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Hannah Shah is an Imam's daughter. She lived the life of a devout Muslim in a family of Pakistani Muslims in England, but behind the front door, she was a caged butterfly. For many years, her father abused her in the cellar of their home. At sixteen, she discovered a plan to send her to Pakistan for an arranged marriage, and she gathered the courage to run away. Relentlessly hunted by her angry father and brothers, who were intent on executing an "honor" killing, she moved from house to house in perpetual fear to escape them. Over time, she converted to Christianity and was able to live and marry as she wished. Hannah found the courage to live her life free from shame, free from religious intolerance, and free from the abuse that haunted her childhood. This is a remarkable true story of how a young girl escaped a life of torture ... a story you won't forget.… (more)
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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
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, 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.
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
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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, 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.
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LibraryThing member MartinBodek
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
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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 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
LibraryThing member JBGUSA
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
Why did she flee? She fled from an arranged and forced marriage to a distant relative in Pakistan. Her family did not let her 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.
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"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 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
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ISBN
9780310325772