Wafa achieves what I believe is her goal with this book, conveying the backwardness, violence, inhumanity and lack of respect for human rights that serve as the fabric of Muslim, and especially Arab Muslim, societies. Furthermore, she rightly places the fault for this state of affairs squarely on the shoulders of Islam. One cannot help but sense, however, the intense undercurrent of bitterness and anger that she harbors, as it runs through nearly every page of her book, and it unfortunately serves to detract from her otherwise high level of credibility. On the one hand, Wafa, makes it clear that she cannot stand the ingrained tendency of Muslim males to use screaming and volume as the key underpinnings of their arguments in any discussion, yet she is essentially doing the same thing in her writing. Through the constant use of general statements, always negative, she paints with an overly broad brush. This causes the reader to wonder â just a little bit at least â about her veracity on the whole. An important read, absolutely. But it could have benefited from an editor willing to divide the broad brush into smaller, more nuanced segments.

Share/Like this Review?