Wanted Women by Deborah Scroggins

 I'm afraid that life is far too short to waste time with books that don't grab your attention and hold it. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes me too long to realize that's the case, and I dither around on finishing something until I finally wake up and grab something better.

Wanted Women is the story of two women raised in the Islamic faith, who ended up with diametrically opposed ideas about the role of women in Islam and the role of Islam in the world - Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui. One of them ended as a crusader for women's rights in a moderate version of Islam, while the other seems to have joined the ranks of jihadis promoting violence worldwide in support of creating a global Caliphate.

I'm certain that Deborah Scroggins spent a great deal of time doing extensive and exhaustive research into the lives of both women, as well as the history of their motivations and motives, but I simply could no longer justify spending time reading her work. If you're deeply interested in such things (and I have read Hirsi Ali's writings, so I thought I might be), you'll probably enjoy this.

Inside the Revolution by Joel C. Rosenberg

I've read a few of Rosenberg's thrillers in the past, but this is the first non-fiction book I've picked up by him. By the way, I did a wiki search and verified that Joel C. and Joel are different authors - the latter wrote some really fun novels based on Dungeons and Dragons back in the late 70s and 80s, called the Guardians of the Flame series. Different fellow, now unfortunately deceased.

Rosenberg seems to enjoy alliteration, as his subtitle reads "How the followers of Jihad, Jefferson and Jesus are battling..." and his major section divisions within the book are the Revolutionaries, the Reformers and the Revivalists. There's also the Resisters, the Reticent and the Rank-and-File.

 Some parts of the book were an interesting trip down memory lane for me, as I was in college, with an Iranian roommate (wonder what became of my friend Muhammed Husseini?), when the Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy and took our folks hostage for 400 days. It seems as if the media only broadcast a small portion of what was going on, and/or I might have merely been oblivious to the big picture back in my school daze.

The book has become a bit dated at this point, as it was written in 2009, before the fall of Ghaddafi in Libya and the civil war in Syria began, but his description of those regimes seems fairly accurate, depicting those leaders as being the type who play the Islamists against the West, depending on which they feel is a bigger threat to their regime at any given point. In a 2009 interview with Lt. Gen. William Boykin, Boykin states that he thinks the Iranian regime could have a nuclear bomb in three years - so far that hasn't materialized...that we know of.

Something interesting that Rosenberg says about Islam:

"As you study the Qur'an, you will find that Islam is a works-based religion. Therefore, Radicals - and all religious Muslims who take the Qur'an seriously - constantly have to be thinking about a "51 percetn solution." They must constantly strive to do more good works that bad, lest they be dammed for all eternity. The problem is that the Qur'an does not provide a way for Muslims to assess how they are doing throughout their lives. There are no quarterly report cards."

So, when the Radicals claim that the only "true assurance or secure promise of eternal salvation is to be a martyr - and ideally a suicide bomber" there must be a certain temptation for some Muslims to accept the sure thing.

And yes, the rumor is confirmed in this book. The U.S. did, indeed support the mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion.

"In July (1979), President Carter authorized a half million dollars in covert financial aid to the Islamic rebels known as the mujahadeen..."

Of course, aid continued under the Reagan administration until the Soviets were forced to withdraw from Afghanistan, but it all started with Carter. LOL.

Just as a reminder of what life was like under the Taliban in Afghanistan, before the Coalition invaded to drive them out and destroy Al Qaeda,

"Children were beaten by their fathers  and psychologically abused. Their schools were shut down. Their toys were taken from them. Movies were forbidden. Television was forbidden. Radio was forbidden, except for a station that continuously taught from the Qur'an. Games were forbidden. Kite flying was forbidden. Concerts were forbidden. Playin music in public was forbidden. New Year's celebrations were forbidden. Christmas decorations were forbidden. Christianity was most certainly forbidden. Museums were closed. Zoos were closed. Dissenters were jailed. Others were murdered. Apostates were executed."

If you're interested in getting a good deep background on what has been happening for the last few decades in the Middle East, this is a great book to read. There are some especially interesting things going on with the underground spread of Christianity that I hadn't heard about at all before this. As a soothsayer, Rosenberg hasn't quite got it down, but he certainly has done his legwork on this one.

Nomad, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A while back, I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel. I thought it was a very good look at Islam from someone who had left the religion, and who was attempting to influence Muslims to quit supporting the radicalization and violence within it. So, I was excited to see Ali's new book.


This one takes a more personal slant, right from the start. Ali talks about her relationship with her father, which had always been strained since she ran away from an arranged marriage, and left her clan and family's traditions behind. When her father died, it caused her to examine her past, especially in respect to her family, and how they were affected by their Somali heritage and by Islam.

It's a pretty harsh view of a very dysfunctional group of people. Whether merely because of their adherence to a strict version of Islam, or because of their clan's history and traditions, or perhaps even just personalities, the harsh discipline, bipolar emotional motivation, and backstabbing and infighting in the family left all of her generation permanently emotionally scarred. This is painful reading.

Ali fled to Holland, where she worked hard to escape refugee status, and eventually became a member of the Dutch parliament. She subsequently moved to the United States, where she took a job with the American Enterprise Institute, writing papers and speaking out on women's issues, especially with respect to Islam's treatment of women.

She describes in great detail the many ways women are abused and repressed in Muslim cultures, including genital mutilation, child marriage, and honor killings. A woman in these cultures is totally subservient and controlled by the men in her family, and anything that she may do, or even may be suspected of doing can merit the harshest punishment without any hope for intervention by the "secular" (in countries where Sharia law is in effect, the secular and religious authorities are one and the same) government.

Men in these cultures may have (and often do) have multiple wives. Women under sharia law may be divorced by their husbands without any recourse, are subjected to marital rape, and can be stoned to death for even the hint of infidelity. They can own no property, generally are kept from any education other than religious instruction in segregated madrassas, and must only leave the house with their husband's permission, veiled to one extent or the other, and must be accompanied by a male relative.

Ali is perplexed by the Western culture's indifference to the plight of these women. She finds it hard to believe that Western feminists, who worked hard to end racial injustice, and sexual injustice, dismiss these women's situations by saying that we must respect other cultures' values.

Ali says, "...All human beings are created equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs and stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is half that of a man..."

Ali does have some constructive ideas in the latter portion of her book about how to help stem the tide of radicalization of Islam and mute the call to jihad. Although she's an atheist herself, she believes that Catholic and Christian churches can do a lot to work with refugees in the West to help them accept and embrace Western ideas about justice and liberty, and to reject violence and oppression.

As I said, this is a tough book to read. Ali pulls no punches talking about her journey from Islam to America.

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