Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror

A mixture of autobiography and polemic, Darwish's first book is extremely readable and draws most of its power and impact from her very personal experiences with American and Egyptian culture. Certainly better than second book, Cruel And Usual Punishment, as it is more about the personal than drawing a universal conclusion. Darwish ably defends her chosen culture of America, but one substantial weakness are her frequent allusions to her new faith of Christianity. Particularly galling was one use of the phrase "even the atheists can see..." I believe it was in reference to slavery. As an atheist, I'm more than a little annoyed at the implication that somehow I'm more predisposed to favouring slavery than someone whose religious texts explicitly condone or at least fail to disapprove of it. This comes up again in Darwish's implied insistence that one must have some sort of faith, it just shouldn't be Islam. One concludes the book with a feeling that even if we are only seeing a single set of experiences or view on Islam's impact on women in a relatively moderate and modern state, it's still a fairly powerful indictment of the culture as a whole and raises many painful questions and a whole heck of eyebrows.

A very important yet scary read. May God protect the USA!

Nonie Darwish shares her life-experience about the Middle-East, an area that is consistently in the headlines. Worth while reading.