Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1194 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-13
• Released on: 2009-10-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00" h x 5.85" w x 8.60" l, .76 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312538354
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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About the Author

Customer Reviews

A Must Read Book!
I have just completed my reading of Wafa Sultan's book, "A God Who Hates". This is a must read book! Many are familiar with her brilliant debate with a Saudi Sheikh on al jazeera television in which she excoriated the coercive violence endemic to the Muslim world. Here she reviews the sources and foundations of that worldview that creates such pathologies. Many accuse her of hating. What I found in her book was a passionate love for Muslims and a desire to open their minds to escape from the oppression that is endemic to Islam...Period. This is a woman who has received hundreds of death threats for simply telling the truth as she experienced it. Having just completed my own careful reading of the Qur'an using Muslim commentaries I affirm that her picture of the message pervasive in the Qur'an is absolutely accurate. She devastates the usual arguments brought against so-called "cherry-picking" of negative things in the Qur'an. Most importantly, she shows, with the acumen of a trained doctor, the results of a consistent application of this world-view to children and adults. The results are devastating. The closer you get to orthodox Arabic Islam, the worse it gets. Having lived in Muslim countries for 11 years I found myself over and over saying, "wow, for the first time I have an explanation for the behaviors that I saw". This is a book that I am going to buy 50 copies of and give to friends, especially Muslim friends. They may become angry, but some will quietly admit, this is the problem. The problem of the Muslim world is not its lack of application of Islam. The problem of the Muslim world is Islam...period. We need to have the love, courage and compassion to give Muslims an opportunity to consider an insider's critique of their own system. Growth only comes through challenging long established assumptions. Doubt is not a "shaytan". In fact, when extreme oppression is established, it is a "word" from God and a "spirit" from God. That God is love, not hate. Thank you, Wafa, for your great courage! You have inspired me to love my Muslim friends enough to challenge their assumptions.

A warning about a hateful ideology by one of its victims
Wafa Sultan does not claim to be an Islamic scholar, but she has seen Islam close up for the first thirty years of her life. The ogre that has a billion and a half people cowering in fear and shame is reflected in the oppressed lives of his subjects. What is so gripping about Dr. Sultan's account is how the affliction is passed from one generation to another -- diminished women give birth and nurturing to children who end up equally diminished. Worse yet, women embrace their defectiveness in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Dr. Sultan writes, "[W]omen have become convinced of their defectiveness and have indeed sanctified that defectiveness as divine decree." The solution, according to Dr. Sultan, is for Muslims and non-Muslims to read the Islamic sacred documents first-hand without distortion or falsification.

Dr. Sultan writes from the heart but has the insight of not only a medical doctor but also a mother and patriotic American. Her book is a highly readable, personal account that will have you laughing and crying as you follow her journey from the sad valley of the ogre to the land of opportunity, hope, and a God who loves.

While this is Dr. Sultan's first book in English, she is widely read in the Arabic media, and she is sometimes called the "Dear Abby" of the Muslim world. It is noteworthy that the two readers who panned her book (so far) are named Mohamed.

Muslim Women (Syria)
Wafa Sultan has written a very heart-wrenching story about the abuse that Syrian women suffer from uncaring husbands and other male relatives; abuse Sultan contends originates in the anti-female attitudes of the prophet Mohammad (the founder of Islam) and his fawning god Allah. The author worked in Syrian hospitals during the early 1980s, before moving to the U.S. Her book is of personal anecdotes while living in an Islamic society, and how even young boys are taught to disrespect women. Although she portrays herself as a psychologist, this is not a collegiate study of serious personality disorders amongst Muslim women. Nor is it a rigorous psychoanalytical study of Islam (see "Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam" by Fethi Benslama). The author two or three times will refer to the Muslim male's `conscious and unconscious' thoughts about women and how they are influenced by anti-female attitudes as espoused by Mohammad, in either the Quran or the ahadith. Her book is informative as to how she had to overcome her Muslim-induced anti-Jewish feelings, even after having lived in California for several years. What I had hoped for in her book would have been more of an `analysis' of the flawed foundations of Islam. She offers a handful of anti-female ayats in the Koran, and while she does cite some anti-female quotations from the ahadith, she provides specific citations of sources for maybe only half of them. It would have been helpful if she had provided specific citations, as some of her quotes are worded differently from similar quotations from the ahadith that I have read. My point is here that her opinions are based on a handful (okay: many, but not really numerous) of anecdotes, which really don't lead one to the conclusion that Islam is really rotten to its core - just that there are some `bad apples' in the mosque-barrel. (A better look at how women are mistreated in Islamic cultures is "Woman in the Muslim Unconscious" by Fatna Sabbah and "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam" by Robert Spencer.)