A woman who we should really pay attention to....

books:


	• Infidel Ayaan Hirsi Ali Free Press, 2007 - 353 pages average customer review:based on 267 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An amazing life illuminating important ideas

The last few weeks, I have been enjoying my commute in the company of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, as I've listened to her fascinating book Infidel. I love books that transport me to a foreign place or time, and immerse me in a culture that I didn't know about before. And I love books that provoke thought about important ideas. Infidel does both of things exceedingly well. It is the autobiographical account of an independent-minded woman who was raised in a traditional Somali Muslim family and grew up to be a Member of Dutch Parliament advocating for women's rights. The first half of the book is a vivid account of her childhood in Somalia, and later in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya as her family escaped the turbulence of their war-torn homeland. Her description of life in places like Mogadishu, Mecca, and Nairobi is rich in detail about their houses and neighborhoods, their food, their culture and traditions. Her portraits of her parents, her siblings, her grandmother, and other family members are richly complex, infused with the emotional perspective of her childhood at the same time balanced by an unflinching retrospective assessment of their good qualities and their weaknesses. The genealogist in me was fascinated learning about the Somali tribal culture that puts such a premium on one's ancestry that children at an early age can recite their ancestry for nine generations, and when two Somalis meet, they can readily ascertain their kinship even to tenth cousins. And her description of the variations of Muslim practice between countries, and the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, was illuminating and especially relevant today. She does a remarkable job of making comprehensible such alien traditions as polygamy, arranged marriages, and female genital mutilation. What is especially remarkable is how, even though she would later come to condemn some parts of the traditions she was raised with as being completely barbaric, she describes them in the context of her early life subjectively and dispassionately, neither concealing the barbarity nor revealing anger, judgment, and condemnation. The account is all the more powerful for that, allowing the reader to understand how such barbarity could be accepted and tolerated because of how it is embedded in traditional ways of life and in how sons and daughters are raised. And it allows us to understand this amazing woman on all the parts of her journey, from childhood, to adolescence when she was drawn to fundamentalism, to adulthood when she escaped to discover liberal ideas. The latter half of the book describes her life in the Netherlands, where she becomes not only a parliamentarian but a political lightning rod after making a controversial film with Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh which lead to his murder and death threats for her. The book then becomes more about politics, ideology, and her intellectual autobiography, though embedded in personal experiences of immigration, learning Dutch culture, and ultimately life as a figure in hiding from death threats. She raises significant questions about whether a liberal society can survive being tolerant of a growing immigrant community within its midst that remains insular and perpetuates an illiberal way of life. (These questions have reverberations here in America, not only regarding Islamism, but in issues like the recent Texas FLDS raids, and in the fault lines of conflict between religious liberty and civil rights protections -- issues I hope to explore in future blog posts.) And she makes a compelling argument that Islam needs to undergo its own Reformation if it is to be reconciled to modernity. Her ideas and the amazing life experience that formed them make for vital and fascinating reading.

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A woman who we should really pay attention to....

This book is about the life of Ayaan. It begins in Somalia where Ayaan is born. She is brought up in a Muslim family. Her mother wants to lead a very strict Muslim life, her father is a bit more relaxed but still obeys the Muslim rule.

Her father is a member of a political movement that is working against the president of Somalia, Siad Barre. As a result, the family had to move around a lot to be safe. First Saudi Arabia, where they were exposed to the very strict rules of Islam. Woman were totally covered and could not leave the house without a male family member. After Saudi, they moved to Ethiopia and then on to Kenya. Ayaan tried to live as a devote Muslim but she was disillusioned with the violence, the intolerance and the treatment of women.

When she was in her early 20's, her father arranged a marriage for her with a Muslim who was living in Canada. Ayaan was sent to Germany to await her VISA. While she was there and was exposed to Western culture, she made the quick decision to go to Holland and apply for refugee status and hide from her family. Eventually the family found her but she refused to leave Holland and divorced her husband.

Ayaan went to school in Holland and earned her degree in political science. She becomes politically active in Holland and is elected as a member of Parliament. She becomes an atheist and is very open about Islam and begins to speak and write about it's deception. The overall theme of this book is, there is no line drawn between moderate and extreme Islam. It is all the same. As a result of her openness, she has received many death threats and must live her life hidden from those that have sentenced her to death.

Some interesting and very eye opening quotes in this book about Islam. "Every society that is still in the rigid grip of Islam oppresses women and also lags behind in development. Most of these societies are poor; many are full of conflict and war. Societies that respect the rights of women and their freedom are wealthy and peaceful." ....the Quran is an act of man, not of God. We should be free to interpret it; we should be permitted to apply it to the modern era in a different way, instead of performing painful contortions to try to recreate the circumstances of a horrible distant past." 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 toned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago." " Life is better in Europe than it is in the Muslim world because human relations are better, and one reason human relations are better is that in the West, life on earth is valued in the here and now, and individuals enjoy rights and freedoms that are recognized and protected by the state. To accept subordination and abuse because Allah willed it----that, for me, would be self hatred." As a member of Parliament, Ayaan proposed dramatically reducing unemployment benefits and abolishing the minimum wage. "From my experience as a translator with welfare cases, I knew that easy access to generous unemployment benefits leads to a poverty trap: people in Holland often make more money from welfare than they would in actual jobs."

Ayaan is my new hero. Her bravery and openness in her speech about Islam is truly amazing and sets an example. Our society needs to listen carefully to Ayaan and stop being afraid of being viewed as racist as they dare to scrutinize this backward culture.

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Unique Insight into the Muslim Mindset

Some authors invite you to take a journey with them. But in "Infidel" Ayaan grabbed my hand firmly and pulled me down her path, sometimes with my heels dug in for fear of what the next turn would reveal. But I could not put the book down. This is a fearless revelation into the very heart of the Islamic world and an honest working through of her faith and feelings. It constantly amazed me that she could recall and relive this horrible existence without hate or resentment. The writing style is extraordinarily good and draws you in from the first paragraph.

Another incredible thing was how she takes the reader into her mind while she was watching CNN and American news coverage during and after the 9/11 crisis. Westerners were trying to convince themselves that these terrorists were isolated extremists. Ayaan tells the reader otherwise, that most Muslim mothers would have rejoiced to have had their son involved in this "holy" and justified act. It is a rare glimpse of politically incorrect honesty.

I felt as if I had fallen into the book. I became, along with her, a conformist and a rebel, an obedient woman and a disobedient daughter, a refugee and a rescuer. I would finally feel safe only to discover that all around me there were those seeking to kill me for revelations of life behind the veil of Islam.

In the end I ached for her. Her emptiness now that she has rejected Allah is palpable. But her strength and character and loving honesty is a testament to the amazing woman she has always been inside.

I literally could not put this book down and read for hours and hours last weekend. Upon reaching the final page I felt that it seemed more like a beginning than an end. A story of brutality and repression that is beautifully inspiring, this book deserves a read.

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Infidel

Until it was finished, this book became a part of me--- I could not put it down. Ayaan's culture was an incomprehensible combination of love, support, backwardness, cruelty, and control. To watch her grow and develop into an independent and autonomous young lady, was to see a flower beginning to bloom. It made me thankful for having been born in the USA and for the parents I had.

Courageous and Timeless

What a thoughtful and inspiring book this was! Ms. Ali writes in a very engaging and direct style that makes for a hard-to-put-down biography/self-discovery book. After finishing this great book, one can only admire this woman for her courage to think for herself, change her whole way of life, and watch as her family disowned and alienated her. She was able to see Islam for what it is--a disastrously out-of-touch system set in place to suppress women, full of ridiculous mythology. Ms. Ali rightfullly shows that Islam countries are far behind Western countries in economic well being, human rights, and learning.

One, I think, must also consider X-ianity during the reading of Infidel. Could there be verses telling women to be quiet in the X-tian Quran? Could there be verses in the X-tian "holy" book where god commands men to r@pe women? Could x-tianity be a silly bunch of myths, hundreds of years old (just like Islam!), that shackle its adherents from growing intellectually and morally?

Infidel is a fantastic book by a true, modern-day hero. I'm so glad I read Ms. Ali's memoir, and I can't wait to see what she'll say next. Highly recommended!

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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