Customer Reviews: Read 243 more reviews...
 One Woman's Story August 17, 2008
I know the purpose of a review is to comment on the book, rather than other reviewers. However, I must say that giving one star to this book because other women have gone through "worse" or that the reviewer doesn't agree with Ali's personal feelings is, to me, utterly ridiculous. This is her story and her coming of age. Do we minimize her amazing story because her repeated beatings weren't as "bad" as other women? Do we ignore her story because we don't agree with her? No. This is her story, her life, and her journey. She's not telling you to agree with her. I myself wonder at her ability to survive it all. Her intellectual and emotional feelings about Islam, again, are HER feelings. I'm certainly not an expert on Islam, but I feel it is condescending and patronizing to state that she confuses religion with culture. She's lived with and in Islam all her life: doesn't that make her rather an expert on the subject? You may not agree with the path she has taken, but please don't minimize her understanding of Islam or her journey. Let's use her story and her life as a first step towards discussion and understanding.
Courageous Lady August 14, 2008
Succinctly put, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one courageous lady. She overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to escape the persecution of islam in her native Somalia and become a free woman, a Dutch citizen, and a member of the Dutch Parliament.
For people who have been lulled into thinking that islam is a religion of peace, some serious rethinking is in order. Granted, as practiced, islam varies somewhat from country to country--some being worse than others--but the ignorance, warfare, barbarism, horrible treatment of women, hatred of everything and everyone un-moslem, and blame-everyone-else attitude all seem to be prevalent everywhere in the islamic world. Ayaan vividly tells of this--not from research but from her own life experiences.
If you want to read an amazing story of literal slavery to liberty, you must read this book. Once you get within the first few pages, if you are anything like me, you will have a difficult time putting it down until you have finished.
Infidel August 12, 2008
amazing story, amazing book, amazing woman. I am highly impressed with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her book. The book was a page turner and Ali is a gifted writer. She is a strong voice for women everywhere.
A must-read for all, politicians included August 7, 2008
This is a gripping book with a fascinating autobiographical story, as well as a focused analysis of what Muslim communities in the West today are like. Ali has the experience, as a formerly observant Muslim and (brief) member of the Muslim Brotherhood, to provide insights and to make an excellent case for every point.
It's must reading for all politicians, as well as all Americans.
This could be the most memorable book I've read all year.
A Must Read August 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If one text has succeeded in challenging the complacency of the West, indeed of supposedly enlightened people the world over, to the rising threat of fundamentalist Islam, it is Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. From her perspective as a woman who has survived the treacherous grip of Islam over both her body and her mind, Ayaan counters the oft repeated proclamation that Islam is "a religion of peace." Narrating her own intimidating journey through oppression and hatred in Islamic Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and the rapidly growing Muslim enclaves of Kenya and Europe, Ali rehashes in masterful and often touching prose her harrowing trials and the series of cruel acts perpetrated against her in the name of the religion she herself so desperately clung to.
Young Ayaan survives her mother's descent into insanity, her abusive male relatives, female circumcision, and constant religious and tribal warfare by dreaming of the life she can only read about in Western novels. She is finally forced to choose between her dreams and the harsh reality of life as a subservient Muslim woman when her father promises her hand in marriage to an aging Somali expatriate who has come to seek a proper traditional wife in Kenya. Her choice is flight, but reaching her imagined paradise in liberal Western Europe she discovers that Islam has arrived ahead of her, bringing with it so much of the terror she had naively hoped to have left behind. After a soul wrenching self-examination, Ayaan cuts the final cords to the religion and culture of her birth, to become a one woman crusade against the oppression perpetrated by Islam, and innocently defended by the "accepting" European Left.
For anyone who is left unsatisfied by the all-encompassing doctrine of cultural relativism, Ali is a breath of fresh literary air. When we unquestioningly "accept" Muslim culture, are we also accepting the horrific abuse of Muslim wives and daughters? What of religious and ethnic minorities suffering throughout the Muslim dominated Arab world and East Africa? Ayaan convincingly argues that in our zeal to be inoffensive, we have allowed for a level of intolerance and violent hatred that would not be tolerated in any other religion. It is time, Ali is telling us, to force an enlightenment in the Muslim world, to bring it up to the same standards by which we judge the Christian West.
Quill says: Infidel is a must read!
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