Muslim women, the symbols of honor for their men, speak out in this timely and stunning book that takes us into the volatile heartland of Islam. The world's fastest-growing religion, with more than one billion adherents, Islam increasingly affects our lives: the oil-rich Muslim states of the Middle East are more important than ever in the aftermath of the Cold War, and here in America, Muslims now outnumber Jews. Yet Muslim culture remains a mystery to most Westerners.

In Price of Honor, noted journalist Jan Goodwin shows how the restrictions on women's lives in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Gaza and the West Bank of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates act as a barometer to the growth of fundamentalism and the Muslim regimes' willingness to appease extremists. From royalty to rebels, from professional women to peasants, Price of Honor takes us into the hearts and homes of Muslim women. With devastating candor, these women relate the increasingly oppressive politics that govern their personal lives. They live in a world where women are confined, forbidden to work or be educated, and even killed because of men's "code of honor."

Goodwin's interviews and reports include a princess who talks about her life as the sixteenth wife of a sheikh; a grandmother who was arrested and whipped eighty times when a lock of her hair slipped from under her veil; women who are raped and then imprisoned for "fornication"; doctors who perform hymen-restoration surgery on women about to be wed because nonvirgins may be killed by male relatives; and American converts to Islam who are completely veiled and accept their husbands' polygamy yet fear the increasing religious extremism and its effects on their lives.

With these and many other telling stories, Goodwin brings to life a world in which women have become pawns in a bitter power game. Here is a provocative look inside Muslim society today — and a powerful wake-up call to the world.

"With disturbingly graphic detail, Goodwin documents cruelties visited on Muslim women — using skills similar to those she employed in covering Russian atrocities against Afghans in Caught in the Crossfire (1987). Despite shrill polemics in an anti-Israel chapter: a significant book that gives a voice to millions of silent and silenced Muslim women." Kirkus Reviews

"[Goodwin's]findings are profoundly disturbing and center on the enormous influence of radical Islamic fundamentalists, who have created a system of 'gender apartheid' that has turned women into virtual prisoners....This tragic state of affairs is all the more maddening given the fact than none of the more flagrant abuses have any basis in the Koran, which teaches respect for women as equal and invaluable partners in Muslim society. Goodwin takes pains to present balanced and well-documented information, making her revelations all the more alarming." Donna Seaman, Booklist

"{Goodwin} correctly notes that male chauvinism, be it in Pakistan or Kuwait, has precious little basis in the Koran or in the Hadith (the reported sayings and deeds of Muhammad). But she then embarks on an account of discrimination and suffering, from the restrictions of the veil to the horror of rape, that through repetition becomes tiresome. It is easy to decry the profligacy and abusiveness of Kuwaiti males, but rather harder to explain why their mothers did not influence them better, or to suggest how they could improve in future. Unfortunately, Miss Goodwin's racy book resolutely takes the easy line." David Barber, The Economist

"In this astonishing book, the product of four years of living in the Islamic world, journalist Goodwin (Caught in the Crossfire) examines the movement that is aggressively spreading a fundamentalist version of Islam throughout much of the world. Her interviews with Muslim women in ten countries both fascinate and disturb, for their candor reveals the movement's profound and often devastating effects on them. Maintaining that Muslims understand the West far better than Westerners understand Islam, Goodwin warns against the Western ethnocentrism that could jeopardize both security and energy resources. Instead, she urges greater understanding of 'the world's fastest growing religion' and of its treatment of women, who 'are the wind sock showing which way the wind is blowing in the Islamic world' — or as one interviewee put it, 'the canaries in the mines.' The work itself enhances this understanding. A necessary purchase." Cynthia Widmer, Library Journal