Much of Ayann Hirsi Ali's early life was typical of what a Muslim female can expect being raised in East Africa.  What happened after she decided to rebel is nothing short of extraordinary. A review of Infidel.

Infidel
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
published by Free Press (February 6, 2007)
Hdbk., 368 pgs.
ISBN-10: 0743289684

On at least three occasions in the past year I have made reference to Ayaan Hirsi Ali in my articles. On those occasions I have done so while admonishing other public figures. I did so first with Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines in May 2006, arguing that Maines' ordeal was mild compared to Hirsi Ali’s.   Earlier this year, in my review of his book The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, I chided Dinesh D’Souza for omitting Hirsi Ali, altogether although he discussed Theo Van Gogh and his killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, at length.  Most recently, I mentioned Hirsi Ali when I took Ugly Betty star America Ferrera to task when she recently claimed America won’t be the land of the free until President Bush leaves office.

Needless to say the time is long overdue for me to devote an entire column to Hirsi Ali herself. I have just finished reading her autobiography Infidel and can state without ambiguity that she has experienced in less than forty years what people could not experience in ten lifetimes. This is not to say that her experiences are unique to her. On the contrary, much of her life could be described as typical of what a Muslim female can expect –- being told that you are worth half a man, that you are subordinate to your male relatives, that you must submit to your husband’s every whim or be beaten, having your genitals sewn at the age of five so as not to be overcome by earthly temptations, and living each day an inch away from being killed for having disgraced your family’s honor.

Infidel traces Hirsi Ali’s journey from childhood where she went back and forth from her native Somalia and neighboring Kenya (with extended stops in Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia) to adulthood where she would escape to the Netherlands when she was faced with marrying a distant cousin living in Canada against her wishes. In the space of a decade in Europe, Hirsi Ali went from being a political refugee to Dutch Member of Parliament to political exile in her adopted country.

What is perhaps most striking about Infidel is that it is a story about family. Not only Hirsi Ali’s immediate family but the myriad courtesies and customs that bind together members of a tribal subgroup who might share a grandfather from nine generations previous. Yet one might ask how Hirsi Ali became the wave that leapt out of the water and found land. One would likely begin with her father, Hirsi Magan Isse (to whom she refers as Abeh), who was a prominent leader of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) – a political and paramilitary organization opposed to the dictatorship of Siad Barre. Her father’s reputation was such that she and her family were accorded a certain amount of respect not offered to most Somali families. Although Abeh would be absent from Hirsi Ali’s life for months, even years at a time (often spent with other women he would marry and with whom he would father children), there is little doubt that his influence would play a part in her becoming a political figure in her own right. Their relationship was one of love, affection and mutual respect.

Hirsi Ali would have a more ambiguous and ambivalent relationship with her tragically doomed younger sister, Haweya, and to a lesser extent with her older brother, Mahad. But by far, her most complicated relationship would be with her mother, Asha, who took the unusual step of demanding a divorce from her first husband after her father had died. Although under Shari’ a law she had no right to do so, her first husband eventually consented to the divorce. Asha would later meet Abeh and they would choose each other as husband and wife. It proved to be a decision she would come to regret. Even when Abeh was not absent most of energies were devoted to the SSDF. Asha took much of her bitterness out on Hirsi Ali, a middle child she believed to be stupid. For years Hirsi Ali was subject to physical beatings from her mother.   Yet Hirsi Ali treats her mother with a remarkable sympathy:

She was dry and hard, but inside, I knew, it was killing her – all the years of living alone, sleeping alone, the emotional abandonment, and now, again, the public rejection.

Ma became hostile and spoke to me in the ugliest kind of way. She began to beat me again. I think perhaps my mother went a little mad at one point. She had once seized control of her life, in Aden, and then she somehow lost it; now she found herself in a country where she didn’t want to be, with no self left at all. She was marooned. I think that was what made her so angry.

Yet it was the actions of her father that would set into motion the chain of events that would ultimately ostracize Hirsi Ali from her father, the rest of her family and eventually render her an apostate. Later in his life, Abeh lost faith in democracy and would come to believe that Somalia would only be a viable nation under Islamic rule. It was during this time that he would tell Hirsi Ali that he had arranged for her to marry a Somali man living in Toronto. This horrified Hirsi Ali. While her suitor was not an abusive man she believed he was entirely unsuitable for her. If she were to marry it would be to someone of her choosing as her mother had done for better or for worse. But under these circumstances her life was not her own. So she decided to make it her own. When it was arranged that she would stay in Germany while waiting to be admitted into Canada she made the fateful decision to flee to the Netherlands and claim refugee status, although this would come back to haunt her many years later.

In reality, though, the seeds of doubt had been planted years earlier. During her adolescent years in Kenya, Hirsi Ali embraced the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet she wasn’t merely content to memorize the Koran. Hirsi Ali wanted to know its meaning and as it turns out she was not alone. In particular, she was drawn to a weekly discussion group, that included both men and women, that encouraged them to read the writings of Muslim intellectuals such as Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb (who is much admired by Dinesh D’Souza). Still, it proved to be a limited intellectual realm. When Hirsi Ali had the temerity to ask why men shouldn’t conceal their bodies in the same manner as Muslim women were compelled to, she was practically laughed out of the room. Yet her questions about Islam lingered.  Those questions would begin to come to the surface nearly a decade after her arrival in the Netherlands on September 11, 2001. Ali Hirsi had just commenced a position as a researcher for a think tank funded by Holland’s Labor Party when the attacks occurred:

I walked around with these questions for weeks; I couldn’t get them out of my head. I became fixated on the 9/11 attacks. I combed through newspapers, searched the Internet. I saw how many demonstrations around the world took place, actively in support of Osama Bin Laden . . .

Mohamed Atta, the hijackers’ leader, had instructed them on how to “die as a good Muslim.”  He used the prayer every Muslim utters when he is dying: he asks Allah to stand by him as he comes to Him. I read it and recognized it.  Everything about the tone and substance of that letter was familiar to me. This was not just Islam, this was the core of Islam. Mohamed Atta believed that he was giving his life for Allah.

Mohamed Atta was exactly my age. I felt as though I knew him, and in fact, I did know many people just like him. The people in the debating center I attended in Nairobi, for example: they would have written that letter, if they had had the courage to do what Atta did. If I had remained with them, perhaps I could have done it, or perhaps Ijaabo [her half sister] would have. There were tens of thousands of people, in Africa, the Middle East – even in Holland – who thought this way. Every devout Muslim who aspired to practice genuine Islam . . . even if they didn’t actively support the attacks, they must at least have approved of them.

Although Hirsi Ali witnessed civil unrest, extreme poverty and life as a refugee in war-torn Somalia first-hand, it somehow could not adequately prepare her for what she would endure after 9/11. She began attending public meetings and speaking out against terror committed in the name of Islam. In the United States, she would have garnered little, if any notice. But in a country with a population slightly smaller than Massachusetts, Hirsi Ali stood out in the Netherlands like the proverbial sore thumb.  

Soon she began doing interviews for newspapers, magazines, radio and television. And before you can say jihad, she was asked to run for the Dutch Parliament by the rival Liberal Party (which is generally the closest thing one has to the GOP in the Netherlands). She accepted the invitation and won election as an MP in 2003. Unfortunately, Hirsi Ali would spend much of her parliamentary career in hiding. In fact, she was under protection even before the election when some of her older interviews came to public attention, especially one where she described the Prophet Muhammad as perverse.  

Of course, Hirsi Ali would become known the world over with the murder of Theo Van Gogh in November 2004. Hirsi Ali wanted to produce an art exhibit that would show the suffering of Muslim women symbolized by verses in the Koran written on the bodies of naked women. Van Gogh suggested that she make a short film instead, to which she eventually agreed. Originally intended to be the first in a series of several short films about perils of Islamic life, Submission: Part One would air on Dutch TV in late August 2004. After Van Gogh’s murder, Hirsi Ali was once again placed in protective custody after a letter pinned to Van Gogh’s body by his killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, indicated she would be next. For more than two months, Hirsi Ali was in hiding in various parts of the Netherlands, including a safe house near the Israeli Embassy, and for a time was swooped off to the United States.  

Hirsi Ali would eventually return to the Netherlands to resume her parliamentary career. Unfortunately, it would be cut short when questions about her refugee status came to light. Before the election, Hirsi Ali told Liberal Party officials she had told Dutch immigration officials she had come directly from Somalia, had modified her birth date and name (she was originally known as Ayaan Hirsi Magen). She did so because the forced marriage was not grounds for a refugee claim and she would have been sent back and forced to go through with the marriage. Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk would strip Hirsi Ali of her Dutch citizenship and she was thus compelled to resign from Parliament. After an outcry from her fellow MPs her Dutch residency was re-instated. However, Verdonk’s handling of the case would lead to the collapse of the government and force new elections. But by this time Hirsi Ali had made the decision to accept an offer from the American Enterprise Institute and move to Washington, D.C.

Will Hirsi Ali’s existence be more serene and tranquil from here on out? Will she be one of thousands of public figures roaming America spreading her ideas and selling her wares? Or is trouble merely Hirsi Ali’s persistent traveling companion that is momentarily on hiatus? Hirsi Ali is currently working on a new book titled Shortcuts to Enlightenment, a fictional tale about the Prophet Muhammad set in the New York City Public Library. Will the Iranian mullahs issue a fatwa in the same manner the Ayatollah Khomeini did with Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses nearly twenty years ago? Will Muslims find yet another reason to set fire to city streets and burn down embassies while torching American and Israeli flags as they did over the Danish cartoon controversy just over a year ago? Could there soon be trouble on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street? One of the lessons we can take from Infidel is that anyone in the world can ask questions, even if one happens to be a Muslim woman from an impoverished country in Eastern Africa. No matter how repressive the political or religious institutions, all people have the power to ask a question. Anyone who asks a question is an agent of reason. Especially a question with an answer that reason cannot defend. It can be a very dangerous enterprise. Few people understand that better than Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her first name means luck. For all her tribulations, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a lucky woman.

Infidel is available on Amazon.com.