From the very beginning Maya Khankhoje knew she had to review this book, but till the very end doubted she could do it.

Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Free Press Publications, Toronto, 2007.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, one of the most controversial feminists  in Europe,  has also  been named one of the  hundred most influential persons in the world. She is also admired for her straight-forwardness  in spite of her prevarication, her self-confessed lies and  the use of fake documents.  She has  been let-go by the left, embraced by the right, derided by intellectuals  and denounced  by traditional and progressive Muslims alike. However, anyone can identify with her suffering because her story is the story of millions of women today. 

Her name first burst into the international scene when Theo van Gogh, a controversial Dutch  film-maker, was assassinated in Amsterdam over Submission: Part I a film produced by him and scripted by Ayaan. Van Gogh’s murder itself was a scene from a movie. He was shot down in broad daylight in front of fifty witnesses, and a five-page letter addressed to Ayaan  was impaled on his chest. The perpetrator was a Moroccan Muslim extremist offended by the film which depicted half-naked women with misogynist verses from the Koran painted on their skin.

Then came Mijn Vrijheid, 2006  (My Freedom), her memoir in Dutch later  translated into English under the title of Infidel, a moniker hurled at her for having  forsaken her people and Islam.  

Infidel is a complex book although its author claims it has a single message: “We in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily by elevating cultures of full bigotry and hatred towards women to the status of respectable alternative ways of life”. Ayaan is referring to the transition from a feudal, patriarchal Islam predicated on blind  submission to Allah  to a modern one based on dialogue and humane values. Her book also criticizes well-meaning multicultural policies that wind up  preventing  the full economic and social integration of immigrant minorities. It also condemns politicians of any stripe who pander to the patriarchal values of male religious leaders to the detriment of women’s rights.  

Ayaan’s  got a point there. Take the case of the Ontario government’s decision to accept Sharia law  for family mediation at the expense of  Muslim women’s rights. Thanks to her outspokenness and single-mindedness,  female circumcision on Dutch soil was brought into the open and  honor killings were introduced into official crime statistics.

Infidel  is a  multilayered memoir  because it offers a first-person account of tribal warfare in Somalia, whose despot Siad Barre jailed Ayaan’s  father forcing the family into exile in Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Ethiopia. It  also depicts genital mutilation from the perspective of a five-year old girl who had to suffer its horrors  as well as hear  her  younger sister’s screams when they infibulated her as well. Love for her parents is a leitmotiv in  this book even though her frustrated mother abused her physically and her affable father  abandoned the family when he took another wife without bothering to inform anyone. During her exile we see her development as a civil rights activist when she helped several families across enemy lines thanks to her language skills and her spunk. There is tenderness in the  story of how she fell in love with her religious tutor who  tried to make out with her while teaching her the evils of eroticism. Her account of how a  fanatical religious leader cracked her skull open trying to teach her a lesson  as well as  the pain her mutilated genitals endured  during her first sexual experience is equally harrowing.    

Ayaan’s father, who returned to  his family after a ten-year separation, forced her to marry a Somali man in Canada “for her own good” and the fortunes of the family. As Ayaan traveled  to Canada via Europe, she sought  asylum in Holland under the pretense of political persecution. No need for that, her genuine tale of patriarchal abuse should have sufficed.

In Holland she quickly adapted  to the host society with the help of kind social workers and friends, learnt enough Dutch to become a qualified  interpreter, acquired a  live-in boyfriend,  obtained  a Master’s in political science  as well as Dutch citizenship and  a seat in Parliament. In the process, she also got labeled  an Uncle Tom  for having denounced her roots, and a political turncoat for having jumped  from left to right. To charges of political opportunism, she quipped: “I am a one-issue politician.”  To charges of  self-hatred, she retorted: “To accept subordination and abuse because Allah willed it – that, for me, would be self-hatred.”

Ayaan’s rise was meteoric and so was her fall. She lost her seat in Parliament and her Dutch citizenship – temporarily—because of the events surrounding Theo van Gogh’s murder. She also lost her freedom of movement and peace of mind when a fatwa against her forced her underground.

Ayaan  currently  lives in D.C. and works for Washington’s American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank. Why have I never used her last name in this review? Because she has many. Her name is actually Ayaan Hirsi Magan, daughter of Magan, granddaughter of Ali ….. and so on dating back to 300 years ago.  What made her turn against such an illustrious Islamic lineage?  9/11 she contends, placing the blame squarely on Islam, without attempting any kind of nuanced  political analysis.           

You must absolutely become acquainted with her world  in order to decide whether you agree with her world view or not.