Burned Alive : A Victim of the Law of Men

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read!
Review: The hardship of being a female child to a male controled family and male oriented lifestyle in the West Bank. Then her subsequent death because she was in love, made love, and then shunned by the lover. Burned alive due to the male honor status. Then a rebirth into a new world, where she learned to live, love, marry, have children. But with the terrible memories of her non-existant childhood and the scars she still has haunts her to this day. But my impression is that she is strong and is a survivor.

Rating:
Summary: A great book for women to read.
Review: This book is not only an interesting story, it serves as an educational novel teaching people about middle-east countries and how women are treated. I think everyone should read this book at least once.

Rating:
Summary: Please read this book.
Review: This book should be read by everyone. It doesn't matter what your country of origin, ethnic background, religion, or ideology is -- just read it.

One can know--on an intellectual level--that honor killings and female infanticide occur in many countries throughout the world. However, one can never truly understand such facts without testimonials like this one. This very personal account of horrific practices that are known to occur and of belief systems that are known to exist, but are so often swept "under the rug" of honor, culture, and tradition, should shock every reader (no matter how much is known about the subject) enough to feel as if he or she had been the one who had been "burned alive"-and the pain should be intense. But the pain shouldn't be experienced for naught. Every reader should take away a message-that women have value equal to men and have the same basic human rights; that there is much, much work to be done around the globe to improve the status of women; and that blind and obsessive societal adherence to any cultural standard, tradition, or belief system (no matter how innocent or honorable the origins) that denies anyone of either gender or any social class their basic human rights (indeed, their very right to exist) must no longer be tolerated.


Rating:
Summary: What kind of people are these??
Review: This has to be the most disturbing autobiographical book I've ever read. It's a miracle that those words ever got the chance to be put on paper. Before now, I wasn't aware of honor killings. I don't really know that much about it, actually. Do these things still happen? All I kept thinking was how many times in my life I would have been murdered had I been living under the rule of those men. What kind of twisted people are these? I pray that the family of the brave woman who wrote this book will never find her.

If you are woman, and you want to read a book that will make you truly appreciate your life of freedom, then this book is highly recommended


Rating:
Summary: Offensive Orientalist Propaganda
Review: This is one of the most offensive books I've encountered in recent memory. It attempts to tar Palestinian society as backward, misogynistic, and tribal which it is not. I have lived and worked with Palestinians for decades and never encountered any with personal stories such as this.

I do not doubt that horrific honor killings occur, but they are not "daily occurrences" by any stretch. The author herself states that only 8 women are murdered per year and only two-thirds of these are honor killings.

Let's get real. The only purpose of this book is to demonize Arabs and Palestinians in particular, and to cash in on the gulliblity, ignorance, and hysteria of Americans given the current "war on terror" environment.

Rating:
Summary: Shedding light on a UN created society
Review: This wonderful emotional book looks deep inside the Palistinian culture, and its wider arab society, to explain and describe the truth about the treatment of women in the middle east. `Honor Killing' often described a figment of `cutlure' in the west and disregarded as something that `cannot be prevented' are in fact barbarism as is described excellently in this first person account of what it is like to be a Palistinian girl who dares to actually fall in love or want to speak out of turn or even dress the way she pleases. Here we see a society where the men go out at night and party and dress as they please while the women are harnessed to do the house work and have up to 20 children and meanwhile dress in ungodly amounts of clothes in the name of `modesty' in a climate where tempetures reach into the 100s. So while the men are at the local bar in t-shirts the women are laboring with the sheep and keeping their eyes down, lest they be beaten and killed in an `honor killing' which is neither a killing, nor honorable, but rather a barbaric murder.

Yet the terrible poetry of this book does not explain one final facet, which is that this society is duly supported, funded and has been largely created by the United Nations. This Palistinian society used ot be more progressive and even had many communists, until the UN began doling out handouts. Then we see that in places like Gaza honor killings are actually subsidized by the UN and women are allowed to be `sold' by their parents, all under the watchful guise of the UN which was sopposed to be teaching them about womens rights and such modern concepts. A tragedy made worse by the misguided policies of the west. While the women next door in Israel are enjoying freedom of expression and freedom to vote and dress as they please, women in Gaza and Jordan and the rest of the UN mandated areas are being enslaved and suppressed.

Seth J. Frantzman