Book Review--Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Infidel
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Islam, says the author, is not a religion of peace. It is a religion of submission, of oppression, of violence sanctioned by its holy book. It is a religion frozen in time, a time of desert tribes, of violence. The people who embrace fundamental Islam, she says, are not the poor, down-trodden looking for a better way of life. They are fanatics, educated in the Madrasas of Germany and the United States, filled with holy hatred, the hatred of all that is not them, the infidel, the American. She warns that this resurgence of fundamentalist Islam is a major threat to the west, and that pretending that it is harmless, or that we should tolerate it, excuse it, leave it to flourish in religious schools, is suicidal.

She speaks from her own experience, growing up within Islam in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and eventually Germany and Holland. She tells her own story, what she experienced, how she lived, how her people lived. She tells of her grandmother, fresh from the desert nomads of Somalia, trying to teach her the ways of the desert, trust noone, be suspicious, attack first, learn your ancestry, recite it-the clan will protect you. Djins, desert spirits, desert ways. Her mother, enthralled by the Saudi way of life; her father fighting for freedom, independence and democracy and still totally within the clan structure. Her escape from an arranged marriage and eventually from the clutches of Islam. A fascinating and revealing story of a world that is hard to imagine and yet must be considered, must be believed and, to the extent that a Christian American can, understood. Her warnings are dire, and real.

It reads like a novel, but depicts scenes hard to imagine from my safe Midwestern country home.
I strongly recommend it to anyone who has any interest in unraveling the complexity of our “modern” world. Will it help me understand Iraq? Will it help me develop a position on terrorism, war, and what we as Americans ought to do? It seems to me that it complicates the issue, focuses it, makes it more frightening In a way. If women’s rights are the focus, it tells a terrifying story of immigrant women, beaten, subjugated, excised (female circumcision), depressed. And the women for the most part complicit—they don’t know any better. They have been taught by their own mothers and grandmothers from infancy that Allah wills that they be beaten, degraded, killed, repressed, treated like property, chattels, livestock. Allah wills it according to the Koran.