Infidel/ Review

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Let me first introduce the book then tell you my own opinion about it. And the best introduction, I believe, is to quote some of of the author’s writings to avoid any misunderstanding. The book consists of 335 pages, hard cover, and was published in 2007. It is a personal memoir in which the author is introduced as:
“Ayyan Haris Ali was born in Somalia, was raised Muslim, and spent her childhood and young adulthood in Africa and Saudi Arabia. In 1992, Haris Ali came to Netherlands as a refugee, escaping a forced marriage to a distant cousin she had never met. She learned Dutch and worked as an interpreter in abortion clinics and shelters for battered women. After earning her college degree in political science, she worked for the Labor party. She denounced Islam after the September 11 terrorist attacks and now fights for the rights of Moslem women in Europe, the enlightenment of Islam, and security in the West”
The author declares that the main purpose of her book is to free Moslem women living in Western societies from the bonds that still enslaved them to their culture, of which most was stemmed from their Islamic upbringing. She also reminds them that they are living in a free world where a human has a value, unlike what they were used to in the countries they migrated from. She promotes full integration into the new society in which they sought refuge from their unjust countries.
This may sound like a feminist movement, yet, it’s not. Ayaan believes that if this integration was possible, tribalism can be diminished, prejudice can be eliminated, and slavery can be abolished for good.

This reminds me of years back when I first came to the United States. And precisely when I moved to Tennessee after I got married. It astonished me then that neither my husband, nor his Moslem friends had any American friends although they spent a considerable time in the States. When I asked why? They replied that Tennesseans are rednecks, they hate strangers. But after living there for a while I was able to make a lot of friends. And to my surprise I found that those rednecks were no different than the warm loving Arabs. They won’t approach strangers, but when you get to befriend them, they are more than family. I was barely a teenager when I got married, and I got pregnant while I was still studying in an Engineering school, which demanded a lot of hard work, and consumed most of my time. My husband also had a two acre house, which was very hard to maintain without the help of maids. And like a typical Kuwaiti, my husband never helped around the house. Not only that, but he constantly brought friends over and made a mess that I had to clean every night I came back from college. Yet, my redneck friends were always there for me, they babysat for me, helped me around the house, and were great company when I was alone, which was most of the time. They even planted my garden. This experience made me realize that it was us who did not like strangers, and not them. It was us who refused to integrate, not them. When my dad came for my graduation, he was surprised that wherever I went people greeted me, while that was not the case with my husband.

Ayaan realized this issue very wittingly, and her efforts to advocate integration is genuine, based on a personal experience. Moslems who migrated to the West demanded that they bring their cultures with them. They have their own schools (madrasas); the soil for instilling tribalism and terrorism in generations to come. They are caved in their own secluded communities, and demanding their own courts of Shareea, on the excuse of freedom. Freedom concept which they utterly handicapped, and from which they eluded their own unjust societies. Female Genital Mutilation is still practiced on kitchen tables without the knowledge of the authorities. Women are beaten by their husbands without the interference of the law, simply because women themselves do not dare to file cases for the fear of Allah. Honor killing is committed without being categorized in police stations as such. Western authorities know this but give it a blind eye for the fear of being labeled as racists. Muslims roar the streets with Islamophobia propaganda with the slightest interference of just law. Freedom of speech is threatened by barbaric murder. In Ayaan’s own words:
“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’s simply isn’t so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religious or cultures of minorities too critically, for the fear of being called racist. It fascinates them that I am not afraid to do so.”
And pay attention that these are the words of a member of the parliament of Holland who worked hard to instill those beliefs.
Ayaan also had a hidden message to all Muslims of the world, she pinpointed that the reason for their backwardness in all life arenas is Islam itself and she backed up her claims with verses of Quran and Hadeath (traditions):
“My central, motivation 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”
She also noticed that the main source of most Muslim’s deportation of terror in the current century is Saudi Arabia, not overlooking its role in Moslem Brotherhood spread in the world, of which she herself was a member before escaping to Holland:
“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 it is the origin of much of the fundamentalist vision that has, in my 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 Mohammad decided centuries ago…the kind of thinking I 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 transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam.”
And about her denouncing Islam she says:
“I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason.”

Now after this long introduction, which I thought necessary, I would like to talk about the book itself. This book was one of few books that took only four days for me to finish. And this is a very short time considering all the other chores I had. I simply couldn’t part from it. It was like a thriller, a fiction with all of its twists and turns of action, yet, it was real. At times I felt angry, at other times I felt sad. While at some times I felt admiration for a woman who escaped an arranged marriage, a brutal society, and sought asylum in a country; penniless. And from scrubbing floors she raised to a member of the parliament. Her insistency to continue her education and get a masters degree in Political Science with all the hardship that she faced was really an inspiration. She was a woman, or rather a black woman in a white society, all alone, and she made it to the top. She did not forget her kin, nor forgot her roots; rather, she made it her case. This case that risked her security and privacy, as well as the loss of her friend, movie director Theo van Gogh, as a result of a joint work in a 10 min movie “Submission”.

This is the film, but please watch it after iftar if you are fasting.

And this is what she said about that film:
“ When I approached Theo to help me make “Submission”, I had three messages to get across. First, 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. Second, the rigid interpretation of Quran in Islam today causes intolerable misery for women. Through globalization, more and more people who hold these ideas have traveled to Europe with the women they own and brutalize, and it is no longer possible for Europeans and other Westerners to pretend that severe violations of human rights occur only far away. The third message is the film’s final phrase: ”I 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 root of oppression.”

The book is also very educational for us Kuwaiti women who are new into politics. Now if you think that I said too much about this book, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This book made me think, isn’t it time for us women within the boundaries of terror to speak up? Haven’t we had enough atrocities in Sharee3a courts that legalizes women slavery?
And you men, you too, haven’t you had enough of deprivation of your personal rights? Can’t you see that there is something wrong when your freedom of normal living and loving life is reduced to the boundaries of your rooms? Isn’t it time you speak up before your executioner lashed his last lethal stroke on your bodies? Can’t you see how many Moslems are migrating to the West for a fresh air of freedom? Is this the solution? How many of us can afford that? What about those who can’t afford it? And why should we leave in the first place?
What are we waiting for? What are we afraid of? Being labeled as outcasts in the society? What is this price compared to the highest, most noble goal of freedom?

Isn’t it time to move from the world of faith to the world of reason?