I thought it was interesting enough to share a few points from the book:
1) On the Arab/Muslim way of debate: she writes that Muslims do not believe in 'calm, reasoned debate in level voice', but will always resort to shouting matches -- she consistently uses the word 'shrieking'. Goes on to say that a Muslim will view an opponent who tries to calmly reason with them as weak, and believes that they are winning if their own decibel level is higher. This is reflective of the underlying violence inherent in Islam, which is not and has never been an 'open market' of ideas that are left to stand on their own merit against opposing ideas or philosophies, but has always required the threat of violence to back it up and defeat rival thought.
2) On Mohammad: she argues that a large part of the problems in Islam arise from the view of Mohammad as the 'ideal man' and the role model for all Muslim men (and his wives as role models for Muslim women). According to her Mohammed was, at best, a warlord like any other of his time and points to the documented reports of his raiding, war-waging, and authorization of the killing and beheading of opponents and seizure of their property (including women, of course). She brings up the often discussed marriage to Aisha when she was six and he was fifty-odd, and the consummation of the marriage three years later -- again, on the low end of the age range even for that time. Then she discusses his other marriages -- to Safiya, a Jewish woman who belonged to a a tribe of Jews (Banu Nadir) that was defeated by Mohammed; on the same day that he killed her father, brother and husband, he took her away from one of his followers who had claimed her (compensating him with two of Safiya's cousins, or seven female slaves, or seven donkeys, depending on the interpretation) and consummated their marriage. Sultana writes that all this brutal behavior is sanctified and seen as acceptable even today because it was Mohammed performing these actions, which thereby become guiding principles for all Muslim men, which leads to unhealthy and unequal marriages in Muslim cultures.
3) On power relations in Islam: she believes that the relationship between Allah and the Muslim is one of total domination-submission -- the Muslim is to completely hand over all authority and obedience to Allah. This domination-submission relationship is then mirrored all the way down the societal pyramid; thus, Allah is supreme and the believer is to obey without question, and similarly the Ruler (Sultan, Emir) is supreme and his subject obeys without question, the follower is supreme and his wife obeys without question, the father is supreme and his children obey without question, and so on and so forth. Thus everyone in Islamic society is simultaneously an absolute tyrant in one context and an abject slave in another -- she gives the example of a Syrian intelligence official she witnessed who went from utter fear and respect on the phone with his superior officer to shouting commands and literally kicking his junior officer who entered his office after the call. Because one cannot retaliate against the injustices, brutalities and scarring (both emotional and physical) inflicted by a superior, revenge is achieved by taking out that anger and hate on an inferior, who in turn cannot retaliate but takes his or her revenge against his junior or his wife, who goes and beats her children or step-children in turn. Hence a constant cycle of hatred and violence inflicted on those who cannot fight back.
4) On male dominance: women are never free in Islam -- when children they are the property of the father, if the father dies and they are unmarried they become the property of the brothers, and after marriage they belong to their husbands. Sultana includes stories of how she, a trained physician with a masters degree and years of experience, was warned by her mother and others that she should respect and pay attention to her brother, who was half her age and a drunk, simply because he was her brother (this is before her marriage). In another anecdote, she was denied the issuance of a passport by the Syrian government because she was a woman, so she had to bribe a half-brother (another unemployed drunk) who she had not spoken to in years to accompany her and grant permission for her visa request -- only then did she receive one.
5) On 'raiding' in Islam: she claims that Islam has to be understood in the context of the desert areas that it originated in. The area had tribes living in it that were constantly raiding one another -- the stronger preying on the weaker. Everyone was always in fear of being raided, while simultaneously looking for opportunities to raid because this was necessary for survival. Thus a lot of the 'revelations' in the Koran justify acts of raiding and raiding ones enemies is enshrined in Islam as a legitimate, if not the legitimate, way for a Muslim to make a living. Thus raiding and slave-taking became an established, even holy, way of fighting and ruling for Islamic rulers, from the Arabs to the Persians to the Turks. Forcible confiscation of the wealth of the unbeliever became the preferred method of enrichment, rather than working or trading and toiling to accumulate wealth oneself.
6) On non-Arab and Arab Muslims: she believes that Arabs are more likely to absorb the negative messages of the Koran -- against Christians, Jews, and kafirs because they understand the actual words being spoken. She points out something that I was not aware of, which is that in the daily recitation of prayer (al-fatihah) is a reference to 'those who have gone astray, and those who have incurred Allah's wrath' which according to long-standing tradition refers to Christians and Jews, respectively. Thus, each and every day, a pious Arab knows and understands that he or she is execrating Christians and Jews five times each day. Similarly Arabs will understand all the verses about raiding and fighting better than non-Arabs will, and again receives this knowledge as divine sanction. In short, Arabs actually understand the Koran so they are more likely to imbibe the violent message contained therein than non-Muslims, who are often not aware of the savagery of some of the verses they blindly recite.
Her book struck me as very ironic because she falls prey to the very same criticism that she levels against Muslims in terms of how she argues -- i.e. one gets the sense of a fanatic shrieking about the evils of Islam, just as she describes Muslims as shrieking about the greatness of Islam. She has all the zeal of a recent convert, except in this case the conversion is against rather than towards Islam.
I disagree with her that Arabs are more likely than non-Arabs to become radicalized -- we have our TFTA neighbors to the West as
Another problem I had with the book is that much of her criticism is really about tribal, patriarchal culture that is not limited to Islam -- such problems are and have been prevalent in nearly all societies.
That said, I think she is on to something when she writes that the biggest problem is in viewing Mohammed's actions as sacred and the ideal that a man should strive for -- this freezing in time and legitimizing forever the actions of a warlord who clearly acted in his own self-interest and for motives that included lust for wealth, power and women. That these actions are not permitted to be seen in their historical context but are commanded to be viewed as the actions of the ideal man now and forever is something that has crippled Islam and prevented its evolution into a more civilized and modern form, and I think it will continue to be so until some radical reformation from within Islam happens.
She also provides interesting background on Syria and the political situation between the Sunni majority and the Alawi and other minorities -- good for anyone unfamiliar with Syria.
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