The Imam's Daughter

I thought that I had experienced the ultimate in literary horror when I read Eishes Chayil's "Hush." However, although steeped in and drawn from reality, it was nevertheless a work of fiction. This book was the unvarnished paralyzing, stultifying horrific truth. How she survived intact from this hellish nightmare is beyond my understanding. They should bottle her courage and dole it out to those in despair. Her capacity to forgive is beyond my comprehension as well. The book clearly highlights the forces of good and evil, but I'm afraid the evil in this book consumes all the good. A profound lesson as well is that there is no horror like betrayal and no joy like having people have your back. Even writing this is an emotional experience show more for me. I'll end with a blessing: Hannah Shah should be praised and blessed for her bravery, and may the good in this world outweigh, outshine, obliterate and consume the evil. show less

The Imam’s Daughter
Hannah Shah

“My father was the Imam; my father was the mosque.” The world Hannah was born into meant her father has absolute power over nearly everyone, especially his family. A sometimes dark and brutal tale, the book is overwhelmingly a tribute the resilience of one woman’s soul.

Raped by her father from the age of five, Hannah Shah lived in a child’s pretend world to escape the horrors of her home. With imaginary Loneliness Birds from heaven coming to her rescue, she was able to survive beatings, rape, and days of being locked in a dark, silent cellar without food.

Her mother and brothers turned a blind eye to the nightmare that became her life. With the help of a school teacher, Hannah escapes. Chased, show more threatened with murder, and moving to dozens of houses to escape her tyrannical father, Hannah blossoms into a caring, compassionate woman, choosing to laugh, to love and to forgive.

An intense look at the inner workings of the Muslim faith how beliefs can become easily distorted and how courage comes in many forms. The Imam’s Daughter is a touching and poignant novel, and author Hannah Shah, a former Muslim, is a tribute to what being a Christian means. show less

I read this book in almost record time for me reading a 270 page book. The book is absolutely fantastic! If true (more on this qualification bellow) the West is faced with some horrifying problems. The first two-thirds of the book reads like a real-life Stephen King novel; the world of some Muslim "families" is one of violence and extreme sexual perversion. Love is replaced by domination and hatred. Contact with the outside world is kept strictly limited. Any violation of the strictures results in severe beatings, and sometimes rape. The subject of the book was regularly raped from age six until 16, when she fled.

Why did she flee? She fled from an arranged and forced marriage to a distant relative in Pakistan. Her family did not let her show more be. At one point her father located her. He headed up a 40 member gang of knife- and hammer-wielding assailants. I won't spoil how she avoided being killed (spoiler alert). But the world she fled to was infinitely kinder, more loving and fairer.

She details how she read the Koran in translation and a lot of what she was told were Koranic dictates in fact were not. Islam seems itself to be a sane, often beneficent religion, much like the other great monotheistic religions. Tribal customs from areas it rules, in this case Pakistan, are engrafted into the religion and become mandates whose violations are punishable by death.

Why the doubt (a minor one) on the book's veracity? Every person described, including herself, has their name changed for obvious reasons. Same with the identity of municipalities. I hope that publishers do some fact checking. Same with the various media outlets that publish her and other accounts.

I have to assume they do. show less

Hannah lived the life of a devout Muslim in family of Pakistani Muslims in England, but behind the front door, she was a caged butterfly. For over ten year, her father physically & sexually abused her in the cellar of their home. At 16 she discovered a plan to send her to Pakistan for a forced marriage - she gathered her courage and ran away. Because her family feared she was a Christian, her angry father and brothers hunted her with intent on executing an "honor" killing.

Its about the daughter of immigrant Pakistani parents who live in the UK. The father is an iman who is a zealot when it comes to islam but who isnt very passionate about anything else.

Well almost, he also devotes a great amount of time to beating his wife,ignoring his children and hating everyone who isnt a muslim.
One day Hannan fights back and yells at her father to stop hitting her mother.This makes him start to target her also and eventually sexually abuse her.

She is 6 years old.

Her mother knows but does nothing.She is too cowed and afraid to do anything.Her husbands word is law and hes a holy man so it only increases the importance of him in the community.

The we follow her as she endures her fathers curel treatment until one day show more she breaks down and reveals to her kindly teacher that she is being beaten at home (she is too ashamed to admit the other thing her father forces her to do though.

She decides to leave home forever. No matter how people try to convince and coerce her to come home.

In the end Hannan finds religion and love in christianity.She even changes her name to "hannah" Making her even more hated by her father who feels that the only way to end the disgrace is to either force her to come back and accept islam and have an arranged marriage or die.

Sometimes I feel very bad for reading these kinds of books,they do call them "feel bad books" but they seem to find their way into my reading.It also allows you to see things from another perspective. We cant very well pretend these issues dont exist.

But it warmed my heart to learn that Hannan got help at last and out from under her fathers rule.

I gave it a three star rating because I felt it was a bit preachy about the joys of being a christian. show less

This book would be suitable for year 12 or 13 students who are studying women's issues for social studies, or for wide reading or theme studies.

Hannah Shah suffered terrible abuse as a child and because her father was a powerful figure in her community she did not know who she could go to for help. When she did finally seek help, the system in Britain thinking they were being sensitive to her religious and cultural background arranged for her to speak with a male Muslim counsellor. He held her father and community in esteem putting her in even greater danger.

Autobiografie van meisje dat thuis mishandeld wordt door haar vader; een imam die in de moslimgemeenschap hoog wordt aangezien. Haar moeder helpt haar niet. Naar de buitenwereld toe houdt iedereen de schijn op. Maar Hannah blijft zich verzetten en zoekt wegen om zich los te maken van haar familie. Dat lukt vaak maar tijdelijk; dan moet ze weer verhuizen omdat de dreiging te groot wordt.
Verhaal wordt chronologisch verteld in de ik-vorm.
Ook uit dit verhaal blijkt dat zowat elke godsdienst dezelfde basisbeginselen heeft, wat min of meer neerkomt op: Wat gij niet wilt dat u geschiedt, doe dat ook een ander niet.
Maar op de een of andere manier lukt het mensen altijd om de dingen zó uit te leggen zoals het hun op dát moment het beste show more uitkomt. Zo wordt er vanalles geroepen onder het mom van dat staat zo in de Koran, dat staat zo in de Bijbel, .... show less