Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Infidel
Book Review: A very vivid description of condition of life of women in Islam and in Africa
Summary: 5 Stars
The book is a very comprehensive account of the condition of women under strict Islamic rule and in Africa. The book presents memoirs of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia, moved to Kenya, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Netherlands. Most of these moves were to escape from persecution of her own or her family members. Its a first hand account of the life of a women in Africa and in Islamic countries. The book is a vivid tale of various kind of brutalities women face and survival during their lifetime in these countries. There are certain sections which are graphic and make you question, if all this happened in 20th and 21st century. The author makes an important point in the book by questioning if the western governments (especially European govt.) are doing the right thing by turning their faces in another direction while witnessing atrocities on women in the name of allowing people to practice religious freedom.
She raises another interesting question which doesn't gets highlighted that much. Why is it that typically immigrants have to mingle only with people from their own country/community even in a friendly and welcoming country?
As an immigrant myself, I have always questioned if people immigrate just for the sake of reaping benefits of better economic conditions. Even when I look around I see people forming clusters with people of their own community/country. While I understand its a natural condition when you move to another place, people stick to this lifestyle even after spending their lifetimes. Is money the sole motivation for moving?
In short, its a fascinating book about her life and she does an excellent job of describing her life and condition of women in Islam. She is brave and deserves tremendous amount of respect.
Book Review: A woman who totally changed her life
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a fascinating and thought-provoking autobiography about a woman who finds the courage to break free from her family and culture. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was raised as a devout Muslim, predominantly in Somalia and Kenya. Her father was absent for large parts of her life and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. She was a bright child who questioned aspects of the Islamic faith from an early age, particularly the inequalities between men and women. As a child she and her sister were subjected to female "circumcision". In her early twenties, her father arranged her marriage to another Muslim man. Ayaan chose instead to escape and seek asylum in the Netherlands. She renounced her religion and became outspoken on the subject of female oppression by Muslims. Eventually she also became a member of Parliament in the Netherlands.
I found the book very interesting, but it is not the definitive word on the Muslim faith and parts made me feel uncomfortable - for example, when she insists that the millions of Muslims around the world who see Islam as a religion of peace are wrong and do not fully understand it. I thought she was very brave to speak out about female oppression, but her points would be better made and probably better received had she not attacked so many other central tenants of Islam.
Ayaan's experiences are very specific to the countries and cultures that she grew up in and it often felt that she couldn't make that distinction and accept that life for Muslims in other cultures might be very different from hers. For example, when she talks about her experience of female genital mutilation (a horrific procedure which is chillingly described), she implies strongly that the Muslim faith is responsible for female genital mutilation, but in reality it is more a cultural than religious practice that is also common among many non-Muslims.
At times her own story does not appear to support her assertions. While there is no doubt that she had a difficult childhood, throughout her life she and her sister were given access to education and could move about freely. Ayaan secretly married a man of her own choosing (although she later denied that the marriage had taken place and it probably wasn't legalized). Her mother was able to divorce her first husband, and when Ayaan chose to leave her husband, that decision was accepted by the Muslim elders. Even when she talks about female genital mutilation, I found it interesting that her very religious father didn't want her to have it and that it was her grandmother who insisted and arranged it.
I really enjoyed this book and found it hugely thought provoking. I particularly enjoyed and was moved by the section when Ayaan first comes to live in the West and how amazed she is by things that we take for granted (or at least expect) everyday: street signs, buses adhering to timetables, policemen being helpful. While I don't agree with all of Ayaan's views, I do applaud her courage and feel inspired by her commitment to make a difference in the world.
Book Review: A woman who we should really pay attention to....
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: A wonderful read and profoundly moving experience.
Summary: 5 Stars
This book opened my eyes to the truth of the world we all live in now - a world that is smaller than we think and much more evil and more perilous. It is the only book I have ever read that truly explains the reason for the 9/11 attack in a way that makes sense and is believable. It opens our vision to the future and to what we can know it will be. I feel that I not only will never think in the same way, I will never be the same. At the same time it portrays amazing courage and is absolutely inspiring, especially so to all young women everywhere.Book Review: About the rejection of resources in Islam: reason, progress, women
Summary: 3 Stars
The author has to settle a score with Islam, especially with the Islam dealing with women. The accusations are not new, but they are concerning whenever an eyewitness and victim is reporting about her own experiences. In this case the author has not only her own story to relate, she is also a person of public interest, guest in many talk shows, an educated woman, not thanks to Islam education, but to a life in the ideological freedom only found in the West. She had to submerge after the assassination of Theo van Gogh who criticized Islam too much for the taste of some radical Muslims.
It is difficult to contradict her arguments against the Islamic treatment of women. If this is Islam, saying woman has only one purpose to satisfy the needs of man, then the women of the world can cerebrate whether this is something they would like to have. Ayaan says no.
She says that the integration of Muslims must fail mainly because of the woman-hostile religion and culture of Islam. She could prevent herself from being forcefully married only by escape. No woman should be a production plant for sons but decide herself about her life. A bad joke that anybody has to say a word like this in the 21. century!
With her critics against Islam she is the most endangered person in the Netherlands, getting constant death threats. The muslims cannot be tolerant in that. She broke too many taboos, she did not only criticize the Islam as a religion, she also rejected Islam and converted to a non-muslim. Who wonders?
Her analyzes are sharp like the edge of a sword. She says that the first element of Islam is the relation of the Muslim to his God dictated by fear, because Allah punishes offences to his requirements. The second element is Muhammad as the only source of moral for a Muslim. But he was a man of the 7th century, thus Islam is backward oriented. The third element is the dominion of a sexual moral of old Arabian customs which entails a certain conduct towards women. And these three elements explain the backwardness of Islam.
"In only taking over the technical achievements of the West and not the western courage to self-established thinking the spiritual stagnation of the Islamic culture is abiding".
No news! In fact there are many educated muslims who think the same. But they are blind for the fact that Islam cannot accept the successes of non-islam societies! The Quran and Muhammads compatible Hadiths stand against it. It is true that the author is exaggerating when she is writing: "The most important explanation for the spiritual and material residue in which we Muslims are, is in the sexual moral."
Is it believable when she confesses she would be optimistic that there are reforms which will take advantage of the accomplishments of the West?
She does not confess Islam at all. At first she realized: "The more religious I became, the more I lied and cheated." On lies and fake the whole of Islam was build, we hear. This again is a less helpful exaggeration.
Change everything what she wanted to and you do not get Islam. For her the sole reading of the "Atheistic manifest" is sufficient to give her the last kick to convert to non-Islam and instantly become the opponent of the fear- and oppression religion.
This again seems to be nothing but a superficial "conversion". Not everybody, who is disappointed in his religion leaves the belief in a higher authority behind, as if the proof that a man-made God is good for nothing is also the proof that there is no God at all! This has to be called inconsequent thinking. But this is not what the book is about.
The author is also asserting that preaching of hatred against Jews and other non-muslims is belonging to the standard program of Quran schools. She is right to say that hatred against the West is not only due to the economical and cultural successes of the West in comparison to the muslim world, but also due to religious reasons. In this she is right to go over the description of Bernard Lewis about the crisis of Islam.
She is consequently contradicting the political "correct" statements of the politicians that Islam is just misused from islamists and taken into custody by them. "Islam has taken itself into custody!" Thus not the interpretation of Islam is the problem, as if all muslims were fools, instead Islam is the problem! She is asking:
"If we Muslims are so tolerant and friendly, why then is there in Islamic countries so much ethnical, religious, political and cultural brokenness and violence. Why are we Muslims so full of feelings of anger and discomfort and carry so much hostility and hatred in us? Why do we not succeed in questioning ourselves?" This is in fact a good question, and to question oneself is moreover a very clever question!
She is dedicating a whole chapter to the necessity of self-reflexion. A very important perception! The question remains what the result of the self-reflexions of people should be, of people who are listening their whole lives long "truths". Everybody needs to have his own traumatic experience! And even this is not always sufficient, because:
"If I had to characterize Islam I should have to say, that it has become like the father of Atta (of the chief terrorist of 11.9.): wrathful, traumatized, shaken and captured in delusion". That everybody uses his own traumas to get free from his delusion! At least, the author seems to have made it!
She is also asking the question whether this God in which she believed failed. And she is answering with the failure of man: "We Muslims have lost the balance between religion and reason totally out of sight. The results are poverty, violence, political instability, economical stagnation and human misery." In this context she is citing Islam expert Lewis, which she seems to have read carefully.
Broad space is given to the description of the role of the women in Islam. Rightly she is talking about her own experiences. That in the Islamic cultural realm the human rights have been tread with feet is well known. What is the author demanding for?
Basically western conditions. But this is the same as the abolishment of Islam! But Islam`s commandments fort he life-style of the fidels is not separable of the more abstract teaching (Allah is the only one and Muhammad is his prophet, etc.). Islam rules and regulates everything and herein is without compromises! Additional is the strong tradition serving in some countries for the mutilation of the genitals. Here she should have better fairly separated Islam and tradition.
Be that as it may, it has to be feared that the call of the author is not heard from those who should hear it. She is invoking muslim women to demand their rights, especially their rights of self-determination. This seems to be a pious wish, because for many women their life is just about the bare survival, not so much about submission. Islam means "submission"!! Islam simply does not grant the right for self-determination. If religion is sometimes not reasonable you have to oppose with: humans do not always want to be reasonable at all! Thus it is not a wonder that they do not demand from their religion that it is a reasonable one!
Freedom is a question of decision! Yes, but also of possibilities and chances! Not everybody is d`accord with the battle cry: "Freedom or death!" The author is even designing a plan for muslim women to run away!
Islam is also therefore a phenomenon because it fosters so many anachronisms and yet it survives and has millions of followers. But to get to know the freedom which the author experienced and treasured - this is exactly what many people do NOT want! Not everybody has such an unquenched drive for freedom as the author, not every woman in Islam has made bad experiences. And many even like to be the subordinates of a man!
Sometimes there seems to break through a piece of naiveté and smart-alecky besides the much too latent outrage and the missionary self-consciousness of the author. One should, she says, adapt faith to realities, Muslims should realize the incompleteness of their faith etc.
And then she steps on totally alien ground in her exuberance: "In fact there are also misogynistic texts in the Bible and in the Talmud". And many Christians and Jews had shown that "many of the texts in the Bible and in the Talmud are good for nothing".
Such unqualified, not proved and polemic platitudes devaluate what she rightly has to say. Not all her comments are showing a clear view.
Her concern should not be understood as a sweeping blow against all religions. Ayaan is just a feminist!
Who is going to read the book? The best is Muslims who really have a serious interest that women in Islam are not oppressed or abused. And non-Muslims, who want to be informed about the topic. They get a lot of information from the insider about the ruling deficiencies in Islam. In the West it is well known how to make wars for the sake of suppressed peoples - but for one half of the peoples, the women, the West is doing next to nothing.
You should also hear others who have studied the matter about the epistemic statements of the author. The comments of a frustrated and - rightfully - disgusted woman are not enough. Nevertheless, no doubt, here you read a personal accounting of a courageous woman. More such courageous women are needed in the world, there are enough cowards! It was high time, that this was said what she had to say. And the so called free world should take it into consideration, even when the muslim world does not do it.
This book is readable mostly, it has weaknesses which lie in the simplifications and the digressions into fields where she is amateurish. You can only hope that the author and all who support her live long enough! And for this the "free" world should do everything!