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In the Land of Invisible Women details the transition of a female doctor, named Qanta, to the Saudi Kingdom from the United States. Prior to reading, my knowledge about the Saudi Kingdom is limited to its harsh policy of following Sharia Law. I know that there is a system of apparent patriarchal dominance as the women are required, by law, to wear a burqa, or abbayah when in public. The culture is predominantly Muslim and is enforced strictly. Regarding Islam, I understand its basic principles. Historically, it is known as a religion which embraces scholarship and advancement - but this has been largely replaced (relatively recently) by strict adherence to the teachings of the Quran, or rather the interpretations of such teachings.
I had never known the name Qanta A. Ahmed (the author) before starting the book. From the covers, I know that she is a doctor who practiced medicine in the US and was eventually denied a visa to remain there. The British Muslim doctor then decided to accept a position in Saudi Arabia. She hopes to recreate herself in this land of unknowns.
This book is a memoir, and hence Dr. Ahmed has since returned to the US and practices in South Carolina.

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Dr. Qanta A Ahmed is a multispecialty doctor who trained at the University of Nottingham and practiced in the UK, the US, and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Her first book, In the Land of Invisible Women, detailed her experience transitioning to life as a doctor in a country in which women appear oppressed. She has many accolades to her name, and quite notably was nominated for a Life Membership at the Council of Foreign Relations in the US in April 2016 in recognition of her journalistic work focusing on Islamism. As a practicing Muslim herself, her description of its practices within the books is personal and not overstated. Yet, her qualifications on the topic have proven immense and she has been recognized internationally as an outreach official on the topic of Muslim/non-Muslim relations.
The book has been published in 14 countries and translated into multiple languages demonstrating its credibility throughout the changing political, religious, and social atmospheres.

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Qanta A. Ahmed, MD

Dr. Ahmed is a physician, non-fiction author and broadcast media commentator. Her first book, In the Land of Invisible Women (Sourcebooks 2008) details her experience of living and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and has been published internationally in 14 countries, translated in multiple languages, now printing in its 13h edition. Most recently her book has been published in Complex Chinese. She is also a prolific opinion journalist and contributor to the American, British, Australian, Pakistani and Israeli media. Her articles, columns and opinions have been published in over sixteen news outlets including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator (in both Australia and Britain), Al Jazeera , The Independent, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The Daily Caller, Newsday, The Telegraph, The Daily Beast, the World Policy Journal, Fox News Opinion, CNN Opinion, Pakistan's The Daily Times, Pakistan's The Express Tribune, Kuwait's Gulf News, and many others.

In Israel she publishes in The Times of Israel, Ha'aretz and The Jerusalem Post. At invitation, she has also contributed editorials to Chatham House's The World Today among others. She regularly provides political commentary focusing on Islam, Radical Islam, Islamism and terrorism on radio and television on many networks including CNN, BBC World, Voice of America, NPR, CNN, Fox and Fox Business, Fox News Radio, C-Span, The Glen Beck Network, Al Arabiya, Israel's IBA Channel 1 and many others.

Dr. Ahmed has also held funded fellowships in the field of Journalism. In 2010 she became the first physician, and first Muslim woman to be awarded the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship in Journalism at the University of Cambridge, England. In 2014, Dr. Ahmed was nominated by her journalism peers for the prestigious Ford Foundation Public Voices Fellowship in New York City as recognition for her journalistic advocacy for the marginalized minority.

During the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship she completed her treatise on the Psychological Manipulation of Islam in the Service of Terror, focusing on Islamist suicide bombing. As a result, she traveled to Pakistan's Swat Valley to meet rehabilitated child jihadists, formerly operatives of the Pakistan Taliban. Her recognized expertise lead to her testimony to US Congress in June 2012, called by the Homeland Security Committee as a witness for the Majority in the 5th Investigative Hearings on Radical Islam in the United States at the request of Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Peter King. She subsequently has provided Congressional Briefings at the invitation of Congressional Staff on the issues of Palestinian child radicalization in the Disputed Territories in 2014.

Receiving an honorary fellowship from the Israel Technion Institute

Dr. Ahmed is a noted international speaker in both her fields of medicine and journalism. She has addressed the National Press Club in Washington DC, The Union League Club of Philadelphia, The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, Cambridge University, Glasgow Caledonian University, the Saudi Arabian National Guard Health Affairs in Riyadh and Jeddah, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health, the US Consulate in Jeddah, the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, FIFA's Medical Research committee at Qatar's Aspetar in Doha (home of the 2022 World Cup), The Menachen Begin Center, in Jerusalem, Israel, The Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel, The IDC in Herziliyah, Israel, the Technion-Israel Institute of Science and Technology in Haifa Israel and many other national and international academic and governmental venues. In 2013 she was honored to deliver a keynote address in Herziliyah at the IDC's Institute of Counter Terrorism's Global Summit on Counter Terrorism.

Keynote address at the International Institute of counter-terrorism at IDC Herziliyah, Sept 2014

She has also addressed multiple public and private gatherings in London, England, and Sydney and Melbourne, Australia in her work as an ambassador for collaborative Israeli Palestinian projects. Recently she was invited to address members of the Knesset at a specially convened caucus examining the threat of Boycott and in November 2014, alongside European Parliamentarians she addressed the Council of Europe on Islamism in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo Attacks and the Bataclan Massacre.

In March of 2016 she delivered the Ron Arad Memorial Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians in London and was hosted by the Speaker of the House of Commons in the Speaker's Chambers at the Houses of Parliament to address British Parliamentarians from both the House of Lords and the House of Commons in London on the challenges posed by Islamism.

She volunteers her limited time for Women's Voices Now, a nonprofit foundation as a Member of the Board of Directors. She has provided expert commentary to "Honor Diaries", a film documenting human rights violations of women in Muslim societies and served as an advocate for the Foundation's fundraising mission. She has provided expert commentary in two further documentaries by the Glen Beck Network. In June 2015 she was inducted as Honorary Fellow at the Israel Technion Science and Technology Institute in recognition of her efforts combating anti-Semitism and radical Islam. In 2015 she was named to the Next Generation Council at the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation-Institute for Visual History and Education, where she also serves on the Anti-Semitism Committee raising funds for Combating anti-Semitism through testimony. In April 2016 she was nominated to Life Membership at the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States in recognition of her journalistic work focusing on Islamism.

A graduate of the University of Nottingham, England, Dr. Ahmed has practiced subspecialty medicine in the United Kingdom, the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and continues her practice in New York. Currently, a triple board certified pulmonologist and sleep disorders specialist, Dr. Qanta Ahmed is appointed Associate Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York (Stony Brook), Honorary Professor, School of Health and Life Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland, UK and Honorary Fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute of Science and Technology in Haifa, Israel. She is a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In 2014, she was appointed a Media Spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine at the invitation of the Academy. In 2012 Dr. Ahmed completed her first fiction work at the invitation of Akashic Books published in an anthology of stories in 'Long Island Noir', edited by noted author Kaylie Jones. She is now working on her first novel examining the worlds of Muslim heroines. In December 2015 she was naturalized as an American, gaining nationality on the basis of the US National Interest in recognition of her academic body of work. She maintains dual British and US citizenship. She lives in New York where she continues to write and practice medicine.

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Qanta A. Ahmed, MD Dr. Ahmed is a physician, non-fiction author and broadcast media commentator. Her first book, In the Land of Invisible Women (Sourcebooks 2008) details her experience of living and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and has been published internationally in 14 countries, translated in multiple languages, now printing in its 13h edition.

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1) The reasons behind the cultural nuances - e.g. the abaayah
2) Do Wahabi Muslim practices extend beyond the capital of Riyadh?
3) More about female/female and female/male interactions
4) Reasons behind the combination of very traditional with most modern
5)How will transitioning back to a Western culture after living in a middle-eastern one affect the narrator?

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To begin her story, the author begins in media res. She describes a scenario in which she is at the bedside of an elite albeit traditional woman named Khalaa al-Otaibai. A stark comparison is made between the advanced modern medicine keeping her alive and the need for her to observe the subtleties of the Muslim faith even while comatose.
In the second chapter, Qanta gives more background information about leaving the US and, more specifically, choosing to go to Saudi Arabia. In the simplest terms, she felt that as a Muslim,  she would blend well with the culture and have an opportunity for self expression. From the departure gate to the customs counter in Riyadh, she quickly realizes her decision will have much deeper repercussions and her primary concern is obtaining an abayaah, or full body covering which will allow her to travel legally in the country.
The third chapter briefly describes her arrival to the apartment, which is actually within a military complex. She reveals that she has set expectations that are making adjustment difficult.
While the fourth chapter describes her initial distaste for the veiled darkness of the abayaah, the fifth is a time if discovery for her in which the covering - which is repeated in many ways throughout the city - gives her comfort.

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Noticeably in the starting chapters of the book, and present less so throughout the rest of the text are footnotes and endnotes. The footnotes serve to define key terms in the story. Without it, a non-Muslim such as myself would find the number of new terms overwhelming. Further, the endnotes cite sources which the narrator provides as a resource for the readers who may want to learn more about the event discussed briefly in the text. While this feature may be helpful to those with an intense curiosity surrounding the historical context of the book, it is otherwise not extremely useful to the common reader. Regardless of using them, the endnotes provide support the validity of the observations made by the narrator and provide a more official perspective to the story.

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In chapter 10, Qanta receives her calling to go on the Hajj (her niyyat or intent). Throughout the next ten chapters, the author describes her journey from Riyadh to Mecca. For a non-Muslim reader, however, it is easy to get disoriented throughout the chapters, and a graphic such as the one below would be extremely useful in aiding overall understanding of the text in this portion of the book.

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Having been raised as a Western, and hence more relaxed, Muslim, Qanta is quick to point out the seemingly extremist policies of the Saudi Kingdom to enforce a way of life guided by the Sharia law. The Mutawaeen is a type of enforcement agent that acts specifically on the behalf of the Muslim lifestyle. Supported by the government, Qanta refers to this group of officials as Wahabi, or extreme Muslims. She has encountered them at the mall wherein Qanta retains her anger so as not to provoke the officials. However, it seems that Qanta is usually in the company of a less fearful companion who is ready to stand up for themselves against the oppressive force. The danger here is in the potential to be put under house arrest as a female, or facing deportation as a male.
Not known for her fearful nature, Qanta's change in personality in the presence of this potentially overwhelming force demonstrates a contradiction in Saudi Arabian society: while the Islamic society is one which is supposed to be accepting and supportive to all, the Wahabi monarchy has chosen to follow a strict and- some may say - oppressive regime. The way Qanta describes the Muttwa in her book invokes nervousness even within the reader. As such, I was curious as to their physical appearance and have thus included a photo below titled Preserving Virtue and Preventing Vice:

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Before delving into reading In the Land of Invisible Women, I had created a small list of ideas or topics I hoped to learn from the author's narration (found in post titled What I hope to Learn). Having finished the book, I have gained this knowledge:
1) The reasons behind the cultural nuances: Throughout the book, there exits a transformation in the mindset and outlook of the reader as she uncovers reasons behind the cultural nuances. While there are laws that  regulate women's role in society by preventing independent travelling or unveiling in public, this is reflective of a Wahabi government influence over society. In other words, the regulations come from an extreme and strict interpretation of Islam. This highlights the possibility of socio-political change in the near future as the government changes.
2) Do Wahabi Muslim practices extend beyond the capital of Riyadh?
In the narration, Qanta rarely travels within Saudi Arabia. This is largely due to her female status which restricts travel to times when her employer allows it. This allowance came in the form of her calling to attend the Hajj. Travelling to Mecca, it was apparent that Wahabi practices influenced regions outside the capital. That being said, I cannot speak for rural or suburban regions as Qanta remained largely within Riyadh (the highly populated capital), or Mecca which was filled with  tourists.
3) More about female/female and female/male interactions
Qanta forms close relationships with those at her workplace. Living in Saudi Arabia for two years, she gains an understanding of the legal separations of (unmarried) men and women.  From her, I learned about the oppression which affects both men and women. As described in another post, the Mutawaeen are in charge of enforcing these policies and the fear they generate supports this restriction.
4) Reasons behind the combination of very traditional with most modern
Historically, Islam is a religion which promotes scholastic endeavors and equality among followers, regardless of race or gender. Thus, the 'very traditional' aspect of the culture is actually a strict interpretation of the Quran, which is not universally supported even within the Kingdom. The pressure to define their own culture within an increasingly westernized world has been the largest influence in incorporation modernity into the city while enforcing strict policies to ensure the social norms do not follow suit.
5)How will transitioning back to a Western culture after living in a middle-eastern one affect the narrator?
I was not able to learn much about this directly, as Qanta only described the story until her landing at JFK airport. However, her outlook on life was extremely positive without having to wear an abbayah in the western world which was a metaphor for the restrictions she faced within Saudi Arabia. She has quite clearly attained success after returning not just as an author, but as a physician and outreach representative of Islam within the United States.

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Without being cognizant of the current events of Saudi Arabia, it is easy for a reader to fall into the misconception that the book is written to represent them. However, the publishing date of the book did not occur until 2008 and the story line takes place a decade before  that.
Understanding this, however, generates a very powerful plot such that the oppressive characteristics of life in the Kingdom for both males, but mostly for females, undergoes change throughout the story and afterwards. Nearing the end of her stay, news of the attack on the World Trade Center in NYC is broadcast around the world. While Qanta is clearly shocked and saddened, her Saudi coworkers seem to celebrate the attack. Some even went as far as to order cake and tell her that the US deserves this violence. Understanding the perspective of these citizens such that they are opposed to the US support of Israeli affairs, it is apparent their viewpoint has been carved from their foreign policy.  In fact, Imran, one of the doctors Qanta works with, declares, "it's time you realized, America has been doing this to people all over theh planet. Murder"(400). Although I disagree with violence responding to violence, the book provokes thought around topics less known in the United States.
The afterward describes change that has occurred in the Saudi Kingdom since Qanta's departure 10 years prior. From this, it is apparent that sociopolitical factors are ever evolving. It would not be surprising to hear of further progress in the 10 years since the book was published. In fact, the book develops an interest within the reader to gain an understanding of this part of the world and global affairs in general.

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In the Land of Invisible Women is written for a target audience of adults.  It surrounds a theme of adjustment to Saudi culture and thus the prevalence and affect of Islam on society is a central theme.   For this reason, the audience should be mature enough to interpret the observations made in the writing in context of a global society as these practices seem extreme to the average American. The author has a strong command over the English language, so some vocabulary is above the average High School reading level. Aside from English, some Arabic words associated with Sharia Law and the Quran are incorporated into the text. While she does explain these terms and how they have been incorporated into Saudi culture, it may be helpful to have at least a basic knowledge of the religion and the region of Saudi Arabia. After reading the book, the reader is left with a firmer understanding of the region and the culture. Though the author incorporates her opinion into the text, it is left open enough for interpretation.
The structure of the text is separated into chapters which are easy to follow and well defined in terms of content. As mentioned in other posts, a map or understanding of the country's geography may further assist in comprehension.

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While describing the turmoil and confusion surrounding the news of 9/11 in Saudi Arabia, Qanta mentions Al Jazeera as the primary news source for the event. Though this means it covers international headlines, I found it useful to employ it as a method gaining insight into the current situation in Saudi Arabia. What I discovered is while gender oppression is still prevalent, the widespread use of technology and social media has allowed the situation to take on global importance. Organizations such as Amnesty International aid in promoting women's equality within the country and the region. All in all, this is an issue I feel deserves increased attention and thus hope to continue developing my knowledge surrounding women's rights abroad and in the US.

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Women activists imprisoned by Saudi Arabia for almost a year face "bogus" charges, including contacting foreign media, human rights campaigners and international organisations, Amnesty International has said.

The trial of at least 10 women opened in Riyadh's criminal court on Wednesday after they were held last year in a sweeping crackdown on activists, legal authorities said, without specifying the charges.

Amnesty put the number of women who appeared in court at 11, adding that they were charged with promoting women's rights and calling for the end of the restrictive male guardianship system.

"The women were also charged with contacting international organisations, foreign media and other activists, including the Amnesty International," the rights group said on Thursday, calling the charges "bogus".

ALQST, a London-based rights group, said the women were charged under the kingdom's sweeping cybercrime law, which carries prison sentences of up to 10 years, based on their contact with "hostile entities", including human rights organisations.

"The charges against the activists are the latest example of the Saudi authorities abusing legislation and the justice system to silence peaceful activists and deter them from working on the human rights situation in the country," said Samah Hadid, Amnesty International's Middle East campaigns director.

"This trial is yet another stain on the Saudi authorities' appalling human rights record, and shows how empty the government's claims of reform really are."

'Traitors'

More than a dozen activists, many of whom campaigned for years for the right to drive, were arrested in May last year - just a month before the kingdom ended its long-standing ban on female motorists. Some were subsequently released.

At the time, the activists were accused by some government officials of undermining national security and aiding enemies of the state, while state-backed media branded them as traitors and "agents of embassies".

A court official said the women would have access to independent lawyers for the trial, a right that family members claimed they had been denied for the entire stretch of their detention.

The official did not specify a date for the next court hearing.

The trial of the women comes as Saudi Arabia seeks to placate international criticism over the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the kingdom's Istanbul consulate last October.

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Saudi women activists face 'bogus' charges, says Amnesty

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Women activists imprisoned by Saudi Arabia for almost a year face "bogus" charges, including contacting foreign media, human rights campaigners and international organisations, Amnesty International has said. The trial of at least 10 women opened in Riyadh's criminal court on Wednesday after they were held last year in a sweeping crackdown on activists, legal authorities said, without specifying the charges.