Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam Paperback – September 25, 2019

I've been following Yasmine Mohammed on her YouTube appearances for a while and find her to be forthright and pulling-no-punches honest. I also have been following a wide array of Muslim apostates over several years whose stories vary but whose essential messages are the same as Yasmine's. And we need all of those voices in order to try to get the message across that Islam is not friendly to living, thinking, honest minds.Yasmine - like so many other critics of the doctrines of Islam - is not anti-Muslim, not a hater of a people, but *is* an enemy of a doctrine that forces a mental burqa over all who take its dictates seriously (which not all Muslims do). She is a first-hand sufferer of the consequences of this doctrine, and her story of the effects on her life and the gruelling process of breaking free is fascinating to behold.What I found especially interesting was the processes she went through - psychological/emotional/rational processes. Here is a clearly intelligent person who nevertheless was terrified of going to hell for her questions and doubts about her religion, who endured physical punishments that ordinarily would be child abuse crimes in the West (unless your parents get a cultural relativism pass), and feared that she was doomed to damnation as her mother told her. If someone as reasonable and intelligent as Yasmine Mohammed could have been, at one time in her life, so indoctrinated and buffaloed by the tactics of this religion, that demonstrates the tragedy of waste and destruction of intelligent minds when raised under the boot of such irrationality. However, the fact that Mohammed eventually dug her way out of the doctrine and the culture that was stifling and torturing her - and that many have done so - gives me hope. And her book shows what that long road to reason and freedom looks like.But one problem that creates barriers to that liberation - one plaguing Western society today - is the damned political correctness that creates blinders against seeing the plight of people like Yasmine. It makes some people afraid to openly criticize Islam for fear of being labeled a bigot and being harassed and pilloried for it. It makes officials afraid to legally protect people like Yasmine, for fear of being labelled a bigot and being harassed and pilloried for it. And so victims of gross abuse are thus abused by the system that's supposed to protect all individuals' rights equally, because somehow a *cultures'* rights supercede a human being's rights.Yasmine's book powerfully illustrates the truths she seeks to tell us.The book is fast-paced (I couldn't believe how quickly it went), well written, and Yasmine's personality and humor make it bearable to enter into the world of miseries and pain that she had to endure as a child and young woman.The author is an intelligent and reasonable human being who has survived a long trial of fire and brimstone. I hope her book is read far and wide. And may the rest of her life be happy and healthy and good.

Fell in love with this book, author and all the first hand information she provided.

Yamine Mohammed is an ex-Muslim who now helps Muslims and ex-Muslims deal with their circumstances with their communities and families.Her recently published memoir, Unveiled, is a truly harrowing account of her life. It is ultimately a heroic story of how she managed to overcome a sickeningly abusive childhood and to escape her circumstances, while shining a light on how millions of Muslims are forced to live.To be sure, most Muslims do not have to endure what Yasmine did. Her mother has severe psychological problems and turned to extreme Islam in order to find order in her own life. She married (according to Islam) an abusive man who was already married and who insisted on strict application of rules that he called Muslim. This man sexually abused Yasmine.But the real abuse came from her mother. She only got pregnant with Yasmine in order to try to keep her first husband from leaving her and since that plot failed, she treated Yasmine like an unwanted excretion from her body that she was stuck with. (She would actually tell her that.)Her mother embraced the most extreme Islam of her husband in order to find meaning in her own damaged life.To a large extent, the book is Yasmine's relationship with, and attempts to break free from, her mother - a woman who would tell her husband that 6-year old Yasmine didn't do her prayers properly so that he would brutally beat his stepdaughter on the bottoms of her feet so the bruises wouldn't show.Yasmine grew up believing that she was worthless and that her mother held the key to allow her into heaven, so she was in a never-ending cycle of trying to gain love from a woman who truly hated her. But she would always question the rules she was forced to live under, and sometimes she would meet others who liked her for who she was, giving her a glimmer of much-needed self-esteem under the crushing weight of the twin burdens of her family and Islam.So many times in her life it looked like she would finally break free, only to be reeled back in by circumstances.Chillingly, Yasmine finally gave in to be married to a man her mother chose for her that her mother herself tried to seduce. This man imprisoned her in every real sense, even beating her for idly singing the alphabet song when looking up something in a reference book. Their baby's birth both cemented her prison sentence and gave her the resolve to escape so her daughter would never have to live through the same hell she did.She finally managed a (Canadian) divorce, and only later found out that her husband was a major Al Qaeda terrorist.Slowly, sometimes agonizingly so, Yasmine manages to escape the hell of her upbringing.How much of her awful childhood was a result of Islam and how much from a psychotic mother and abusive stepfather/"uncle"? Yasmine brings statistics and plenty of anecdotes from other Muslims and ex-Muslims about things like female genital mutilation, sexual assault and the psychological pain from wearing a hijab and (later) a full burka. She mentions a friend who broke free, and when she fell and hurt herself and her boyfriend ran to see if she was OK she assumed he would berate her for being so stupid. That's how generations of women are taught to think about themselves.There is no way most Muslims grow up in such an environment, certainly not in Canada where Yasmine was born, but her story is not so different from how many Muslim women are forced to live in Muslim-majority countries. She had opportunities to meet others, especially the years she was allowed to go to public school, and to start to question things. Most Muslim women in Islamic countries do not even have that lifeline.Her final chapter is an appeal to today's feminists, who are so anxious to find something to protest that they spend their time blowing up truly minor issues like whether to remove the "e" from "women" yet they ignore the patriarchy and often abuse that is imposed on hundreds of millions of girls and women, today, in Muslim-majority countries. Fear of being labeled "Islamophobic" wins out over helping so many who are imprisoned as Yasmine was. It is a damning indictment of today's Western feminism and a world where Nike would never consider to put its logo on Mormon women's underwear but happily places it on a hijab that so many wear not out of free will but out of fear.This is a frightening and ultimately uplifting book about a remarkable woman and her incredible journey.

I had been meaning to read this book for quite some time, but after the author reminded me on Twitter of how her book is independently published and that it is important for such works to be read and reviewed, I finally purchased the book and read it. And here is my review. It is excellent (the four stars is simply because I am conservative in my use of stars). I knew much of what Mohammed writes about at the pure knowledge-level, yet the author puts flesh on things philosophical and intellectual, and it is often shocking and painful to read. However, the book is also positive, a young Muslim woman's inspiring "coming of age." For some reason, the vignettes reminded me of The House on Mango Street (this might be a bad comparison as it has been years since I read Cisneros). In short, the book is captivating, and you will finish both uplifted and sober-minded, far better informed as Mohammed interrupts the narrative at times to offer evidence that what she is enduring is all-too-typical.

A must for anyone interested in learning more about life under the sharia laws and how religion indoctrinates from childhood to the end of life.

This is a very important book, especially since October 7th, 2023. It is well written and engaging and I admire the author's honesty, exposing what it is really like to be a woman imprisoned in a bourka. This book should be required reading in every high school and university, and all students should be required to pass an exam, to confirm that they really read the entire book. For many, it will be an eye opener and hopefully, will help them realize they have been fed propaganda and made into useful idiots.