Infidel

Title: Infidel – My Life

Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2008 (First published 2007)

ISBN: 9781416526247

Pages: 353

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia, was raised as a Muslim, and spent her childhood and young adulthood in Africa. She fled to Holland at the age of 22, and since then is famous for her steadfast and outspoken criticism for the rights of Muslim women and children in Europe and elsewhere, the demand for enlightenment in Islam and concerns about security in the West. The book is a biography of the author, as well as a truthful mirror on the appalling plight of women and girls in any Islamic society. Who would suspect that female circumcision and honour killings are now a common feature in Europe too, where refugees are increasingly asserting their militant version of opinion on the native population? Ayaan Hirsi brings out all these aspects and more in clear detail and clarity of thought in this excellent piece of literary work.

The first part of the book, titled ‘My Childhood’ covers the author’s life in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya, till she reached adulthood. It brings out the sad predicament of women in traditional Muslim societies that are also burdened with clan rivalry. The primary allegiance of an individual was to his or her clan, which protected them in the case of hardships, with no questions asked. But this also meant submission of the individual spirit on the altar of the clan’s interests. This comes as double submission for Somali people, as their unconditional surrender to the will of Allah is demanded by their religion. However, the faith only acted as a loosely fitting mantle over the clan structure, until the advent of terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, which compelled its adherents to seek their roots from the original spring of religion. Hostility between the clans quickly escalated into civil war that sounded the death knell to efforts of establishing a civil society on the foundations of democracy. The position of women was only secondary to men in the author’s Somali society, like any other Islamic society, or even in Asian communities like India. Living in extended family resulted in everyone involving in everyone’s business. Ayaan Hirsi found the complete lack of privacy, of individual space and excessive social control suffocating. All the hardships caused by the medieval mindset of the society were attributed to the machinations of Jews and America. Somali society imposed harsh restrictions of the veil and purdah on its women. They were not consulted even in decisions involving their marriage, education and employment. Somali society traditionally believed that all women, who are not covered from head to toe, or not protected by male guardians are prey to any adventurist. Their women developed self-defence mechanisms like ‘qworegoys’ to counter threats to their modesty. The community was founded on suspicion of those not immediately belonging to their own clan. This is clear evidence of modern religions like Islam not being able to lift these people from their tribal mindsets to its own much hyped ideals of universal peace and brotherhood. Ayaan Hirsi also explains how extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood finds increased acceptance in African societies. When government control is loosened to the point of irrelevance due to corruption, Brotherhood workers step in to provide those services cheaper and also without corruption, riding on the oil wealth of the Middle East. When she was made to marry a cousin whom she had never met before, she escaped to Germany en route to her expatriate husband in Canada, sought and obtained asylum in the Netherlands.

Ayaan Hirsi managed to obtain asylum by falsifying her name and details of birth. She was desperate to stick on to freedom. Even though she openly admits that she lied, we also read that as per Somali law, technically her adoption of her grandfather’s name as her own is legal. But this finer point was too much for a few Dutch politicians to invoke the rule of law and revoke the citizenship granted to her. Eventually, the coalition government fell over sharp division of opinion on the extraordinary decision to take away her citizenship, particularly at a time when she was reeling under death threats. Holland offered a lot of opportunities to the author, to complete her education, to live life as a free person, and even to become a member of Dutch parliament, and that too, from a right-of-centre party’s ticket. She had realized the fallacy of the religious philosophy she had believed in and turned an atheist. But in Islam, an apostate deserved death. The terrorists tried to get at her, but were repulsed by the elaborate security detail granted to her. But Theo van Gogh, a film maker who had produced a short film titled ‘Submission’ based on Ayaan Hirsi’s script that mocked the medieval outlook of Islam, was not so lucky. He was shot in broad daylight in Amsterdam, then his throat was cut and finally a knife pierced through his heart, pinning on the blade a message to Ayaan Hirsi that she would meet the same fate. She now lives in the U.S.

The book focuses world attention on the terrible situation brewing in Europe as more and more refugees, almost all of them Muslims, who are flooding to Europe fleeing war torn areas where Muslims fight among themselves over who has the harsher interpretation of what the religion and the Prophet declared several centuries ago. The asylum seekers keep their mindset intact in the host country too. They show a superiority complex over their hosts, who are considered to be ceremonially impure, as they don’t follow Islam. They are oblivious to the fact that if they did believe in it, that country itself would’ve wasted itself in futile fratricidal warfare. Immigrants then form their own isolated communities, cut off from the liberal current of mainstream society. They build separate Quranic schools on European soil where girls are kept veiled and every inhuman custom they were familiar with in their native countries are reproduced in faithful detail. Subjects like geography and physics are taught in these schools, but topics that are contradictory to Islamic doctrines are avoided. European children are not allowed to join and the students are advised to keep their distance from unbelievers. Women and children are continually being abused. It is shocking to note that female genital mutilation is taking place unabated on the kitchen tables of migrant homes. European governments turn a blind eye to what is going on, under the guise of preserving immigrants’ culture, but often at the expense of the most vulnerable sections of the population. Many refugee Muslims don’t even bother to learn the local language and reject Western values like tolerance and personal liberty. Ayaan Hirsi points umpteen times to the stupidity of European societies elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred to the status of respectable, alternate ways of life. This note of caution has added relevance today, as most European countries that permitted immigration on a large scale stands threatened by terrorists bred in-house.

The book is adorned with a splendid foreword by Christopher Hitchens who never minced words where a sharp rebuke was due. He concludes that the cause of backwardness and misery in the Muslim world is not Western oppression, but Islam itself, which is a faith that promulgates contempt for enlightenment and secular values. The narrative exposes the harsh realities in Somalia and Kenya, highlighted in more detail by the background of sadness condensing out of Ayaan Hirsi’s words. The helplessness of the protagonists, mostly her sister and herself will continue to haunt the reader even long after finishing it. Readers are chilled with horror when she wonders how many girls born in the same month of her birth at the same Somali hospital would be alive today! A set of monochrome plates adds context to the description. Her mother’s portrait is absent from the gallery, which is understandable in an extremely orthodox society that occupied Somalia then.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star