Annie Van Sommer

Our Muslim Sisters: a Cry of Need from Lands of Darkness. Annie Van Sommer

Publisher Marketing: Islam. Has a religion of peace been hijacked by modern radicals? Our Muslim Sisters documents Muslim beliefs and practices relating to women from across a broad spectrum of the Islamic world. First published in 1906, these first-hand case studies and testimonies demonstrate how the oppression of women, in a myriad of forms, is a fundamental tenet of the Muslim system. From the Introduction, "This book - with its sad, reiterated story of wrong and oppression - is an indictment and an appeal. It is an indictment of the system, which produces such pathetic results. It is an appeal to Christians to right these wrongs and enlighten this darkness by sacrifice and service. At the recent Islamic Educational Conference in Bombay [1906], the president of the gathering, the Agha Khan, himself a leading Muslim, spoke very vigorously of the chief barriers to progress in the Muslim world. The first and greatest of these barriers in his opinion was "the seclusion of women, which results in keeping half the community in ignorance and degradation and this hinders the progress of the whole." Surely, the ignorance and degradation of one-half of a community, which has a world population of over 233 million, is a question that concerns all who love humanity." Has Islam been hijacked? In fact, nothing has changed.