Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From Clan-Dominated Muslim Somali to Atheist and Global Critic of Islam, 16 April 2007
Infidel is an overwhelming book to grasp. Why? Well, because so much has happened so far in Ms. Ali's life. In addition, she takes you into mental spaces where you've never been before and this takes more than a little stretching.
Here's the bottom line: In the course of her first three and a half decades of life, Ms. Ali moved from being born into a medieval-type lifestyle in Africa and Arabia based on Islam to becoming a prominent social critic of Islam in Europe and the United States who is well listened to wherever she goes. At the same time, she required enormous personal security to keep her alive as those she criticized sought to silence her.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in a traditional high-clan Somali family whose father was a leader in the Somali civil war against the Marxist dictatorship of Siad Barre. While her father was progressive in some ways, her grandmother wanted to follow all traditional practices. Her mother was estranged from her father, and often seemed to be fighting a losing battle for her sanity. As a result, Ms. Ali seemed to get the worst of each person's influence.
Her grandmother forcibly arranged for her female circumcision. Her mother used to alternate between beating Ms. Ali and forcing her to do all of the household work. Her father was usually absent except when she became an adult and he forced her into an arranged marriage she opposed. A Muslim teacher once almost killed her through a beating.
Early in her years, Ms. Ali began to value equality for women and decent treatment from the men in the household. Those instincts were viewed as totally anathema to her family and clan members.
On her way to join the new husband picked out by her father, Ms. Ali escaped to Holland where she becomes a successful applicant for refugee status. She soon was earning a living as a translator to help pay for her education, and later worked for a political think tank. There, her outspoken views about the dangers of permitting Muslim practices to be freely followed in Europe caused quite a stir. She became a Dutch citizen and was able to switch parties and run for Parliament, earning a seat in her first election. With this prominence, her criticisms had more effect.
Ms. Ali burst on the international scene in 2004 when she collaborated with Theo van Gogh to create a short documentary, Submission, Part 1, that had rocked the Muslim community with its physical and psychological boldness. A partially undraped woman is portrayed speaking directly to Allah rather than submitting to her faith in totally covering clothes. Two months later, van Gogh was assassinated. In the aftermath, the quest to keep her safe made her life a nightmare. In the aftermath, her citizenship was challenged and she has since moved to the United States to continue her role as a social critic of Islam.
|
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than fiction, 2 Aug 2008
It is rare to find a non-fiction book that is as gripping as a good thriller. This one is in the cannot put it down genre. It is such an amazing story that if written as fiction it would have been beyond belief. Here is a woman who goes from communist Somalia to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Germany, Holland and America. She becomes Dutch and nearly loses her citizenship. In the process she is in part the cause of the fall of the government of The Netherlands. Several times she nearly loses her life. She is accorded the highest security protection ever after her friend is murdered in the name of Islam. After 9:11 she renounces her faith and becomes the infidel of her title. She insists that the real Islam is not the religion of peace but the motivator of terrorists. She has devoted her life to exposing the Islamic mistreatment of women. Her description of her own genital mutilation and that of other Somali women is horrific reading. But as well as this horror and that of the disintegration of her country as Siad bare fled, there is delight here. Her innocent description of her marvel newly arrived in Europe is beautiful. She asks how can these counties of unbelievers run so well with polite and helpful police? If Islam is so right and superior, how come Islamic countries like her own are in such a mess?
She is compassionate and caring to her family which forces her into marriage against her will and then disowns her. She becomes a Dutch MP only to be forced out of her new home by Muslim hatred. She exposes the folly of multiculturalism, the liberal Western folly of thinking Islam and democracy are compatible. She is a brave woman.
|
|
|
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An amazing woman who fought her way out of the clutches of Islam, 4 Feb 2008
Amazing, not a word I use often, but this word describes Aayan Hirsi Ali perfectly. She was born with a sense of justice in Somalia to Somalian parents,her father was heavily involved in politics, but not so involved with his family.
Aayan was the stalwart of the family,the well behaved elder daughter badly treated by her mother, but this giving her a sense of survival from the harsh family,harsh country & cruel Islamic teachings.
She tells her story without self pity,just the events & facts, which I admire greatly, this is not a novel it's almost a diary.
Her story takes you from here,her decision to escape from the clutches of Islam, a forced marriage & her arrival in Holland, where to her amazement she found men didn't rape the first woman they saw without Islamic dress.
Where she could speak her mind,where people were kind, where people helped & respected her, where most of all they listened to her.
This for me was the best part of the book,to read a Muslims 'unbiased'[ who by now is almost an Apostate] view of democracy.
All the lies she had been fed by Imams over the years on what we the Infidels were like she now saw first hand it simply wasn't true.
It's a sad, cruel,but uplifting story which should be read by all in the west, it's a crash course in Islam, it tells how life really is for the majority of Muslim women,from female circumcision to the way marriage is conducted by Muslim families, where the girls have no say in the choice of their life long partner,a husband.
The husband who does the most barbaric thing on the wedding night to their brides,the way women are shut up in the house whilst men have free movement without restrictions, how women are slaves to them & their needs.
Is it any wonder that this woman now fights for Muslim womens rights.
She became an MP to speak on their behalf, was & is still, being hunted down for speaking against Islam, the penalty is death.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Christopher Hitchens
by Christopher Hitchens
by Aravind Adiga
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home