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So, while I know all the names of these people who were important and influential in her life, I don't have a 'sense' of any of them.It was interesting, though, following her rise and the literal politics of how one goes from being a Somali refugee to a member of Holland's parliament. She says the world would be outraged if it new how many honor killings occur today. So I finally finished Infidel, and I still hold to the opinion that this book is not a great literary piece. In it, four women represent four types of oppression that she feels Islam perpetuates - total submission to men, arranged marriages, physical abuse and sexual abuse. This is what makes Infidel a worthy read. And, I was really interested in her message. She uses verses from the Quran that she feels supports the oppression.The producer who helped Ali with this film was murdered two months after its release in broad daylight - a knife plunged into his chest stabbed a five-page letter of warning addressed to Ali.
It is one thing for a person of means to learn of someone's plight and spend the rest of their life fighting for a cause of the weak and helpless. The monotonous rhythm of events never changed. And, "[t]he fact is that hundreds of millions of women around the world live in forced marriages, and six thousand small girls are excised every day."So she has dedicated her life to giving a voice to all the Muslim women who are oppressed, abused and silenced. In a world where it is so politically incorrect to speak against a specific religion, Ali lives every day in fear of her life for what she has exposed about what Islam teaches to Muslims.In 2004, Ali made a short film with a producer called Submission. (The last female is a young girl who was raped by her uncle, but is now pregnant and so will be punished for having sex outside of marriage). It is quite another for a women with no means, who knows first hand, to rise above out of sheer will and be able to enlighten the world around her of what she knows because she has lived it - and escaped. Infidel
I read this book for discussion with my book club and then was lucky enough to be invited to a surprise appearance by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I saw many parallels, none of them pleasant.But as to INFIDEL, this is a book that ought to be required reading in any Woman's Study course or any course about the Middle East or Immigrants to the Netherlands. Ali's final conclusion was to excoriate the entire baggage of religion and expose it as an excuse to abuse women.If you enjoyed this book, you might be interested in Jasmine Sharif's Caged in America: One Woman's Journey through the Veil.
I think she's an inspiration to women of all creeds and cultures. No consideration was given to her welfare or the welfare of the other women in her family. She's a brilliant woman and used every bit of her genius to extricate herself from one nightmare after another.
Sharif, another Muslim girl, grew up in the US in a very dysfunctional family of Yemen origin and was basically sold several times so that her father could collect a bride-price. I have to say the female genital mutilation scenes were very very hard to read. But I think people have to know the truth about such matters if the world is to change.
It was considered perfectly okay for husbands to beat their wives and even attempted murder was swept under the carpet. It is very eye-opening.
Wonderful experience of a struggle of freedom from a woman that should be named a hero.Written well and with passion and strength that is a symbol of what a hero is all about.I recommend this to everyone and especially to women to learn about the things we take for granted.Do not order through the smeilkalbooks as the size and text is smaller.
By being polite and taking a "live and let live" stance toward the Muslims among them, they are white-washing Islam, making the same mistake I did by believing one should not attribute the bizarre actions of an extremist few to the central tenets of the religion, based on the Quran.Hirsi Ali tested Osama bin Laden's statements, alledgedly from the Quran, knowing she would find them there. He was offended, not only because of his pride, but because of his decades-long study of world religions.Like many "open-minded, tolerant people," I said "You can't lump all Muslims in with the extremists." He told me Islam is Islam and there is no milder version of it.I shared these conversations with a mutual friend who told me of her experience reading Infidel. president because of Islamic ties). Any literal interpretation of the Quran - and Muslims believe they have no right to "interpret" so they must take it word for word - demands the killing of all infidels: all non-Muslims.
I called him prejudiced. A neighbor began sending me anti-Muslim emails (also casting aspersions on the U.S. She looked anyway. I will quote one exemplary sentence. I got it as soon as I could and read it in two days (it's a page-turner).Written by a woman with a degree in political science, in 2005 named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People, it is a "from the inside looking out" examination of Islam.
Yes, they were word for word, are word for word. Where she grew up "Death comes riding on raindrops that turned to floods." (p. He said they would not rest until they have killed every non-Muslim (whom they call "infidels"). They aren't supposed to associate with the rest of us. One could compare Hirsi Ali to a young person who joined the Hitler Youth, and 15 years later condemned the Holocaust and renounced her ties with Naziism because of the Holocaust.
Then the book carries a perspective of "outside looking in" - but knowing the truth and the intent of the inside.One of the flaws, if this is not too harsh a word, in Dutch society, which Hirsi Ali persistently calls passionate for freedom, is too much tolerance. We are polluting the world of their god.If cannibals moved into your neighborhood would you think it civilized to look the other way and let them practice their beliefs, their religion, as they wish.Infidel is a must-read book.Others have praised Hirsi Ali's writing style. 346)
Ali the gift of faith:"The Prophet did teach us a lot of good things. 281)Ms. Ali thinks her mother is the one who is irrational:"Ma taught us to tell the truth because otherwise we would be punished and go to Hell. The scientific basis of humanism is the pseudo-scientific idea that humans are superior to animals, not because humans have spiritual souls and animals don't, but because of evolution. Ms. In the Eastern Roman Empire, by contrast, emperors gave orders to bishops. In the west, bishops and popes gave orders to emperors, kings, and princes.
Of course, Ms. Ali's motivation is not to increase the hatred of and prejudice against Muslims and their religion. With fear and trembling, we hope for a perfect fulfillment in the Hereafter based on our human experience. 272)But ultimately she decided not to believe in God:"One night in that Greek hotel I looked in the mirror and said out loud, "I don't believe in God." I said it slowly, enunciating it carefully, in Somali. At one point, Ms.
The long process of seeing the flaws in my belief structure and carefully tiptoeing around the frayed edges as parts of it were torn out, piece by piece--that was all over. Ms. Our faith is a positive response to the message of miracle workers and prophets that our freedom is before God, that our past will be gathered up when we die, and that our death will be the defining moment of our lives. I found it spiritually appealing to believe in a Hereafter." (p. 45)Both of her parents, as well as her teachers, gave Ms. You can fight the oppression of women, Ayaan, but you must not link it with Islam.'" (p. My theory is that the freedom and prosperity of the West compared to the rest of the world was caused by the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the Roman Catholic Church.
Ali started her political career by criticizing a Muslim leader for saying in a TV interview that homosexuality was sinful:"To the Somali in me, this attitude was familiar; but the Dutch person in me was shocked. Our father taught us to be honest because truth is good in itself." (p. Humanism replaces the study of revelation (theology) and the study of being (metaphysics) with science. Ms. Germany carried out the first Darwinian genocide from 1904 to 1907 when tens of thousands of Africans were killed in Namibia. After describing the hardships of a pious Muslim wife with a cruel husband in a country where divorce is not allowed, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says:"If you are a Somali woman you must learn to tell yourself that God is just and all knowing and will reward you in the Hereafter." (p.
Christians who quoted from the Talmud to justify their hatred of Jewish people invented the scam. This is an old trick. Western civilization rose above that of the rest of the world long before the 18th century. The angels, watching from my shoulders; the mental tension about having sex without marriage, and drinking alcohol, and not observing any religious obligations--they were gone. "It felt right.
The interview caused a commotion, and I sat down and wrote an article and sent it to the NRC Handelsblad. And I felt relief. Ali not just skeptical about the Hereafter, which is deism, but thinks people who do believe in revealed religion are irrational. Ernst Haeckel, and other early Darwinists, thought that some races were superior to the other races and that the life of some human beings has more value than the life of other human beings. When contemplating own existence, we see ourselves against an infinite abyss that we call God. Humanism is the belief that our goal in life should not be to serve God, but to serve mankind. There was no pain, but a real clarity.
Ali is trying to persuade herself that she has not lost anything when she lost her faith in Allah. 286)Ms. 12) Married Somali woman believe in the Hereafter for the same reasons I do, which is the same reason single or married, educated or not, Christians, Jews, and Muslims do. Ali's father pleaded with her:"My father said, 'Islam does not say women should be beaten. Islam is a religion of freedom, and peace. In the 19th century, humanism and socialism became important movements for social change throughout the world.
266)The so-called Enlightenment occurred in the 17th and 18th century when people began educating themselves instead of being educated by the Christian churches. People like Thomas Jefferson and Voltaire got miseducated and became deists. Ali is in no position to criticize others because she herself does not see the irrationality of her father's explanation of why people should be honest. Deists like Voltaire justified their anti-Semitism, as well as their deism, by quoting from the Old Testament. The ever-present prospect of hellfire lifted, and my horizon seemed broader." (p. I wrote that this attitude was much larger than just one imam: it was systemic in Islam, because this was a religion that had never gone through a process of Enlightenment that would lead people to question its rigid approach to individual freedom." (p.
Ali links the violent behavior of many Muslims to Islam by quoting from the Koran. Ms.
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