Now They Call Me Infidel

Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror by Nonie Darwish, Sentinel HC, 2006. 

Nonie Darwish was born in Cairo. Her father, Colonel Mustafa Hafez, served in the Egyptian army in Gaza. Darwish went to elementary school in Gaza. The Palestinians in Gaza were prevented from entering the rest of Egypt, even though Gaza was part of Egypt. Egypt intentionally kept the Palestinians in Gaza in poverty, in order to make Israel look bad. In Gaza in the 1950s there were two primary political ideologies, Communism and the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1955 the Palestinians staged an intifada, not against Israel, but against Egypt. Egypt indoctrinates its school children with hatred of Jews and Israel. Egyptian children are not educated about the long history of the Jews in Israel, and are instead taught that the Israelis are only European colonists of Arab lands. The international star, Omar Shariff, was widely criticized for costarring in Funny Girl, with Barbra Streisand, a Jew. 

Darwish attended the American University of Cairo, where she studied sociology and anthropology. Her first job was working at the Middle East News Agency in Cairo. She was an editor, translator and censor. At one point she writes that all journalists in Egypt are employees of the government. 

Men who express affection for their wives in public by hugging them or holding hands, are ridiculed for being under his wife's control. 

In 1978 Darwish moved to the United States. She cherished her new-found freedom. But in recent years, she has begun to feel the presence of fundamentalist Islam again. The Saudis have funded many fundamentalist mosques in the United States. Many American Arabs have been influenced to become more fundamentalist, the men by growing beards, and the women by wearing the veil again..