Book
Review
The most
authentic people are those who quest after truth. The quest can be extremely
agonising and even life-threatening when it questions certain truths that are
held as absolutes by large numbers of people. Ayyan Hirsi Ali undertook that quest
and her book Infidel: my life is the story of that quest.
The book has
two parts which are titled ‘My Childhood’ and ‘My Freedom’. Born in Somalia, the
author had a terrible childhood that was totally controlled by the rigid traditions
and conventions of her clan and her religion. Somalia practises a very fundamentalist
version of Islam which regards girls as subhuman creatures who have to be
subservient to men in every imaginable way. A woman is not supposed to have any
individuality of her own in that version of Islam. She is a man’s slave. Even
as a wife, she is not supposed to enjoy her sexuality; her religion sews up her
sex in the ritual of female circumcision. She is only a hatchery for producing offspring
for her man who may marry other women as he pleases.
Ayyan’s father
himself had three wives. He seldom cared for the family as he was a political
activist who often lived away from the country itself. Ayyan’s mother wouldn’t
go for work since she was a faithful Muslim woman who believed that women were
not supposed to work outside the home. Hence the family had to depend on the
clan for subsistence. The book presents many members of the clan as well as
other people whom Ayyan had to encounter in those days. We get to see how most
of these people were deluded by the primitiveness of their religious faith
which made them believe that all their misery was part of Allah’s eternal plan
for them.
As she grew
up, Ayyan began to question her religion and its rigid and prejudiced codes.
The second part of the book shows us how she slowly moves away from Allah and
his perverse prophet whom the author accuses of paedophilia among other vices. The
Prophet legislated every aspect of life, says the book. Even your body parts
are not your own, let alone your thoughts. The Quran dictates what is permitted
and what is forbidden. Even to this day. Thus the holy book “froze the moral
outlook of billions of people into the mind-set of the Arab desert in the
seventh century. We were not just servants of Allah, we were slaves.”
Ayyan came to
the conclusion that the Quran was not a holy document. “It is a historical record,
written by humans. It is one version of events, as perceived by the men who wrote
it 150 years after the Prophet Muhammad died. And it is a very tribal and Arab
version of events. It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on
controlling women, and harsh in war.” True Islam, she says in another place, “leads
to cruelty.”
The author ran
into a lot of problems because of such opinions which she expressed loudly and
clearly. She could afford such candidness because she was living in Holland to
which country she had run away in order to escape from a marriage which was
arranged by her father against her wishes. Holland even allowed her to become a
member of its parliament. But even Holland “where prostitution and soft drugs
are licit, where euthanasia and abortion are practised…” could not ensure the
safety of a woman whose thoughts rebelled against a dominant religion of the
world.
Infidel is the story of a fundamental rebellion. Its author
is someone who will fit into Albert Camus’s classical definition of a rebel as
one who says no to a system and goes on to create an alternative system. Ayyan
deserves to be read.
"Ayyan deserves to be read"- Yes, your review proclaims that loud and clear!
ReplyDeleteIt's a hard choice to give up one's religion and god. Only genuine seekers do it and so she is a rebel with a cause.
DeleteI salute her courage for writing such a book.
ReplyDeleteShe can afford that courage because she's living in America.
Delete