Infidel

The Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali-A Must Read

For an autobiography this book is amazingly readable. I could not put it down even though I knew how it ended. Ali writes beautifully and gives such stark descriptions of life as a woman in a third world Muslim family.

Most important was the insight she gave into her transformation from a faithful Islam believer to an agnostic. Her explanations of her early instruction in Islam, all the prohibitions, her beginning doubts, (ie men didn't crash cars in Holland by being distracted by women in modern dress) her eventual rejection of Islam help to make the current political climate clearer.

I am not certain I can agree with her conclusion not to trust any Muslim, but I can understand that with her life threatened why she must feel that way.

I constantly had to remind myself that she is just 42. She is so strong, courageous and has accomplished so much.

11 out of 12 people found this review helpful.

From a Muslim Prespective

When i read the book i did understand some of her arguments and her anger is justified but she is blaming the religion instead of society ,culture and tradition. The Koran doesn't state anywhere to have a female circumcised but it is simply a cultural thing in some countries.My mother had never heard of circumcision of a women and was disgusted by it. Although i do understand her when it comes to freedom for Muslim women i myself a young Muslim woman found that i argued her beliefs.

7 out of 15 people found this review helpful.

Specious and fallacious

Here's the deal if you wish to become a bestselling author and undertake public catharsis - go Ali's way. Denounce your faith and find a scapegoat for your suffering. You will get noticed by the bign guns. Never mind if your content is illogical and specious. Never mind if a dysfunctional and unnatural childhood has marred your life write it all up in reams and get published. Look at one of her opening paragraphs 'There is the woman who is flogged for committing adultery another who is given in marriage to a man she loathes another who is beaten by her husband on a regular basis and another who is shunned by her father when he learns that his brother raped her...' This account could be from anywhere around the world. Ali gives a horrifying, global problem a very narrow perspective and thus does a disservice to her sisters. Her myopic view of religion and culture have shaped her subsequent chapters. Ali who has had a difficult and painful childhood blames its all on her religion. She could have mentioned how average women fight this problem in the backdrop of civil wars, penury, drought and bloodshed given readers some food for thought Her book implies all women in the east are are humiliated, insulted and tortured. This is not a coming- of- age- book but a I- want-to-blame-someone-for- this autobiography that jars even non muslim sensibilities. Unfortunately this will start a trend other floundering writers will go Ali's way.

6 out of 15 people found this review helpful.

Not Typical

I have just put to rest Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel. I would implore any reader of this book to search for the truth of Islam thru sources other than biographies such as this. So much she has experinced is fascinating, yet when reading about 'her Islam' is was full of cultural traditions and NOT the faith itself. As an American woman who converted to Islam 16 years ago I can testify to that. As the Quran states, 'READ!'

5 out of 11 people found this review helpful.

Fight for Freedom

Infidel is a book that focuses on not hatred or spite, but rather the differences that exist and the need for citizens of the world to recognize the role of Islam in modern culture. No other book has ever dared to cross the extremes of the political and religious realms . Ayaan Hirsi Ali defiantly challenges the traditions of Islam and their beliefs towards Western culture. She exposes the harsh realities of female mutilation and numerous other discriminations that preside within the Muslim community. Infidel brought the reader into a world of alienation, civil war, and family values. Ayaan Hirsi Ali manages to survive the death and violence that constantly traps her in Africa through an arranged marriage of which she flees from and seeks refuge in Holland. This book inspires both passion and sympathy. The tales Ali tells are sadly true, and are in dire need to be addressed. Ali provides readers with intimate information about the ways of Islam in Africa, and then tells about her own spiritual journey to realization. An excellent choice of reading that undoubtedly reveals a conflict between Muslim prejudices and Western ideals, this autobiography is bluntly horrifying and absolutely necessary to read for further understanding of today's religious and political clashes.

5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

A Must Read!

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!

5 out of 7 people found this review helpful.

Not what I was hoping for at all

I'd heard so much about this woman, but nothing about her life story. I was hoping for something a little more.. groundbreaking. This sounds more like the spotlight seeking writings of her predecessors that just have bitterness over their raising. Granted she had a tough life, but not everyone with a tough life needs to write a book about it.

4 out of 12 people found this review helpful.

One of the BEST memoirs you'll ever read

After I finished this book I felt like buying a copy for everyone in this country. A must read to understand Islam, which, when left to rule a country is permeated by cruelness, torture, and a total and complete rape of freedom. A must read for the politically correct among us who think every religion is equal and expouses truth, but fail to see the implimentation on humanity that proves otherwise.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

NEGATIVE BOOK

I feel that she has suffered so much in a Country that has done her wrong so she says. She states that female mutilation is from her religion and I decided to ask and do research and I found out that this only happens in Africa to African women. I feel that she is pointing the blame on the religion when she should be blaming the culture that she grew up in. You see the Koran is written in arabic and africans do not speak arabic they speak there own languege and has it translated to them (by men of course) and they are seeing and reading it from a mans point of view. I was born in an arabic muslim country with 30% Christians and as a Cristian myself I am able to read the Koran and it is very similer to the Bible but it all depends on who is translating it and how its perceived. No it does not say circumcise your daughters and beat them. It says teach them. I think Ali is pointing her fingers in the wrong direction. I also take offence in the fact that she wants to stop religious schools since she thinks it is wrong. Well I think it is wrong that she doesnt beleive in GOD and is now an athiest and she has the nerve to fight what teachings parents want for their kids.

3 out of 10 people found this review helpful.

A Must Read for all those who are seeking answers to the great questions of our times.

The author puts to rest the false impression that Islam stands for peaceful solutuions in solving the differences of the world's religions; that it is a religion that stands for toleration. She stands up for women's rights denied in the world in which she had been born and from which she had escaped. Forced marriages of young girls to older men, female genital mutilation, second class citizenship for women in the Muslim world: battles against these abuses are the ones she has chosen to fight, perilous to her life.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

dont read this book

it's completely biased

2 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

An Iraqi-American Muslim review!

Never, never confuse between cultural and religious teachings. Simply the word "Islam" means "to surrender, and it call to worship the one and only God and live in peace. I respect some of her opinions concerning women's rights and that children shouldn't be beaten, this is true, but this is actually related to the traditions and culture of the places she live in, I lived there and that gives me the privilege of judging. She is educated and she must know better, but alas, money can screw people's minds!

2 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

Resonates beyond Islam

Provocative and thoughtful. A young woman's life under the spectre of religious fervor is narrated with eloquence. The bigger lesson is that fundamentalism, irrespective of religious hue, curtails individual freedoms. Christianity too is awash with similar examples.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

This book is an autobiography of the brave and controversial Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The account starts with her strict upbringing by her grandmother who lived as a nomad. She gives us insight into the Somalian social hierarchy, and the world through the eyes of a Muslim child. The beginning of the book actually makes the reader sympathize with Muslims and gives one an understanding of why societies embrace Islam how the it affects the dynamics of personal relationships in these societies. The latter part of the book shows her exposure to Western society and it's ideals, and how this prompted her to question what she had considered an absolute truth. This book is not an Islam-bashing book by an apostate, but rather an account of how a member of the voiceless side of a religious culture defied her fears of the afterlife through reflection and perseverance. While western authors who are critical of Islam will be discredited for not knowing the 'true Islam', I am sure Ms. Hirsi Ali will receive the same treatment as an apostate.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Graphic Must-Read

Infidel starts low and slow, with sometimes graphic depictions of Ms. Hirsi Ali's childhood, and blossoms into the best coming-of-age story I've ever read. This memoir is well thought out and written, witty, biting, and condescending of self; written with flair and humbleness. You're taken on a journey of her life so far, and at the end, I was dumbfounded right along with her about how far a person can come. Definitely recommended, definitely a must-read.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A great biography of an African woman who was freed not only by her choices, but by literature.

This book is simply exquisite. Ali deals quite effectively with her impression of many ideals and reveals her perspective on Islam, from first hand experience. It is not so much a revelation of Islam as it is a coming of age of a girl into adulthood.
The way she shows her mother, who must obey her husband and eventually how she has to take out the stress that is heaped on her. It shows that Ali could have grown into something else entirely, but it was her dreams and also, her exposure to literature that actually put ideas into her head. A must read book, that also shows the importance of education to women who suffer under the pressures of extreme societies.
The book contains a lot of different elements and my particular favorite was her escape from Germany. It was brief, well written, and exciting. This book is a must have for any book clubs since it covers so many issues. Many of which are still current. Female circumcision, literacy, Islam, immigration, racism, welfare states, and many others. Promote it and read it. I love this book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Simply Outstanding

This is the best book I have read in the last five years - perhaps longer. Not only is it insightful and educational about the world of Islam and the treatment of women, but it teaches those of us who are products of Western culture, that it is necessary to question any religion that practices extremism and oppression.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

Every now and then, a book comes along that shatters sacred myths and forces us to look at evil up close and personal. This book could only have been written by a Muslim woman. One great myth in the west is that 'Islam is a great, peaceful religion that is being hijacked by a few crazy people.' Infidel shatters this myth into a million tiny shards of glass that cuts deep into our collective souls. One of the most critical points Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes it that Islam is incredibly intellectually thin. There is nothing to debate or question or discuss. You must simply submit. That's it. Allaya cannot be questioned. Period. The Quran is absolute. With this attitude, there is no room for intellectual growth. Another key point she makes over and over is that Islam has never been through a reformation. It has remained unchanged from the seventh century and has no desire to change on its own. Only force and will power will bring about the civilizing influences this so-called religion so desperately needs. As I slowly turned the pages, the enormity of her message hit me full force: Islam is terribly afraid of freedom. At some gut level, the practioners of Islam realizes that their collective views and ideas cannot survive in the free market of ideas. That is why freedom is feared by all who embrace Islam. Once people are allowed to ask questions, the whole house of cards comes crashing down. Islam cannot survive in the bright light of reason. It grows and thrives in the dark shadows of hate and death, where young girls are horribly mulitated in the name of God and women are routinely beaten for no reason at all. Miss Ali takes us on her painful personal journey to understanding and in so doing, she reinforces the words of Plato from twenty-five hundred years ago: 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' She has fired the first shot in exposing this vast fraud in the west. Now it is up to us to show just a small amount of the courage she has shown to bring us the truth. This should be a must read for anyone truly interested in the true face of Islam. Her words speak truth to power and there is no way she can be intellectually challenged. No doubt she will be hated by the 'true believers' who would love to kill her for no other reason than she chose to speak the truth. However, we can no longer say 'we didn't know.' Now we know, thanks to this incredibly brave and gifted young woman. Great job!!! Keep it up.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

'Riveting'

This book in a riveting, page turning, intriguing revelation into the world's most mysterious and dogmatic religion. Ayaan's journey in unraveling the truth behind the veil is a intimate expose' that gives insight and understanding to the otherwise ambivalent true nature of Islam. A must read!!!

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Literally jawdropping!

Hahha mu yeacher was reading this and her mouth just wouldnt close! She was gasping the whole time! We all wanted to know what happened so i decided to read it. It. Is. Amazing.