Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Chesler Memoir Powerfully Illustrates Muslim Misogyny

Reviewed by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News

Phyllis Chesler, who set out to write An American Bride in Kabul as a memoir of her life as the young, Jewish-American wife of a wealthy Muslim in Kabul in the 1960s has penned something much more: an analysis of the plight of women in the Muslim world.

Chelser was a wide-eyed college student in 1961 when she met the man she calls Abdul-Kareem, scion of one of Afghanistan's wealthiest families. He was charming, elegant, romantic, and Muslim. She was a bright young Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, eager for adventure, lured by the exotic. Abdul-Kareem offered both; and when he asked her to marry him and join him in his privileged life in his home country of Afghanistan, she joyously said "yes."

But the fantasy she envisioned was nothing like what she found once they arrived at his family compound in Kabul. The first sign of this reality comes when she is ordered to relinquish her passport on arrival in Afghanistan, leaving her effectively stateless. As a woman, she is now property, belonging not to a nation or a people, but to the man to whom she's wed. And things will only grow more horrific. [more... ]

Some Excellent Recent Reviews of An American Bride in Kabul:



About the author: Phyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York, the best-selling author of 15 books, and psychotherapist. Chesler has lectured and organized women's rights and human rights campaigns all over the world and has also appeared on numerous national and international media outlets. Her writings have been featured in The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Times of London, The Weekly Standard, National Review, Israel National News, The New York Times, and in the Jewish and Israeli media.

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