Book Review: The Poison Tree - Planted and Grown in Egypt

"I would highly recommend the book to any non-Egyptian girl/woman/lady planning to get herself an Egyptian boyfriend or Egyptian husband."

Unless she comes from another Islamic country, she would have to be a complete idiot to marry a guy from Egypt.

Isn't this the place where the men starve kidnapped kids in farms so that they can become camel jockeys and die in the process?

led:


said like a true scholar

;)

Thanks t,

you put it much better than I could :)

wow ledz, isn't hard to read thru your large intestine? :) :) :)

Hey LED,

only once you showed a different, non-bigoted aspect of yourself when you wrote a nice article here on DC. Prior to that and after it, we cannot in good faith claim that you have LED us down...since you are who you are, bigoted as ever, despite your tiny alter-ego, struggling to break free from you. Please LED the kinder, gentler, non-bigoted side of you prevail, particularly since your usual comrade, the arch-bigot Kerty seems to have simply evaporated into thin air. Words no doubt wasted on you, but once in a while, you simply have to LED go...

over the past three years since I have been on DC, I must admit i have tried to visualize what LEDZIUS might look like in real life. It would be too offensive to put it down in words, but i think Smallsquirrel is kinda close to it...

Kim,

I found this article very interesting. Thank you for writing it here. Though I personally have no reason to pursue reading "The Poison Tree", there are women who might well be interested in it. One of these women is Dr. Phyllis Chesler. I am forwarding this link for you to read on what is apparently the latest regarding the burqa and disputes over it, "Egypt Wants to Ban the Burqa, France and Italy Too" from the Chesler Chronicles.

From the article:

In her last letter, Lazreg implores Muslim women to stop wearing the veil. “It is a symbol of inequality…it undermines faith… it objectifies women for (reasons of) political propaganda just like advertising in Western society does: one by covering, and the other by exposing womens’s bodies.” Lazreg also views the veil as harming Muslim women’s employment because “hijab symbolically inserts her into a virtual domestic space” and affects how she is viewed and treated at work. She re-defines “modesty” as related to behavior and character rather than to appearance and opposes “the straitjacketing of a woman’s body. Removing or refusing to veil does not mean that a Muslim woman has succumbed to the West. She writes:

“Not wearing the veil is not a victory of the ‘West,’ it is women’s victory over a custom that inflects their thinking about themselves as human beings. Wearing the veil is not a strike against anti-Muslim prejudice…As long as states mandate or prohibit veiling, as long as political movements advocate for it, as long as organized networks with books , lectures, DVDs, and course packets promote it far and wide, a woman can never be sure she takes up the veil freedly…Ultimately, there is no compelling justification fro veiling, not even faith…No one is entitled to turn the veil inton a political flag.”

Thank you Ruvy. Phyllis Chesler seems to have a balanced opinion on the veiling issue, but I'd like to read Marnia Lazreg whom she referenced, as I think she would have more insight and is closer to the issue personally.

The threat of the full niqab ban is currently filling the newspapers and blogging space in Egypt with arguments supporting both sides. This coupled with the sacking of Sheikh Saad al-Shethri in Saudi could be a precursor to some interesting developments in this region.