Infidel Reviews

• A vivid chronicle of a triumphant escape from cultural confinement

  
  By A2MI5PQBEII7O3 on 2007-02-18
  Autobiographies often suffer from late-life authorship--a time when the fires are damped and the events foreshortened by time. This one--by a woman still in her thirties--is an exception to nearly every rule of the genre. Not least for its electrifying readability: it consumed every free moment of the two days it took to finish it. Putting it down was simply not an option.
  
  This book will grab your imagination like no other, transplant you into a world you have probably never known, and introduce you to the intimate world of a muslim family swept by circumstance all over Africa, Arabia, and Europe. The complex interaction of tribes, clans, cultures, extended families and nations (and their consequences) isn't dryly analyzed, it is woven into a personal drama with the momentum of a locomotive. The love of family rides perilously over the jarring railbed of refugee life, of ancient and modern Islamic conflicts, all of it recounted with real compassion in beautifully clear English. This multilingual immigrant needs no ghostwriter.
  
  Unlike the collection of editorial essays which comprised "The Caged Virgin", "Infidel" is a consistently focused narrative of a spectacularly eventful life launched almost inadvertantly into an unparalleled adventure in moral courage. But there's far more here than a clash-of-cultures story well told. There is no targeted rush toward a predestined liberation. The revelatory discovery of western freedoms comes late in the book and gathers like a slow-motion sunrise. Only in the final chapters does she defect from Muslim culture, graduate from the University of Leiden, become a Dutch legislator, a target of Islamic terrorists, and an incendiary revolutionary for Muslim womens' rights.
  
  More than simply discovering western libertarian values, she shows a deep and critical understanding of their history, how they've shaped the modern world, and shows their prognosis for dealing with the festering problem of Europe's Islamic subculture. Her extraordinary life seems more an ongoing work in progress than a settled iconographic career. She has recently moved to America--the adopted home of another famously eloquent and consequential revolutionary: Tom Paine.
  
  

• What now for the 'non-political" woman?

  
  By A1GCF1CLZMAH40 on 2007-02-08
  Every now and then a book comes along to give my personal paradigms a good shake up. "Infidel" is one such title.
  
  I have admired Ayaan Hirsi Ali for some time - ever since I saw the first reports of her in Dutch politics and the shocking images of her subsequent film on the abuse of Muslim women. I admired her in her role as activist against the wrongs of radical Islam. (After all, Christianity has had its own ideological purge.) But my admiration was even more for the woman herself.
  
  As a white, middle-class female I am neither sociologist nor political animal, so why read this book, let alone comment on it? Because I believe it has a powerful message for Western women besides a political one. Certainly, the plight of Muslim women and the implications of burgeoning Islam concern me greatly. I cannot turn a blind eye, even in the isolation of New Zealand where I live. We have seen vandalism here against the mosques and been saddened by it. We have bristled at the intractability of a visiting Imam when he was interviewed on national television on the abuse of Muslim women. (As far as he was concerned, it didn't exist, and the Qu'ran did not sanction abuse.) But this book does more than enlighten me on such issues: it shakes me out of the complacency of my own, relatively safe world. And it leaves me with questions I had never thought of asking before.
  
  Gary Zukav (The Dancing Wu Li Masters) says, "According to quantum mechanics, there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture." So in what way do we put ourselves in this particular picture?
  
  What can Western women do? Should we clean up our own backyard,first? After all, women in Christian countries are no strangers to abuse. Maybe if women's thinking internationally gets to "critical mass" on these issues, something will change radically. (I interpret part of Ali's message as saying this.) I admit I'm still looking for answers.
  
  All I can say to other women who consider reading this book is: do! Ayaan Hirsi Ali shows that inner power is not dependent on outer circumstances. The book is worth reading for that alone.
  
  

• Here's a face representing real women suffering under Islam

  
  By A1QEVCBBADYS21 on 2007-02-13
  I read it in 3 days. A fascinating page turner.
  
  Ali has lived in Somalia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and the Netherlands. You get a first hand account of the respective cultures. Worse yet, you get a feeling of the repression women and girls suffer at the hands of Islam.
  
  She does not flinch from the truth -- despite the legions of fanatics that now want to kill her. You owe it to her to read this book, and you owe it to yourself.
  
  The book leads to true comprehension of the evil we will all have to face. Don't taking the life journey she has so eloquently laid out! Don't pass up the chance for an understanding of a very closed culture with a tour guide that has lived it.
  
  Mark
  
  

• Very interesting autobiography of a courageous woman

  
  By AP65VDY75BHI7 on 2007-01-27
  It is difficult nowadays to get an objective, nuanced opinion on Islam, neither flattering nor biased against it. If I were to recommend a way to try and achieve this, I would suggest reading several good books on the matter, including this one among them.
  
  This is a wonderful autobiography. I knew that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a controversial thinker, but I was afraid that her life would be boring. However, the author manages to narrate her own life and circumstances in such a way that I could not put it down, and read it in less than two week's time. I highly recommend it.
  
  Other books that I would recommend reading (as Khaled M. Abou El Fadl -scholar trained in both Islamic and Western law- says, non-muslims "first and foremost [are to] learn and understand, because nothing helps the puritans' cause as much as Western ignorance, prejudice and hate") would be the following:
  
  ASSESSMENTS OF ISLAM:
  
  1) The best, impartial, wise: "Islam. History, present, future" by Hans Küng (written in German, already available in Spanish, English translation coming in 2007).
  
  2) Harsh but well argued: "Muslims in the West: Redefining the Separation of Church & State" by Sami Awad Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh.
  
  3) Moderate Islam at its best: "The Great Theft : Wrestling Islam from the Extremists" by Khaled M. Abou El Fadl
  
  HISTORY:
  
  1) General: "The Venture of Islam", by Marshall G. S. Hodgson (nowadays a classic included in any bibliography on Islam).
  
  2) Turks: "The Turks in World History" by Carter Vaughn Findley.
  
  3) Political theory: "God's Rule : Government and Islam" by Patricia Crone.
  
  4) Jihad: "Understanding Jihad" by David Cook (it also seems interesting although I have not read it yet: "Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice" by Michael Bonner).
  
  
  

• Where have all the feminists gone?

  
  By A3BYZ7XU8DEJNG on 2007-02-13
  If you value liberty, you will weep as you witness this brave woman's story.
  
  Like Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, the viewpoint of this book will appeal across political lines. It's impossible to ascribe political tendencies of 'liberal' or 'conservative' to the author. How can that be, you might wonder, if the author is a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute? Do your daughter a favor and read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's story to find out. The author would seem to be as welcome on Oprah's show as Glen Beck's: Her story trancends political differences and will remind the reader of what it means to value humanity.
  
  When you read this book, note that she refused to compromise while a politician and spoke her mind to the Dutch people, even when her views conflicted with her party. This is a woman who stands for what is right, and that will make her popular with those that value reason and unpopular with those that accept dogma, whether it be religious or political.
  
  She writes "I also don't want my reasoning to be dismissed as the bizarre ranting of someone who has been somehow damaged by her experiences and who is lashing out." No one who reads this book could possibly think such a thing. I'm amazed with the evenhandedness she is able to exert in this memoir.
  
  If, like my wife, you wonder "where are my feminists" in the face of islamic extremism, you will find a new hero.
  
  
  
• A wake up call
  By A2ABVI4QN74PNZ on 2007-02-22
  [...] This is a riveting, deeply moving auobiography of a woman, reared in an oppressive Muslim society, who fled to the West and gradually came to embrace western values. When she coproduced a film depicting the abuse and oppression of Muslim women, she received death threats, and her coproducer was murdered. She has given us a wakeup call. We will all need to have her courage to overcome this totalitarian ideology that threatens the values we hold dear.
  
  
• Must-Read By a Heroine of World Historical Importance
  By ASQ8KNNP3A7FP on 2007-03-05
  "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a must-read book by a heroine of world historical importance.
  
  Years from now, maybe even centuries from now, her depth and integrity, and the depth and integrity of others like her, will still be having a positive impact on the world.
  
  Please don't misunderstand this book. "Infidel" is NOT a right-wing tract or a left-wing tract; it is not a feminist pamphlet or an apologia for the West. "Infidel" is NOT an attack on Muslims.
  
  "Infidel" is a beautifully written work of art. If you were living on another planet, where there were no Muslims, no Westerners, no 9-11, you would still want to read this book for its profound human depth and its literary value.
  
  Ayaan Hirsi Ali takes the particular -- her own extraordinary life lived in Africa, Saudia Arabia, Europe and North America, lived as a hyper- devout Muslim and lived as a new atheist -- and, with the clarity of an electron microscope, depicting every detail, she creates a work of universal resonance.
  
  Have you ever been afraid to defy convention? Have you ever suffered to learn that your family's and people's traditions were not as benign as you had been taught to believe? Have you ever witnessed injustice and not known what to do? Have you ever wanted to be a hero or a heroine?
  
  If so, then you will see yourself in this book, even given its exotic details.
  
  Its exotic details include a heartbreaking scene that describes how madrassah -- Koran school -- pupils brutalized a girl they dubbed "kintirleey," that is, a girl whose private female anatomy had not yet been mutilated, as per Muslim-African custom.
  
  This scene is written in the most simple of language. You could read it with the television on in the background. And yet it falls on your heart with the weight of lead.
  
  What makes Ayaan Hirsi Ali a voice of world historical importance is partly her great art, exhibited here; it is also her shining courage. Simply, in an age where truth is penalized, banned, distorted, Ayaan Ali Hirsi simply speaks the truth.
  
  Hirsi Ali refuses to participate in nonsense. I want to type a word other than "nonsense" -- B.S.
  
  Hirsi Ali resists lies. That insistence on truth has made her life hard. She and her colleague, Theo van Gogh, made the film "Submission," about the fate of women in Islam. A Muslim assassin killed van Gogh on a public street, shooting him, stabbing him, slitting his throat, and, with a knife blade, affixing a note to his chest; the note threatened Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The words you read in "Infidel" have a high price. Hirsi Ali lives in constant danger for telling the truth.
  
  This book is so good and so important, that one knows that Ayaan Hirsi Ali's great courage is worth any price.
  
  
• The story of a courageous struggle for human freedom and dignity
  By AHD101501WCN1 on 2007-02-08
  Ayaan Hirst Ali is the Somali born human rights activist who came to the world's attention when the murderer of Theo van Gogh left a message accusing her of defiling Islam. She at the time was living in Holland where she had sought refuge after not taking the flight to Canada to an arranged marriage she did not want. In Holland she worked hard, graduated from Leiden University, tried to help Islamic women who were being persecuted by their husbands. She also became a parliamentarian. As the death threats to her mounted , she who as a young person had supported the fatwa on Salman Rushdie , she understood that she must move to safer territory. She now makes her home in the United States where she is a member of a conservative think- tank 'The American Enterprise Institute'.
  Ali is fundamentally a human rights activist who believes in Enlightentment values. While she is deeply concerned about Islam's failure to provide women with basic human freedoms- she is concerned about all of mankind having freedom of speech and expression, the right to be educated, the ability to choose one's own path in life.
  Her own courageous example in which she chose to go outside an oppressive framework and stand alone is perhaps too difficult and extreme for most to follow. But clearly her passionate conviction, her clarity of expression do speak to the very real need to provide each and every human being on earth basic freedoms and the opportunity to create their own life in dignity.
  
  
• Bashing Islam is the Best Selling Plat du Jour
  By A17HY9TE9SUSXR on 2007-03-12
  It never stops amazing me how in the greatest country on earth where we're leading the world in the fields of academia, technology, economy, innovation, arts, etc. some mediocre (and that's an overstatement) books and authors manage to become instant bestsellers... the formula is obviously clear... Bash Islam and Muslims, these evil people... medicore writers like hannity, o'reilly, coulter and countless more figured out the best way to make a quick buck... attack a religion and a civilization that has given so much to the world.. one that achieved the unprecedented fate of 900 years of world domination... helping to advance maths, science, arts, philosophy, medicine, etc. a religion that from the time it was revealed set itself apart from previous ones by giving women many rights that were at the time unheard of in the rest of the world (women were still treated like sub-humans in the Christian world)... a religion with a prophet who worked for his wife, a leading noble businesswoman in Mecca... it goes without saying that Muslims have mismanaged their fall from grace... some did blame women... but should this be seen as illustrative of a culture where women were religious scholars, poets, writers, etc... or should we listen to Ayaan Hirsi Ali... [...] That she felt stranger at home is ok, it happens... many teenagers go through that process... sometimes, they are right, sometimes they are wrong... but for her to jump on this Muslim bashing train is unethical... more and more Muslims will be unfairly profiled, mistreated and abused...
  [...]
  
  
• inimitable yet middling
  By A2FTHCGH06O4Y5 on 2007-05-15
  I'm an ardent "fan" of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and side with her on most of the issues she speaks about publicly. Her story is inspiring; her character, incredible. I believe when she is gone from the earth, schoolchildren will likely have to learn her name the way they do for Mohatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King.
  
  There are, I would like to point out, only a handful of people in human history that have effectively defied the entire world, everything they've ever known -- and Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of them. She is truly great.
  
  Yes, my praise for Ali is almost irrational. But in my calmer moments, when I mentally separate Hirsi Ali's life and beliefs from the contents of this book, I must soberly admit this is a fairly unremarkable read, not quite as earth-shattering and heart-pounding as you might be expecting. (To tell you the truth, I got a lot more out of her previous book, "The Caged Virgin," which is much more powerful and coherent.)
  
  Sure, "Infidel" tells you a monstrous, unbelievable tale, the tale of how the young Ali suffered an unspeakable mutilation at the hands of relatives, went AWOL on an arranged marriage, went to college, rose to be a member of Parliament, enraged 1.3 billion people, was stripped of her citizenship, and finally made her way to the shores of freedom.
  
  You watch all this unfold with awe, but interlaced with these events is a great deal of discussion about Somalian customs and other extraneous material related to Ali's life, most of which I found less than gripping, and some of which is starkly irrelevant to the book's presumed purpose. The whole thing could have been a great deal shorter and made its points much more forcefully.
  
  Not that you will rue picking "Infidel" up. By turns eye-opening, tender, daring, startling, and poignant, it will leave you with a unshakeable sense of really having gotten to know an extraordinary woman.
  
  Which I suppose is the point of having written it.
  
  But if your interest level is such that you're only gonna read two or three books on the subject, I would probably give this a miss. Bruce Bawer's "While Europe Slept" or Robert Spencer's "Islam Unveiled," to name only a couple, will provide you with much more mind-bending and unforgettable reading experiences.
  
  Despite my mild disappointment in this title, I will always line up to read what Hirsi Ali has to say, for this elfin but steel-hearted Somalian has made me proud to be a member of the human race in a way that few people ever have.
  
  
• A call for Reformation within Islam
  By A2LAFA6KS5QBRL on 2007-02-07
  This is an extremely important work as it reflects the growing emergence of enlightened women's sensibilities in the world of Islam. It is a clearly written accounting illustrating the kind of intellectual and emotional journey many Muslim women around the world are experiencing as they gain education and freedom of thought. Ali's story will likely be carefully, and eagerly, considered by Muslim women and those of us who want to understand Islam better, from a woman's point of view. Ali's journey is also important for all of us, Muslim or not, women or not. Why? I'm an evolutionary biologist who writes about social conflict and war and the effect that silencing women in matters of war has had on the human history of war ("Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace" by Judith L. Hand (not Latta)). The global empowerment of women and their participation at planning sessions and negotiating tables--women from all sides of our many conflicts--is the necessary, critical catalyst for creating a better, less violent future. By so clearly presenting her own journey, Ali shines a light that clarifies an arguably necessary reformation that must occur within Islam if that better, less violent future, is to be created for the benefit of us all.
  
  
• Insight into Islam
  By A2U4QN7NESIFRB on 2007-03-01
  Contrary to the pabulum that Islamic experts tell you every time a Muslim blows themselves up, ploughs themselves into a building or beheads an infidel the truth is darker. Thankfully Ayaan Hirsi Ali exposes the truth and the danger it poses to western values. Those very values that tolerate all beliefs even those whose very desire is to take the world back to the 700's. In Holland the authorities were actively working on behalf of the Jihadists in seeking to expel her due to immigration irregularities. Sadly I doubt this book will awaken sleepy Europeans until their beloved values are deemed illegal by a Saharia court.
  
  I am honestly worried that she will probably meet with an untimely end. Wherever she travels she has a bodyguard. I wonder if she already cannot travel to Europe due to her "intolerance" of Islam or just for her safety. Sad but true, and it isn't getting better
  
  
  
• A most remarkable book.
  By A282HM1QF1N2MU on 2007-03-17
  Every now and then, something truly remarkable is written. This book falls into that category. I have read very few books which hit me as hard as this book did.
  
  This is a remarkable woman. She has crossed an impassable divide, and has been able to reach the other side--after considerable suffering, work, and tears. Her journey has not yet ended. I would imagine much more awaits her. She seems to be fated to say what many do not wish to hear.
  
  How well does anyone in the west understand Islam, and all the things it does to people? Do we really understand female genital mutilation, beaten women, arranged marriages, the compuslive need to hide the feminine, and the complete loss of individual freedom? Americans still don't have a clue. This book makes a very real effort to explain a few things. It is painful, but important reading.
  
  One can read the various books on Islam--with great value. This book makes it personal, and painful. It is time the west came to its senses, and faced reality. It is not "one world," all cultures are not equal in value, and the individual matters much more than the collective living in darkness.
  
  On a more mundane level, the book is well-written, gripping, heart wrenching, powerful, painful, touching, and impossible to put down. Read it, and you, too, will feel its remarkable value--and message.
  
  I wish this wonderful woman well . She has done so very much to open our eyes.
  
  
• Reason Overcomes Dogma
  By A2CWSBE4NR23ZG on 2007-03-19
  The word "oppression" is often misused, but describes perfectly the effect of Islam on women. They must submit absolutely to their fathers, husbands and even brothers. Arranged marriages, honor killings, genital excision, beatings, headscarfs and body coverings, and more, all to keep the women totally subservient. While I previously knew many of these things, the book is remarkably effective in giving them real meaning for those living in the West.
  
  The book is also a compelling and candid memoir by a highly intelligent, courageous and remarkable woman. Raised dirt poor in Somolia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, she managed to become fluent in English, as well as Somali, Arabic, and Swahili. After landing in Holland to escape an arranged marriage, she learned Dutch, earned a master's degree in political science and and became a member of the Dutch parliament. Her description of culture shock when she arrived in the West shows how much we take for granted. The book tells the story of her journey from Muslim to apostate (a capital crime in many Islamic countries). A major theme is how multiculturalism (however well intentioned) in Western countries has the effect of isolating Muslim immigrants and perpetuating the abuse of Muslim women. For that and other blasphemous behavior [see Submission, Part I on the Internet], she lives under constant death threats.
  
  I bought the book after seeing Ms. Hirsi Ali speak on C-Span. She was dazzling, showing an appreciation of Western values and traditions that would put 95% of Americans to shame.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Surviving a culture of caged virginity.
  By A3D9VXSUDX8J36 on 2007-03-15
  "I didn't know how I'd escape or what freedom might mean," Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes in this highly recommended memoir of self discovery. "But I knew what course my life would take if I went to Canada. I would have a life like my mother's and Jawahir's, and like the life of this woman with whom I was staying in Bonn. I would not have put it this way in those days, but because I was born a woman, I would never become an adult. I would always be a minor, my decisions made for me. I would always be a unit in a vast beehive. I might have a decent life, but I would be dependent--always--on someone treating me well" (p. 187).
  
  In 2004, outraged Muslims named Ali as their next target in a death threat nailed with a knife to the chest of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. At the time, Ali was collaborating with Van Gogh on his film, Submission, which questioned a culture that oppresses women, told through the eyes of five Muslim women. This was also the subject of Ali's 2006 feminist critique of Islam, The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, in which she challenged Western culture and Islam to honestly confront issues of religion and individual freedom.
  
  In her compelling memoir, INFIDEL, Ali shares her extraordinary ordeal in surviving a "culture of virginity" that oppresses women, and threatens their liberty as well as their lives. From her own experiences, she reveals her genital mutilation as a child and then her forced marriage--abuses suffered by other female Muslims. While en route to meet her husband in Canada, Ali abruptly decided to seek political asylum in the Netherlands--where she became a Dutch citizen, enrolled in a university, and then met Van Gogh--a decision that ultimately transformed her into an internationally renowned spokeswoman for the rights of all Muslim women. Ali's ultimate conclusion is that Islamic practices are incompatible in many ways with modern life and democracy, and should not be tolerated in the West without radical transformation. "We in the West," she observes, "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." Ali now works with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. For further reading on this timely subject, readers should consider Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women.
  
  G. Merritt
  
  
• Surprisingly good reading
  By A1VBZ455BHBRD0 on 2007-04-10
  I'd give it five stars but I feel like that should be reserved for the greatest book I'll ever read (whatever that might be). This book surprised me: I'm an older man and I didn't think that this story from a young African woman would interest me that much. But it was easy to read, always interesting, and pulled me through it in just a couple of evenings. I read it to try to get more understanding of Muslim ways. I not only got that out of it but also got as interested in this woman's story as if it had been an action novel. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a super writer who can not only tell a story but also inject humor, slang, and enough human interest so that I felt like I'd gotten to know a new friend.
  
  
• A serial liar
  By A3Q0UM4YTDBLOS on 2007-06-20
  Too bad her interview on The BBC was not included with her book. It exposed her as the serial liar, illegal alien in The Netherlands that she is/was. As an avowed atheist, she can only speak for herself and not Islam. Her "tales" while horrific are the product of a backwards culture, and a patriarchal society. Her story is no different from that of any woman, in any religion. In short, woman get crapped on all the time. Is it fair? H*ll no, but is her story anymore worthy than any Christian or Jewish woman simply because she claims to be a Muslim? Nope.
  
  
• Definently a must read book
  By A1OBPHRXHZF8P6 on 2007-03-17
  Because (like too many other Westerners--particularly Americans) I had limited immediate knowledge of Islam, Ali's book provided an invaluable read.
  
  Born in a Somali family, she later sought political asylum in the Netherlands. Reading what experiences she had to document in order to obtain that status honestly gave me great pause for consideration. I and other Western-born feminists might have good intentions when we undertake 'campaigns' to help emancipate our 'sisters' in other countries from FGM, arranged marriages, and many other practices, but we should have wondered if our actions didn't have at least the smidge of condescending paternalism behind them.
  
  We were subconsciously assuming that 'our way' was the only way and 'that religion' was naturally backwards, despite (like most of America) not actually understanding Islam, particularly the positive aspects pertaining to women's status which are too conveniently overlooked by both fundamentalists and Western feminists.
  
  Unable to imagine having to obtain a bodyguard just because I have decided to look at my childhood religion differently, her revelation in the text is both thought provoking and sobering. Still believing that her faith is important, Ali just holds that it should be a tool for respect and equality rather than a weapon of hate and inequality.
  
  
  This book is infinitely more gripping than any campaign mass-mailing because it shows how a woman successfully and proactively controlled her own life when everything in it initially suggested that others (including older women in her homeland) were going to plan it out for her. Requiring a critical reflection of her upbringing (including prior religious and social customs) this community activism will also transcend to other audiences and their very tough life experiences.
  
  Making real change requires that EVERYTHING be examined---and NOTHING be reserved!
  
  
  
• MUST reading for everyone trying to understand...
  By A3GUK4RWXKHS9I on 2007-04-03
  Is Islam truly a religion of peace and love? Would it be possible to gather around the negotiating table and reason our way out of the Iraq situation and talk the Iranians into putting aside their nuclear ambitions? Read Infidel and you will find the answers. How can we ever find common ground with people who have, since birth, been taught that Americans and Jews are Satan? Either convert us to Islam, or kill us - that's the choice.
  I have admiration and respect for Ali - and what she endured to find a better life - and I fear for her safety. I was deeply affected by her metamorphosis from total submission to her beliefs to her courage to question them. She takes us with her as she reaches for truth. We feel her pain as each bit of enlightenment means that to embrace it and move forward, she must leave loved ones behind.
  I did not understand the life of the Muslim woman until I read this book. It is difficult for us, with all of the freedoms we take for granted, to understand how anyone could willingly live in such subjugation. It is all they have ever known or been taught. And it has been taught as part of their religion. How on earth can we expect to be greeted as the great liberators or even as friends, when they take one look at us and see Satan?
  This book is more than just one woman's story. It is a window into the soul of Islam - not from some lofty, isolated perch - but from the streets she walked, the schools where she learned from the Koran, the mosques where she prayed, and the arms of those who nurtured her.
  You will read this book like a novel - you won't be able to put it down. And you'll think about it every time the news comes on and some seeker of fame puts forth his solution for a quick fix to the problems of the Middle East.
  
  
• Moral Courage
  By A6TAJAYZ5F1YH on 2007-04-20
  The theme that repeats throughout "Infidel" is moral courage. As a girl in Kenya, she endured a fractured skull due to the rage of one of her Islamic teachers. Yet as a teenager she embraced her Islamic faith, even while being ridiculed by some of her peers for wearing an Arab-style hijab. But she also privately questioned the criticisms of the west, especially by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. After returning to her native Somalia, she watched as her country descended into chaos. In one incident, with a knife to her throat, she used her quick thinking and courage to persuade her attacker to let her go.
  
  Things get very interesting when she is married off by her father to a man from Canada whom she greatly dislikes. She decides to flee to the Netherlands and seek political asylum, admittedly using false pretenses. Despite strong curltural pressure, she abandons her Islamic traditions and embraces the progressive culture of her adopted country. And finally after the attacks of 9/11, she even abandons her belief in God. While some may argue this shows a lack of morality, to me it shows intense and admirable moral courage. She stood by her convictions despite pressure from family, society, and even her personal safety.
  
  Finally, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is elected to the Dutch parliament where she fights strongly for the rights of immigrants and women. She ignores the threats of violence from fundamentalist Muslims, and openly criticizes the faith she was born to. With Theo van Gogh she makes the short movie "Submission Part I", which leads to the brutal killing of van Gogh by a Muslim extremist. Her own life in peril, she refuses to stay quiet or back down, and to this day continues to push for major reforms within Islam.
  
  Ayaan Hirsi Ali has earned the right to speak her mind, whether you agree or disagree with her. Her example will hopefully encourage many others to stand up and speak their minds. We should all have the moral courage to speak openly, without bowing to the violent threats of those who somehow are unable to use words to defend themselves.
  
  
• Compelling...and breathtakingly stark
  By AS16T5OQPI4GW on 2007-03-28
  This is a compelling account of a Muslim woman who found--really, ingeniously and courageously struggled--her way out of the Middle East, eventually making her way into Western culture. Hers have been real cloak-and dagger experiences. She has been and continues to be driven by what she sees as an imperative for first exposing and ultimately eliminating 7th century ritualistic and cultural cruelties and injustices perpetrated on Muslim women--still today--even outside of the Middle East. She has been and continues to be a target of radical Islamists. Some of her remembrances and descriptions of Islamic practices regarding girls and women are breathtakingly stark. Unabashedly, she refutes the concept of Islam being a religion of peace and love. AND she's been there and ought to know!
  
  
• A wake up call for the West
  By A2V3P1XE33NYC3 on 2007-04-28
  What an unusual autobiography we have in the form of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel". I can't remember the last time I read a book as unique as this one. It's insightful, powerful, and talks about places in the world most of us in the West have little experience dealing with, let alone understanding. Ali, if you aren't familiar with her, was born in Somalia back in the late 1960s. She resided there for some time before heading off to live in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya before fleeing to the Netherlands in search of freedom from an arranged marriage set up by her father, a prominent Somali who spent years trying to topple the pro-communist Mohamed Siad Barre regime. Her tenure in Holland changed her life in several important ways. One, the choice to flee from her new husband caused irreparable damage to the connections she had with her family. Two, she came to understand the dangers radical Islam posed to the western world. Three, her absorption of western philosophical ideas led her to embrace democratic freedoms and oppose the subjugation of women under Islamic law. This stance, coupled with her embrace of atheism, brought her into direct conflict with fundamentalist Muslims.
  
  Ali recounts the difficulties inherent in living in third world countries in the first sections of the book. Sadly, Islam exacerbated these difficulties for the author. Women, as we all know by now, are treated as second-class citizens in most Islamic nations. The book overflows with sad depictions of arranged marriages, beatings, sexual repression, and other abuses best left unsaid here. One excellent example is Ali's mother, a proud woman who initially set out to achieve good things with her life but who eventually sank into despair and resorted to violence against her children because Islam forbade her to take an active role in resolving her marital and economic problems. Living in Ethiopia and Kenya wasn't so bad, according to the author, because both countries contain significant non-Muslim populations. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, was a nightmare. Ali didn't live in some corporate compound reserved for foreign oil workers. She lived right next door to the citizens, which exposed her to the full brunt of fundamentalist Islamic practices. Woman couldn't drive, couldn't go to the store without a male escort, and couldn't report domestic violence. The local populace blamed their problems on the influence of Jews. What a world we live in, eh?
  
  The last part of the book details Ali's immigration to Holland and her subsequent rejection of Islam. A proud woman and a hard worker, she labored for years to learn the language, find employment in order to get off the public dole, and eventually earned a master's degree in political science from Leiden University. Her education led her to a job with the Social Democratic Party's think tank. She didn't stay here long due to her increasing disenchantment with Islam, brought about by her embrace of western philosophy, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the realization that Muslims weren't assimilating into Dutch society. Ali eventually joined the conservative Liberal Party and ran for a seat in the Dutch parliament. She won, but her strong condemnations of Islamic practices along with her role in the death of controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh (she made the film "Submission" with him, a short movie that attacked Islam's domination of women) brought down the wrath of Holland's "tolerant" politicos. They dug up the fact that she lied on her immigration forms and chased her out of politics. Death threats from fundamentalist Muslims resulted in her exodus to the United States. Today she works at the American Enterprise Institute.
  
  I'm leaving a ton of stuff out in these two brief paragraphs. "Infidel" is more than a quick jaunt through the Middle East and parts of Africa, although that would be interesting enough. Most readers will gain a better understanding about these parts of the world after reading this book. For example, the author elucidates several theories about the third world that explains much about their proclivity for violence and civil war. She credits the tenets of Islam with much of the discord in the Middle East and Africa, a controversial theory that will find plenty of detractors. But it's her explanations about how the clan system works that add additional depth to her ideas. I don't think it's possible to understand the mess that Somalia is in today without understanding how clans work as both a form of economic support for citizens as well as a means of social classification. When you throw in Sunni and Shia distinctions, well, you've got a recipe for the sort of madness we're seeing in places like Iraq right now. The author also points out how Saudi Arabia's funding of radical Islam causes further chaos in these third world countries. What a seething cauldron!
  
  The most disturbing element of the book is the book itself. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a cry in the desert about what's really going on over in the Middle East and, with increasing regularity, Europe. Where are all the other voices that should chime in with additional evidence supporting this author's conclusions? Critics will tell you the paucity of Ali clones proves that she's dead wrong in her analysis, but we ought to know better. There aren't more people speaking out because they're afraid of becoming the next Theo van Gogh; they're afraid some Islamic fruitcake will stick a knife in their chest if they tell the truth. Look at what happened when this author spoke up. She had to go into hiding for weeks at a time in order to avoid execution. "Infidel" is a wake up call to the West just as surely as the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were. We ignore the problem at our own peril. Even worse, we're endangering our children and our grandchildren by ignoring this problem. It's time to wake up and act before it's too late.
  
  
  
• Couldn't put it down
  By A3TEQSE3XOVX1X on 2007-06-18
  I have seen Ayaan Hirsi-Ali interviewed and knew who she was when I got this book, which was riveting from the moment I started to read it. Her life story (to date) is an amazing road of transformation and realization. This woman has determination, intelligence, and courage beyond anyone I have ever met. As a woman born and raised in America and having opportunities available to me from the beginning, I am humbled tremendously by the incredible accomplishments of Hirsi-Ali. Born in Somalia, one of the poorest nations on earth, and having lived in Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia under strict Muslim faith, she managed to educate herself beyond the restrictions of the religion, escape the prison of such a male dominated culture and realize the hypocrisy of the world in which she existed. Against all odds, she survived female genitle mutilation at the age of six, learned to speak several languages, and ultimately disgraced her family by refusing to marry someone she barely knew by seeking asylum in Holland. Amid death threats, she further educated herself and ultimately became a member of the Parliament in Holland with a focus on women's rights and wrote a film about the submission of women in Islam which resulted in the horrific murder of it's director, Theo Van Gogh. The assasins composed a letter to Hirsi-Ali and stabbed it into VanGogh's chest. Her courage to share with us the tragic and horrifying events of her life, including severe beatings, a fractured skull, and her ultimate denouncement of Islam, demonstrates her determination to call to reality the backwards ideology of Islam, specifically the fundamental aspects, which threatens the Western World. She is grateful for all that she saw in the modern world, from friendly police men to social workers and democratic governmental agencies. She was fascinated by bus schedules that ran on time, garbage collection, and all the things we in the West take for granted, including welfare. As Hirsi-Ali was amazed by hot and cold running showers, I am in awe of Hirsi-Ali and wish more educated women of Islam could find such strength and courage to stop the ignorance and violence and hatred that is ingrained in the children in the name of Allah. Unfortunately, education and poverty is at the core of fundamental Islam and it is unlikely to change in those regions where Islam is the law, corruption abundant and women are enslaved. Her insight is invaluable, her honesty is applauded and her curiosity, which brought her to where she is today, is refreshing. Tragically, those values cost her a family who have disowned her and see her as an Infidel, but ironically, her choice to accept and embrace freedom has made her someone they should be very proud of because she is truly a woman of great honor, admiration and success.
  
  
• Full Circle
  By A2526B2XO56NJ6 on 2007-08-20
  Hirsi Ali writes a fascinating account her experience as an child growing up in Islam Somalia. The hardships of the culture, the wars, and the control of the masses by appeal to archaic religious believes is worth reading. She describes the female circumcision she is subjected to, against the wishes of her parents, by her grandmother who still holds to this ancient and barbaric tradition that has been practiced since the times of the Pharohs.
  
  To avoid an arranged marriage (her first marriage with a partner she choose, did not work out) she escaped to Holland where she is treated well, given the means to support herself and eventually even offered a position in parliament which she accepts. One has to admire her courage and her fervent desire to take responsibility for herself.
  
  Other reviewers have mentioned that she tends to confuse culture with religion; unfortunately this is accurate. She rails against genital mutilation of young girls as a barbaric Islam traditon despite the fact that it is not practiced by the vast majority of Muslims. She can be very shrill in her criticism, but does not seem ready to join in the education efforts that are becoming more common and successful in northern Africa to end this practice.
  
  She is concerned with the violence she experienced as a child in her community and quite rightly criticizes the violence often perpetuated and threatened by Muslims. But just as Pat Robertson does not speak for all of Christianity, the most radical of the Muslims are not representative of all of Islam. Hirsi Ali seems unaware of the vast numbers of moderate Muslims who are just as horrified by the hatred of the extremists as she is.
  
  Disenchanted with Holland when her citizenship was questioned as a result of lies she told to enter the country, Hirsi Ali has entered the United States to and is now associated with the Neocon American Enterprise Institute.
  
  Like her, this group has done much to promote prejudice against Islam and supports the denigration of the religion - in all forms. She has come full circle from expressing hatred toward the west and Christianity, as she was taught as a child, to the mirror image of promoting war against Islam and stating that the west should not tolerate this religion. She is still participating in efforts to promote perpetual war among people by inflaming religious prejudices. Now, however, it is Christian hatred and bigotry rather than Islamic hatred and bigotry and she is one who benefits rather than suffers from this ongoing turmoil and strife.
  
  One hopes that Hirsi Ali might eventually use her considerable abilities of critical thinking towards her current associates and situation. It is the arrogance and bigotry of the neocon foreign policy that is largely responsible for inflaming and expanding the misogynistic conservative Islam she professes to hate.
  
  One fears that she has become to attached to her new found power and wealth to recognize her contributions to the horrors of bigotry, ignorance, and violence that are increasingly encompassing our world.
  
  A better book that shows more sides of Islam, as well as the sincere efforts of people to move beyond hatred, reduce ignorance, and eliminate misogyny in Islam is "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
  
  
• A Profile in Courage
  By A13BPBJAYPCBSF on 2007-03-13
  I recently had the good fortune to meet Ayaan Hirsi Ali at a Cato Institute conference, where she gave the closing night address. While she spoke calmly from the podium, the image of grace under pressure, her bodyguards were strategically positioned around the room. I was mid-way through Infidel then; I have since finished the book and handed it on--several copies, in fact--to members of my family. I trust they will find, as I have, that this is an important and necessary book. I judge the writing fluid, the story gripping, and the arguments clearly reasoned. Above all, I am grateful that proponents of liberty like Hirsi Ali, however they are dismissed, reviled, or threatened, continue to speak out with courage and conviction.
  
  
• An amazing story
  By A7SL3YVPPNCZH on 2007-03-26
  Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book would stand alone on its own merits as a breathtaking autobiography (I wish that people who have English as their native tongue could write so well!). Add to that the book's insights on a number of African and Middle Eastern cultures, its observations on Islam, its comments on Europe's politics and welfare states, and its analysis of human psychology...
  
  This book is simply fascinating on many levels. I don't know if I want to compare the author with Voltaire or Spinoza, but her strength of character is truly amazing. [..]
  
  
  
  
• Out of Africa . . .
  By AQE41QO3NEUMW on 2007-04-16
  Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memoir of growing up female of Somalian parents is an indictment of the treatment of women that prevails in many Islamic countries, as well as among Muslims living in Europe. Her story is a harrowing account of domestic abuse, arranged marriage, and living as a refugee, set against decades of tyranny and tribal warfare in post-colonial Somalia. Claiming asylum in Holland, she becomes an outspoken advocate of women's rights and, in a storm of publicity, runs for and is elected to a seat in Parliament. Along the way, her outspoken opposition to Islamic views of women has triggered death threats and the murder of a Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who made a film about her.
  
  While her story is an inspiring example of someone with enormous faith in herself and the determination to defy all obstacles to achieve her goals, it is also a story of self-education, as she learns through her experience and her reading to challenge and reformulate the beliefs she has held since childhood about the world, about herself, and about God. Her book is also a disturbing call to action to confront what she regards as the West's failure to fully comprehend the chief aim of Islam - world domination through complete submission to the God whose word is revealed in the Qur'an.
  
  Her story dwells at length on her childhood, lived in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya - her absent father, an educated man who has given his life to the political struggle to restore democracy to his homeland, her mother, increasingly embittered by life's misfortunes, her domineering grandmother, and her sister and brother. There are the countless members of her tribe, her friends and teachers in school, her father's other wives and children, and the young men who figure romantically in her life. With her eye and her memory for detail, her story becomes an immersion in a variety of widely different African cultures. That same gift for observation illuminates her experience of European culture when she arrives in Holland. For Western readers, her book opens a window onto an unsettling view of Islam mostly hidden from the media, while exploring the impact of Islamic culture introduced to Europe following years of immigration. Readers may also be interested in the novels of Somalian writer, Nuruddin Farah, whose works have covered many of these same themes.
  
  
• Struggle of a Somali woman on behalf of all Muslim women
  By A8YSPYJP5Y232 on 2007-03-08
  Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a fascintating story to tell. After growing up in a traditional Muslim setting in Somalia, she ended up in the Netherlands as an advocate for women's rights and member of Parliament. In part because of death threats by Islamist radicals, she has left Holland and now lives in the U.S. What an odyssey and what an inspiring story.
  
  
• when entering the bathroom....use the left foot first
  By A1V4HZ2I5SD5YV on 2007-02-09
  The contents of "Infidel" are well outlined in the above Washington Post review. I will confine myself to my impressions of the book and author.
  
  This is a momentous work, written by one of the brighter spirits of our day. Already a best-seller in Europe, I'm sure it will receive an enthusiastic audience in America (as did her first work of a year ago: "Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam").
  
  First and foremost "Infidel" is a gripping autobiography of struggle, survival and eventual triumph against the tyranny of Islam. Islamic ideology is totalitarian, regulating every moment of its subject's life, including such trivial things as which foot to use first when stepping into and out of the bathroom.
  
  Also the work is a significant contribution to the social sciences; to cultural anthropology, history, economics, political science and both comparative religion and the sociology of religion. It is the definitive refutation of multi-culturalism.
  
  But perhaps most of all this is a first rate work of literature. It stands as an outstanding dramatic creation in its own right. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a gifted writer whose life was indeed the suspenseful drama she has produced; a page-turner that keeps you wondering how all the problems and conflicts will be resolved. The characters, locales and events are vividly drawn with the sure hand of a natural story-teller.
  
  Ms. Ali does not shy away from relating the most intimate details of her life. She handles this perfectly, as only a person of great character can; she draws the reader intimately close while simultaneously keeping herself at a proper distance. She never sentimentalizes or indulges in self-pity. Her revelations are an essential part of her story and her message.
  
  Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been destined to embody in her person the political and religious crises that rack our time. This is a great burden to bear. She has already proven that she has the inner strength and the mental clarity for the job. I look forward with anticipation to her next work.
  
  
  
  
• Most important read ever!
  By A1PLMJWG7EEWVE on 2007-03-11
  This is the most important book I have ever read --- and I have several advanced degrees. This should be MUST reading for all Americans. It gives insight into the enemy that plans to take over the entire world. It is a fresh view, less pedantic than some of the other good books on islam. It is not about radical islam, but mainstream islam and how it is lived in its own culture. Read it!!!
  
  

• The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
• Infidel
• The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

• The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
• While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within
• The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion
• Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America