Judith Caesar of the American University of Sharjah wrote that the family members "feel more like hostages than guests".[4] M.D. Allen of the University of Wisconsin Center Fox Valley stated that the author believed that the Muslim Brotherhood was "a group of socially disadvantaged hypocrites who mask a will to violence and power behind their religion's call to show charity toward the unfortunate."[5] Caesar wrote that "The Muslim Brothers who bully Awadallah into enacting his supposed conversion are formerly confused and uncertain young men who have found a sense of community and mission in fundamentalist Islam that they want to share with others."[7]