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| Infidel | 
 enlarge | Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  236 reviews
Sales Rank: 259
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0743289692
Dewey Decimal Number: 949.2073092
EAN: 9780743289696
ASIN: 0743289692
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her astonishing life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya, to her intellectual awakening and activism in the Netherlands, and her current life under armed guard in the West.One of today's most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following an Islamist's murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the movie Submission. Infidel is the eagerly awaited story of the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished -- and sometimes reviled -- political superstar and champion of free speech. With a gimlet eye and measured, often ironic, voice, Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will, and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely ruled by despots. In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat -- demonized by reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from her family and clan -- she refuses to be silenced. Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 231 more reviews...
A vivid chronicle of a triumphant escape from cultural confinement February 18, 2007
383 out of 423 found this review helpful
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? February 8, 2007
219 out of 270 found this review helpful
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 February 13, 2007
130 out of 165 found this review helpful
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 January 27, 2007
115 out of 142 found this review helpful
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 Kueng (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? February 13, 2007
115 out of 137 found this review helpful
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.
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