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Ali's memoir Infidel reveals an extraordinary woman who survived a harrowing early life, fled to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage, and was elected to that country's Parliament before death threats landed her under 24-hour guard. Not every reader will agree with her political and religious positions, but her intelligence, resilience, and courage are inspiring. I was deeply moved by her response, near the end of the book, to questions of what it is like to live with death threats. She recites her many brushes with death, from the moment of her birth onward, and concludes, "Even with bodyguards and death threats I feel privileged to be alive and free." It is to her credit that she dedicated herself to bringing that freedom to other oppressed women. Recommended by Kelly L., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
One of today's most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following an Islamist's murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the movie Submission.
Infidel is the eagerly awaited story of the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished — and sometimes reviled — political superstar and champion of free speech. With a gimlet eye and measured, often ironic, voice, Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will, and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely ruled by despots. In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat — demonized by reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from her family and clan — she refuses to be silenced.
Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.
Review:
"'I am Ayaan, the daughter of Hirsi, the son of Magan.' In the first scene of 'Infidel,' Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a child of 5, sitting on a grass mat. Her grandmother is teaching her to recite the names of her ancestors, as all Somali children must learn to do. 'Get it right,' her grandmother warns. 'They are your bloodline. ... If you dishonor them you will be forsaken. You will be nothing.... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) You will lead a wretched life and die alone.' Thus begins the extraordinary story of a woman born into a family of desert nomads, circumcised as a child, educated by radical imams in Kenya and Saudi Arabia, taught to believe that if she uncovered her hair, terrible tragedies would ensue. It's a story that, with a few different twists, really could have led to a wretched life and a lonely death, as her grandmother warned. But instead, Hirsi Ali escaped — and transformed herself into an internationally renowned spokeswoman for the rights of Muslim women. The break began when she slipped away from her family on her way to a forced marriage in Canada and talked her way into political asylum in Holland, using a story she herself calls 'an invention.' Soon after arriving, she removed her head scarf to see if God would strike her dead. He did not. Nor were there divine consequences when, defying her ancestors, she donned blue jeans, rode a bicycle, enrolled in a university, became a Dutch citizen, began to speak publicly about the mistreatment of Muslim women in Holland and won election to the Dutch parliament. But tragedy followed fame. In 2004, Hirsi Ali helped a Dutch director, Theo van Gogh, make a controversial film, 'Submission,' about Muslim women suffering from forced marriages and wife beating. Van Gogh was murdered by an angry Muslim radical in response, and Hirsi Ali went into hiding. The press began to explore her past, discovering the 'inventions' that she had used to get her refugee status. The Dutch threatened to revoke her citizenship; the American Enterprise Institute offered her a job in Washington. And thus she came to be among us. Even the bare facts of this unusual life would make fascinating reading. But this book is something more than an ordinary autobiography: In the tradition of Frederick Douglass or even John Stuart Mill, 'Infidel' describes a unique intellectual journey, from the tribal customs of Hirsi Ali's Somali childhood, through the harsh fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia and into the contemporary West. Along the way, Hirsi Ali displays what surely must be her greatest gift: the talent for recalling, describing and honestly analyzing the precise state of her feelings at each stage of that journey. She describes how she felt as a teenager, voluntarily wearing a hijab, a black cloak that hid her body: 'It sent out a message of superiority: I was the one true Muslim. All those other little girls with their little white headscarves were children, hypocrites.' She writes of meeting her husband-to-be's family: 'I concentrated on behaving properly: Speaking softly, being polite, avoiding shame to my parents. I felt empty.' She also describes how horrified she felt as an adult after Sept. 11, 2001, reaching for the Koran to find out whether some of Osama bin Laden's more bloodcurdling statements — 'when you meet the unbelievers, strike them in the neck' — were direct quotations. 'I hated to do it,' she wrote, 'because I knew that I would find bin Laden's quotations in there.' And there were consequences: 'The little shutter at the back of my mind, where I pushed all my dissonant thoughts, snapped open after the 9/11 attacks, and it refused to close again. I found myself thinking that the Quran is not a holy document. It is a historical record, written by humans. ... And it is a very tribal and Arab version of events. It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women, and harsh in war.' That moment led Hirsi Ali to her most profound conclusion: that the mistreatment of women is not an incidental problem in the Muslim world, a side issue that can be dealt with once the more important political problems are out of the way. Rather, she believes that the enslavement of women lies at the heart of all of the most fanatical interpretations of Islam, creating 'a culture that generates more backwardness with every generation.' Ultimately, it led to her most controversial conclusion too: that Islam is in a period of transition, that the religion as it is currently practiced is often incompatible with modernity and democracy and must radically transform itself in order to become so. 'We in the West,' she writes, 'would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.' That sentiment, when first expressed in Holland, infuriated not only Hirsi Ali's compatriots but also Dutch intellectuals uneasy about criticizing the immigrants in their midst, particularly because both Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh went further than the usual criticism of radical, political Islam: Both believed that even 'ordinary' forms of Islam, such as those practiced in Hirsi Ali's Somalia, contain elements of discrimination against women that should not be tolerated in the West. Thanks to this belief in female equality, Hirsi Ali now requires permanent bodyguards. But having 'moved from the world of faith to the world of reason,' Hirsi Ali now says she cannot go back. Still, she describes herself as lucky: 'How many girls born in Digfeer Hospital in Mogadishu in November 1969 are even alive today?' she asks rhetorically. 'And how many have a real voice?' To that, it's worth adding another question: How many women with Hirsi Ali's experience of radical Islam have emerged to tell their stories? And how many can do so with such clarity and insight? 'Infidel' is a unique book, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a unique writer, and both deserve to go far. Anne Applebaum is a columnist for The Washington Post." Reviewed by Anne Applebaum, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group) (hide most of this review)
Review:
"Ms. Hirsi Ali's struggles to gain a toehold in her new country, and her perceptions of the West, told through innocent eyes, put flesh and blood on an immigrant story repeated countless times throughout Western Europe." William Grimes, New York Times
Review:
"While often horrifying and heartbreaking, Infidel is an ultimately inspiring story of defiance, resilience and truth-seeking." Miami Herald
Review:
"[A]t its core, her story is about a crisis of faith, and her compelling account of her transfiguration offers a glint of hope that, like Christianity before it, Islam may be brought to its senses by legions of incensed apostates." San Diego Union-Tribune
Review:
"[T]he book reads like a...coming-of-age novel — except that a Muslim girl from Mogadishu was never supposed to develop a sense of 'self' in the first place." Wall Street Journal
Review:
"A charismatic figure...of arresting and hypnotizing beauty...[who writes] with quite astonishing humor and restraint." Christopher Hitchens
Synopsis:
In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia to her intellectual awakening in the Netherlands to her life under armed guard in the West.
Bloodlines — Under the Talal tree — Playing tag in Allah's Palace — Weeping orphans and widowed wives — Secret rendezvous, sex, and the scent of Sukumawiki — Doubt and defiance — Disillusion and deceit — Refugees — Abeh — Running away — A trial by the Elders — Haweya — Leiden — Leaving God — Threats — Politics — The murder of Theo — Epilogue: the letter of the law.
jazzmom636, January 1, 2011 (view all comments by jazzmom636)
This book changes your worldview. She describes life experiences that the Western reader would find abhorent, but from her viewpoint were the expected norm. A must read for women everywhere.
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itsmerunning, January 1, 2011 (view all comments by itsmerunning)
This was an amazing book. And sn amazing woman. I learned so much more than I expected. It has stayed with me, and I find myself thinking about it often. It is a biography of life in Somalia and other countries through the eyes of a little girl, and then follows her as she goes to a western country. She now lives in USA under guard. Loved it!!!!
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mbcoffee, January 10, 2010 (view all comments by mbcoffee)
This is a powerful memoir of an amazing woman. Such depth in her story and perspective. It's a must read!
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
Ali's memoir Infidel reveals an extraordinary woman who survived a harrowing early life, fled to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage, and was elected to that country's Parliament before death threats landed her under 24-hour guard. Not every reader will agree with her political and religious positions, but her intelligence, resilience, and courage are inspiring. I was deeply moved by her response, near the end of the book, to questions of what it is like to live with death threats. She recites her many brushes with death, from the moment of her birth onward, and concludes, "Even with bodyguards and death threats I feel privileged to be alive and free." It is to her credit that she dedicated herself to bringing that freedom to other oppressed women.
by Kelly L.
"Review"
by William Grimes, New York Times,
"Ms. Hirsi Ali's struggles to gain a toehold in her new country, and her perceptions of the West, told through innocent eyes, put flesh and blood on an immigrant story repeated countless times throughout Western Europe."
"Review"
by Miami Herald,
"While often horrifying and heartbreaking, Infidel is an ultimately inspiring story of defiance, resilience and truth-seeking."
"Review"
by San Diego Union-Tribune,
"[A]t its core, her story is about a crisis of faith, and her compelling account of her transfiguration offers a glint of hope that, like Christianity before it, Islam may be brought to its senses by legions of incensed apostates."
"Review"
by Wall Street Journal,
"[T]he book reads like a...coming-of-age novel — except that a Muslim girl from Mogadishu was never supposed to develop a sense of 'self' in the first place."
"Review"
by Christopher Hitchens,
"A charismatic figure...of arresting and hypnotizing beauty...[who writes] with quite astonishing humor and restraint."
"Synopsis"
by ing hold,
In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia to her intellectual awakening in the Netherlands to her life under armed guard in the West.
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