Customer Reviews: Read 251 more reviews...
 Do Not Miss This Book September 6, 2008
What a fantastic woman. Incredible story. Open your mind to the world outside.
 Gutsy, But Should Have Gone Much Further September 5, 2008
Hirsi Ali is a survivor. She details her painful experiences as a Muslim female throughout her life vividly and candidly and deserves credit for that alone. She escapes an arranged marriage and winds up seeking political asylum in Holland, where she eventually gets elected to serve in Parliament
As she learns to appreciate her freedom, she begins questioning what she was taught about her religion: women are possessions, the problems Muslims face are created by the West and Jews, honor killings are acceptable etc.
She eventually leaves her religion behind, drawing attention to what she learned and experienced as evidence that her teachings were severely flawed. How can the West, where there is so much freedom, and life is so much better than in Muslim countries, be the cause of their problems? Why shouldn't women have an equal say in their choices? Why should women have to hide their bodies lest men have uncontrollable sexual attractions to them, and men not have to hide their bodies, as if women had no concept of sexual attraction? Why could women walk down the streets in Holland with their legs, arms, necks showing, and not get raped every second? If a woman gets raped, why is it her fault?
Hirsi Ali rejected the notions that the West had any part of the plight of Muslims, and for her bravery, received many threats to her life. Indeed the director Theo Van Gogh was murdered because of his involvement in a documentary he made in conjunction with her.
Hirsi Ali repudiated what she was taught about the West multiple times, but never said anything about how what she was taught about Jews was incorrect. As late as 9/11 (2001), she mentioned that she could have understood what happened on 9/11 (please note, I'm not saying she condoned what happened), had the hijackers been Palestinian, and left notes saying that the terrorist acts were against the US because of its support for Israel. Yet she never addressed what you said about Jews in terms of any enlightened experiences or knowledge. She did speak about the embarrassment Holland felt for its complicity with Hitler, which would have been a perfect time to mention her feelings, yet they weren't addressed.
Hirsi Ali went to great lengths to show how and why she rejected her early teachings. Every single objection was gone over repeatedly. Yet she never addressed the claims about how Jews were responsible for Muslim problems.
I wrote to her at the American Enterprise Institute where she works, about my concern asking for her to address that, and received a letter from an associate telling me that Hirsi Ali reads all her email, but doesn't have the time to answer everyone. Fine. But it would have made sense to be directed to some writing where this issue was addressed. Apparently, there aren't any.
I was torn between giving this book five stars or one. I decided to split the difference, and encourage the writer to explore her feelings and write about what Muslims say about Jews.
Harlequin Saves August 29, 2008
In her book "Infidel," Ayaan Hirsi Ali acknowledges several people who made it possible for her to survive the Islamic tribalism she grew up under in Africa, to escape to Holland after her father arranged for her to marry a man she didn't love and to prosper thereafter. But if I were to cite one overriding factor that saved her, it would be the Western novels she read.
Throughout "Infidel," Ali brings up these books again and again, particularly in regard to love, sex and marriage. To understand their impact, it's important to recognize the mind-numbing, repressive culture she had to endure. Ali was born in Somalia to religious, clannish Muslim parents, and her mother taught her to memorize old chants of war and death, raids, and camel herding, and female Somali poetry that never mentioned love, which is, she writes, "considered synonymous with desire, and sexual desire is seen as low -- literally unspeakable."
Fortunately, Ali and her family moved to non-Muslim Kenya, where she attended a British colonial-based school and learned English. There she read "1984," "Huckleberry Finn," "Wuthering Heights" and tales by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.
"Later on there were sexy books: Valley of the Dolls, Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steele," she writes. "All these books, even the trashy ones, carried with them ideas -- races were equal, women were equal to men -- and concepts of freedom, struggle, and adventure that were new to me."
Here are some other excerpts:
"[T]he spark of will inside me grew even as I studied and practiced to submit. It was fanned by the free-spirited novels ... Most of all, I think it was the novels that saved me from submission. I was young, but the first tiny, meek beginnings of my rebellion had already clicked into place."
"I always found it uncomfortable to be opposed to the West. For me, Britain and America were the countries in my books where there was decency and individual choice."
"I knew that another kind of life was possible. I had read about it ... [T]he kind of life I had always wanted, with a real education, a real job, a real marriage ... I wanted to become a person, an individual, with a life of my own."
"Infidel" is a great study for someone who would like to (further) concretize the crucial, life-sustaining role that art plays in man's life.
~ Joseph Kellard
Theainet1@optonline.net
A must read!!!!! August 28, 2008
Ayan Hirsi Ali's account of growing up as a Somali woman in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Germany, and the Netherlands, what she endured, her search for religious meaning as a Muslim and her struggle to be her own person was inspiring and a must read for all!!!!!!
Honest, Life-changing August 28, 2008
One of the few life-changing books that I would consider a must-read for all: honest, direct, and with inspiring moral clarity.
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