned the validity of Islam as a religion, which isn't wrong, except for the fact that quite a bit of her research isn't backed up legit scripture or hadith. Instead of saying so, she 'declared' a lot of customs in a fashion that made it appear as though they were solid facts when they aren't - which is primarily why I guess some Muslim people seem to take offense. I don't think that she could seperate culture from religion- and that's a view that many Americans share (especially post 9-11). She went in with a naive attitude, like these 3rd world countries were supposed to be in as good of state (economically,socially, etc.) as the US or the UK. You will find equal degree (not same) treatment in many South American and East Asian countries as well. Why she chose the Middle Eastern area, a region with continous conflict, to show a reflection of Muslim women, I don't know. Maybe picking countries like Bangladesh and Malaysia (the 2 most highly populated Muslim countries in the world - yet very different than Middle Eastern culture) would've given her story a different angle. That being said, I really enjoyed the book because it primarily focuses the impact on WOMEN during the political changes and revolts (most books about Middle Eastern conflict don't document the female perspective). Does it provide good religious arguement? No. Is it biased? About as biased as one would be if they were sheltered. The reality? She acts far too shocked to find out such treatment is going on. Read this book to open your eyes,but disregard it as a religious reference. It is still a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: Biased account of the lives of Muslim Women
Review: No one wants to hear that Muslim women are happy or that they choose, and enjoy wearing hijab. That is boring. They want to hear that we are beaten by our husbands everyday and oppressed because that is what gets good ratings and higher book sales.
I think that in any society you can focus on a few stories which would make the rest of society seem terrible to an outsider. If I wrote a book for Muslim women, I could point out the terrible numbers of women killed and raped in this country making the United States the most dangerous nation in the world to be a woman. And how pornagraphy, strip club, popular music, and films degrade women in this county where even the common name for a women among young men is "Ho".
As a Muslim woman I found a severe bias and crooked outlook in this book that focused on only the extreme stories and refused to discuss in which ways our lives are good. The assistant who began to wear hijab is seen in a bad way but many of us also made that choice and we were happy to live more deep and spiritual lives. We don't want to look like Brittany Spears, and I don't see why people in the West consider it oppression that we choose not to run around half naked but wish to remain modest and respectable. It is only a piece of cloth.....get over it. Americans focus far more on the hijab than we do.
I am happy to be a Muslim woman, and happy to cover. I think this book in many ways oppresses Muslim women because when we go out on the street here in America or try to get a job we are treated in a biased way becuase of books like this which portray a charactuture of Muslim women rather than the reality.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Well-Written and Easy to Read
Review: I would first like to say that I really enjoyed reading this book. I have become very interested in women's life in Islam and this book was very well-written. She goes around and basically interviews women and men in Islamic societies and gives you the facts on what is going on in these third world countries. Some of these other reviews are very judgmental just because Mrs. Brooks is Jewish. The bottom line...Geraldine Brooks is a very talented author and deserves credit where credit is due. The world would be a better place if people could accept one another for who they are and not try and stereo-type them just because of their choice of religion. In the words of Geraldine Brooks, "But sitting there, sharing the warm sand and the soft air, we acepted each other. When she raised her face to the sun, she was smiling". (Last line of the book)
Rating:
Summary: Prime Example of Orientalism
Review: Considering the fact that this book is on the reading lists for many university courses, which seek to educate students about women's issues in the Middle East, the book perpetuated many disturbingly biased viewpoints, to the extent that it made me wonder what type of organizations contributed the majority of the funds required for the author's research. People seeking a more honest representation of the role that women play within Middle Eastern politics or culture, currently or historically, would be better informed by reading a book by a female researcher from the region, such as Fatima Mernissi.
Rating: 
Summary: Tell me the truth
Review: Mrs Brooks is depicting Muhamed(pbuh) asa lustfull man driven by his male chauvinist sexual instict. Such a man could survive as a leader of his people maybe during his life time.But he could not bild a nation that continuosly expanded through out the past 14th hundred years and still despite all odds,the most rapidly expanding nation all over the world,espesially in the western world.
Just an example of this growth and this divine merical is that Islam is the only religion in the Unitedstates today whose numbers grow beyond the natural birth rate of the population but rather through converting.
This book is not worth discussing as a historical study.Because it lacks all elements of logical arguments and as a fiction it is terribly written.
There are many westerers who wrote about Islam and Muhammed(pbuh)such as Arnold Twinbe who considered Muhammed the most influncial personality in the history of humanity and the same of Bernard Show.Even though neither historian could be considered pro-moslems.But they are defenitly serious historians.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction to an engaging topic
Review: This book is an excellent starter to anyone interested in the lives of Muslim women in various different countries. Geraldine Brooks has an engaging style that is helped by her genuine compassion for those she encounters. Besides letting us into the world of these women, Ms Brooks also gives us many interesting excerpts from the Koran that shows that Islam does not necessarily have to be anti-women.It is not a huge book, and should be a fast read. If you have any concerns at all about the state of women's rights, you will come out feeling enraged, and will want to learn more. This book is highly recommended for its fairness and passionate arguments.
Rating:
Summary: This is an important part of the debate
Review: Brooks writes that our understanding of the real lives of Islamic women in Arabic nations is just as shrouded as the chador-clad women who live there. "These incidents come at us from so deep in left field that we, as Westerners, have no coherent way to think about them. We shrug. Weird foreigners. Who understands them? Who needs to? She writes that we can't just examine the Islam of the Koran, we must ask - urgently - why this particular faith has been such fertile ground for almost every "antiwomen custom it encountered in its great march out of Arabia. When it found veils and seclusion in Persia, it absorbed them; when it found genital mutilations in Egypt, it absorbed them; when it found societies in which women had never had a voice in public affairs, its own traditions of lively women's participation withered." Women in Islamic nations can't travel without written permission from their husbands. Some conservative families don't let their sons marry a girl (yes, girl - ages 8, 9, 10...) who has EVER been seen by anyone other than her immediate family. Many women can't attend school, can't go to the beach with their families, can't maintain visitation with their children if their husband suddenly decides to divorce her by merely declaring it so. This book made me feel lucky to have the liberty and freedoms that I do as well as outraged that such treatment goes on today in the world.
Rating:
Summary: balanced and broad
Review: I enjoyed this book because of the wide view of Islamic women it portrayed. From reports of the Taliban and books like "Princess Sultana's Daughters", we hear of very restrictive regimes where women are oppressed. Geraldine Brooks shows us that many women choose the veil, and that there are many different kinds of Islam.
I also enjoyed the chapters on women in Islamic texts, and where the traditions evolved from.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful insights for folks in the west
Review: As a die hard feminist I was expecting to have no sympathy whatever for women accepting the veil but I found Geraldine's book impossible to put down. Like women all over the world who use icons and fashions, veiled women have an enormous range of emotions about it, ranging from profound significance to seeing it as a useful cover-up and provider of privacy in public. I now appreciate more the significance of the veil and the reasons women have for wearing it against, or for, their will. As a symbol of all female issues, the most profound of which is freedom to live as an individual and equal, I realize the beauty of Geraldine's book's simplicity for neophytes in Islam like me. Many, many kudos for taking the role of independent reporter and female in perhaps the toughest possible assignment.
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