Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography, Infidel, takes you through her life from her birth in Somalia, to living in Saudi Arabia and Kenya, and finally to exile in Holland to escape an arranged marriage. This book is amazing and will astound you with the lack of basic human rights for most Muslim women.
Ali goes into agonizing detail of the beatings she endured from her mother, the painful circumcision she and her sister went through, and the harsh fundamentalism of Islam she encountered in Somalia and Saudi Arabia.
When her father arranges an unwanted marriage, she escapes while on her way to Canada to unite with her husband, who she’d met only a few times. She decides to seek asylum in Holland where she slowly adapts to the Dutch culture, disavows Islam, and is elected as a member of the Dutch Parliament.
She later produced a short film with Theo Van Gogh that shines a spotlight on the brutality that Muslim women face from their husbands and families. Theo Van Gogh was murdered shortly after this film was shown and Ali has faced death threats because of her involvement.
In one passage in the epilogue of this book, Ali talks about one of the main reasons she decided to write the book:
“My central, motivating concern is that women in Islam are oppressed. That oppression of women causes Muslim women and Muslim men, too, to lag behind the West. It creates a culture that generates more backwardness with every generation. It would be better for everyone – for Muslims, above all – if this situation could change.
When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn’t so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically, for fear of being called racist. It fascinates them that I am not afraid to do so.”
This is an amazing woman and she’s written an amazing book. I highly recommend it.
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#1 by Nick on December 17th, 2007
She sounds amazing! Great story I need to check out…thanks for the review. I think it would be safe to say that she will not be getting a job on the nightly news anytime soon.
#2 by becky on December 18th, 2007
i’ve heard so much about this stuff from other people and read articles on the web. i totally wanna read this now!