Infidel is an amazing book, on many levels. It’s an amazing story, work of historical analysis, political philosophy, and dissection of Islam as viewed through the autobiography of a remarkable woman (Ayaan Hirsi Ali/Magan) who will not fail to point out that among Muslim women, she is singularly fortunate. Just look at what she has done through the power of logos: mastered languages (she is fluent in Somali, Arabic, Swahili, English, and Dutch), logistics (she has negotiated her way from the post-colonial violence of East Africa into asylum, citizenship, and ultimately a seat in Parliament in the Netherlands), and logic (she has questioned traditional clan, government, and religious authority). Furthermore, atop the impressive weight of her own argument and experience, she carries the ultimate stamp of authority – those in power whom she opposes fear her and publicly call for her murder.Somewhat paradoxically, Ali’s public voice arose not only out of Dutch tolerance, but in reaction to it. Her central thesis is that the peaceable diversity promoted by multiculturalism cannot be successful without shared experiences and values, and that tolerance of alternative folkways and practices must neither impose segregation nor permit acceptance of self-imposed isolation. As chronicled here, Ali has sacrificed much to attain her present position of intellectual and physical freedom. She has endured ostracism from family, clan, countrymen (emphasis on men), and (former) coreligionists along with the crippling self-doubt that comes with such shunning. Fortunately, the world is wide, and she appreciates her acceptance among a free-speech loving people and those sympathetic to human rights. Ali develops her insights through relating her poignant life story. Hers was not a warm, cuddly childhood, but one in which an insect-infested bit of food in the rural dirt gives rise to her grandmother’s diktat (page 9), “A woman alone is like a piece of sheep fat in the sun…. Everything will come and feed on that fat. Before you know it, the ants and insects are crawling all over it, until there is nothing left but a smear of grease.” This statement comes neither as a warning nor a lament, but a statement of simple fact, one accepted by men and women alike. It is through such experiences that the heart of Ali’s “infidelity” to her Islamic faith pulses not in her stance against the extremist thought and cruel practices of Islamic fundamentalism but in her claim that Islam is inherently fundamentalist in nature and incapable of reformation. She quotes a variety of Quran passages that render women mere chattel to men’s designs and which make possible a culture of violence, ignorance, and poverty in which women and children are fair game for anyone with the Quran-lauded strength and desire to take and do with them what they will. Ali rebels against what she describes as an unreasoning submission of body, mind, and spirit in the face of the dual threats of eternal damnation and temporal vengeance.Her memoir is in many ways, a chronicle of an emergent crisis of faith. At pp. 272-273, she concludes:I could no longer avoid seeing the totalitarianism, the pure moral framework that is Islam. It regulates every detail of life and subjugates free will. True Islam, as a rigid belief system and a moral framework, leads to cruelty. {Terrorism is…} the logical outcome of this detailed system for regulating human behavior. Their world is divided between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ – if you don’t accept Islam you should perish.It {doesn’t} have to be this way…. We Muslims could shed our attachment to those dogmas that clearly lead to ignorance and oppression…. We could hold our dogmas up to the light, scrutinize them, and then infuse traditions that are rigid and inhumane with the values of progress and modernity….For me to think this way, of course, I had to make the leap to believing that the Quran was relative – not the literal syllables pronounced by God, but just another book.However, this desire to soften the Quran into a more egalitarian stance, to be a “Muslim Voltaire” and push for compassion and empathy based on common humanity rather than inward-facing misogynist xenophobia arises from observing that the tendency for asocial exclusion is not limited to any particular culture or group. At page 68 she lightly mocks the self-segregation that took place at her secondary school in Kenya, where in “the politics of lunchboxes” Kenyan Kikuyu, Kamba, and Luo each despised one another and collectively reviled the Somali Darod, who likewise looked down on the Somali Hawiye, who together disdained the Yemenis, all of whom were in their turn at odds with the “backward” Saudis – to say nothing of the Indians and Pakistanis who themselves maintained a caste of Untouchables. (All together now in singing Peter Gabriel’s “Not One of Us?”) Nor did she find the situation much changed as a young adult in junior college in Holland, where pillars of Protestants, Catholics, and secular liberals could exist in relative isolation so long as they remained willing to come together to repair the dikes (at p. 239). Or for that matter, in college (at p. 241), where clans and nationalities gave way to class distinctions of preppy clones, trashy girls who failed to dye their roots, and sleazy girls who did drugs, each of whom perpetuate their respective in-groups by self-selecting fraternity and sorority housing. After growing up with Ali in an environment of genital mutilation and regular, ritualized beatings strong enough to leave her with a broken skull, you have to appreciate her rejection of collegiate hazing opportunities in her early 20s as much as her break with the Parliamentary power-mongering exercised by Dutch political parties she encounters in her late 30s.If this comes across as so much moralizing in my synopsis, that’s a grave injustice to Ali and those of her friends and acquaintances who have been threatened, maimed, and killed by those who cannot tolerate a little cognitive dissonance or who fear Ali’s truth to power. Infidel is a riveting narrative, free of histrionics and hysteria, full of wit and wisdom. Arriving in a German airport and speaking to a taxicab driver her first time out of the Muslim world, her reactions are classic fish-out-of-water comedy. But if her painful experiences should be leavened with humor, in no way should this detract from the seriousness of her conclusions about the root causes perpetuating Islamic cruelty. If anything, her juxtapositions render the subject matter all the more provocative to “enlightened” readers. You can laugh, cry, and get angry in the face of ongoing human atrocity, but you cannot ignore it.
oh gosh.. only 30 pages into this book and I'm not sure I can read it.. Female castration/ mutilation - this isn't in the dark ages.. this happens in mid 1970 and still happens today!!This is an incredible biography of a girl who was born in a country torn apart by war, in a continent mostly known for what goes wrong rather than right. Measured by the standards of Somalia and Africa she states she is privileged to be alive and thriving.She states; "Where I grew up, death is a constant visitor. A virus, bacteria, a parasite; droughts and famine; soldiers, and torturers; could bring it to anyone, any time. Death comes riding on raindrops that turned to floods. It catches the imagination of men in positions of authority who order their subordinates to hunt, torture and kill people they imagine to be enemies. Death lures many others to take their own lives in order to escape a dismal reality. For many women, because of perceptions of lost honor, death comes at the hands of a father, brother, or husband.Death comes to young woman giving birth to new life, leaving the newborn orphaned in the hands of strangersFor those who live in anarchy and civil war, as in the country of Somalia, death is everywhere".When she was born, her mother initially thought she had died. When she later got malaria and pneumonia she recovered.When her genitals were cut, the wound healed. When a bandit held a knife to her throat, he decided not to slit it.. when her Quran teacher fractured her skull, the doctor who treated her kept death at bay.In the second half of the book she flees to Amsterdam when she is married to a man her father has chosen who she does not want to marryShe takes the chance at freedom, a life in which she would be free from bondage to someone she had not chosen, and in which her mind, too, could be free.She states she first encountered the full strength of Islam as a young child in Saudi Arabia. It was very different from the diluted religion of her grandmother, which was mixed with magical practices and pre-Islamic beliefs. Saudi Arabia is the source of Islam and its quintessence. It is the place where the Muslim religion is practiced in its purest form, and its is the origin of much of the fundamentalist vision that has, in our lifetime, spread far beyond its borders. "In Saudi Arabia, every breath, every step we took, was infused with concepts of purity or sinning, and with fear.. Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality; hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago.."The kind of thinking she saw in Saudi Arabia, and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mind-set based on tribal concepts of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West, while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes the transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam.It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. It was difficult for her and all her relatives from the miye. It was difficult when she moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation. Having made that journey, she knows that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values.The message of this book, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.People accuse her of having internalized a feeling of racial inferiority, so that she attacks her own culture out of self-hatred because she wants to be white.. This is a tiresome argument. She asks, "Is freedom then only for white people? Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestors' tradition and mutilate my daughters? to agree to be humiliated and powerless? To watch passively as my countrymen abuse women and slaughter each other in pointless disputes?"When she comes to a new culture, where she saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practice?Her decision to write the book, exposing so many private memories, was made to allow the world to know... how many girls are still excised and married off in the modern Muslim world. The fact is that hundreds of millions of women around the world live in forced marriages, and six thousand small girls are excised every day!!!Her excision in no way damaged her mental capacities. As was proven when she got her degree in political science in Holland and was elected to Parliament. Where once again, she is threatened with death, by speaking out for freedom and change. She lives under guard as much a prisoner as she was before.. For a short chaotic time ~Ayaan Hirse Ali gives a strong voice to when all her dissonant thoughts snapped open and she found herself thinking that the Quran is not a holy document, it is a historical record, written by humans. It is one version of events, as perceived by the man who wrote it 150 years after the Prophet Muhammad died.It is a tribal and Arab version of events. It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women, and harsh in war.For her to think this way of course she had to make the leap to believing the Quran was relative - not absolute, not literal syllables pronounced by God, but just another book. She made the 10 minute art movie, 'Submission' to give a message - that men, and even women, may look up and speak to Allah; It is possible for believers to have a dialogue with God and look closely at him .. The rigid interpretation of the Quran in Islam today causes intolerable misery for women... and finally, that she may no longer submit.. It is possible to free oneself - to adapt one's faith , to examine it critically, and to think about the degree to which that faith is itself at the foot of oppression. A powerful, thought provoking biography. A book I will probably never forget!
What do You think about Infidel (2007)?
This masquerades as pure autobiography of the daughter of an iconic Somali revolutionary, who was absent for most of her life and left her, her brother, and her sister to be cared for by a heavy handed grandmother and an abusive mother. If I were rating the review as an autobiography, I would give it an additional star. As an autobiography, it does not let you down, although it does drag a little slower towards the end.When reading this book, however, you quickly realize that there is somewhat of a political agenda. I am not sure if most Americans would understand this since most would know very little, if they know anything at all, about Ali. The fact is that she is, again, the daughter of a highly respected Somali nationalist and revolutionary. She also served in the Dutch parliament, which later became scandelous when it was disclosed that she had lied to obtain refugee status. When you look at her whole life, however, it's easy to justify her lying. Anyone who says they would not lie to escape some of the circumstances she endured in Somali, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopa and Kenya is lying. She also became famous for her speeches and holding up the "art mirror" to Muslim society, in particular its treatment of women and others who are, mildly putting it, pushed off to the sidelines.In the end, however, the book does become political and I eventually found that she becomes a bit too heavy handed, one sided, and judgmental towards Islam. For this reason, I had to deduct some of my stars. Unlike some of the other reviewers, however, I do not think Ali wrote an autobiography purely as an autobiography. She has always been in the political spotlight; if anything, I think she's now riding the wave on this book while she can.
—T.S.
This book is not unlike Into Thin Air as it is a story of incredible courage and perseverance in the face of extreme danger. On the other hand it is nothing like Into Thin Air as there are no physical mountains climbed in this book. It is an autobiography of a Muslim child/girl/woman from the shacks of Somalia that ultimately rose to be the first African to serve in the Dutch parliament. Her escape from Islam has not been just physical but equally spiritual and emotional. The liberation of her mind, after having it programmed for the first 20 years of her life, is a powerful lesson for us all. We are talking about one very courageous woman!I could have rated this a 3 as it is not a rollicking, cannot put it down kind of book. Nor is there an ounce of humor in it. On the other hand I could easily have rated this a 5 as I believe it is a MUST READ for U. S. citizens. It is extremely enlightening and educational. If you do not believe that there is a place for fear in politics then you may be too naïve to appreciate this book. I know it washed away a lot of my ignorance.
—Bill
An extraordinary woman. Her criticism of Islam and of sociocultural practice in Islamic countries is for the most part measured and reasonable, though only her most extreme utterances get airtime. She clearly states that female genital mutilation (FGM) is not an Islamic practice but a north African cultural one. The extreme patriarchy, honour killings etc. she criticises are similarly not Islamic per se, though they are often justified and perpetuated in the name of Islam. The rosy spectacle religion-of-peace-and-love stuff is all well and good but frequently not a reflection of real-existing Islam as seen on the ground. Her message is essentially that in trying desperately not to tar everyone with the same brush, we pass over spots that definitely need to be tarred. Cultural relativism cannot be used to excuse or ignore practices such as FGM, forced marriage, spousal abuse and rape and honour killings. That's not hysterical ultra-conservatism or racist neo-colonialism, that's a defense of fundamental human rights.
—howl of minerva
