The exquisite trauma and trouble that women in the world have been through isn’t something new for us. Over years we’ve witnessed that and the movements that have followed. Atrocities against women have been high in conflict zones, where law and order often tosses and it is easy for rowdies to execute brutality. A God Who Hates Women is a real story of a woman and her son to survive in a war-torn zone amidst extremely wicked beings and volatile circumstances, and at a time when patriarchy was dominant and irrationality was at the epitome.
The acclaimed Iranian-American political scientist Dr Majid Rafizadeh narrates 
the story of none other than his mother and the grim treatment she received from the men her parents forcefully married her to, at a young age. In an age, when his mother, a Syrian, wanted to pursue studies, her parents stuck to the so-called societal norms of tying knots to literally “get rid of her”.
At that tender age, when she deserved love and comfort, all she received was slaps, kicks, punches, mocks and abuses from the men she was told to consider her everything and set up a different world with. And even as she and her rights as a woman were violated by these atrocities, the neighborhood remained calm and ignorant, as if nothing hellish happened.
However, the reason the neighbors never intervened was perhaps because such ghastly incidents unfolded in many households back then, when women were considered nothing but mere commodities, with their rights severely trampled upon. In developed countries as movements for women’s rights were widening, women in the underdeveloped, backward and conservative countries were facing utmost wrath. Even today, as things have changed to an extent, accounts of recent episodes of barbarism against women still shoot a shiver down our spines.
Dr Rafizadeh, in the course of narrating this awful and extremely touching tale, drags attention to the beliefs that were prominent in Iran and propelled and justified certain wrongdoings that happened. Dr Rafizadeh also highlights the stark contrast between Iran and Syria, as he writes, “Syria was a secular country and the hijab wasn’t mandatory there at all”.
In the course of reading this book, what is really touching is the gumption of Dr Rafizadeh’s mother, despite being subjected to severe violence. The description of the way she was hit and physically and verbally abused is highly heart-rending. Certain things are so painful that they literally give you goosebumps and your heart goes out for the woman. Everytime I read the book, I only wished the horrifying revelations of violence weren’t true.
A God Who Hates Women is an emotional journey through a labyrinth of violence and civil war. It’s a journey of a mother-son through a raged battlefield riddled with archaic cultural demands and explosive emotions. It’s indeed a highly must-read book!
| Author: | Dr. Majid Rafizadeh | ||
| Publisher: | Fingerprint | Year of Publishing: | 2015 |
| ISBN-13: | 9788175993013 | ISBN-10: | 8175993014 |
| Binding: | Paperback | No. Of Pages: | 264 |
| MRP: | Rs 295 | Buy From: | Amazon.in Flipkart.com |
Note: A review copy was sent by Fingerprint publishers.
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