Free Republic

In her new book, "The Death of Feminism" (Palgrave Macmillan, $24.95), feminist pioneer Phyllis Chesler describes her disastrous 1961 marriage to her college boyfriend, a Muslim from Afghanistan. When they returned to his homeland, she says, she was segregated from men, given inedible food and placed under virtual house arrest. By the time her father-in-law allowed her to return to the U.S., she was pregnant, had hepatitis and weighed 90 pounds. It's a dramatic story, and one that figures prominently in the rest of the book, an extensive but mostly anecdotal argument that Islam, as it is currently practiced, harshly...