I mentioned last week that I had a stack of books to be read, and I started reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali on New Years. All I can say is that this was an amazing, extremely intense book that opened my eyes to a whole new world.
The book is the autobiography recounts Ali’s days as a child who was raised in an ultra-strict Islam family, moved from Ethiopia to Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia trying to escape the tribal violence and clan fighting.
I learned a great deal about the clan and tribal systems that are prevalent in many African countries. In a place and time where honor and family name matter more than life and death, it’s difficult to be a child who begins to question the rationality and validity of Islam.
The reader learns about how women and children are considered property, regularly beaten and sexually abused through circumcision. Children, both boys and girls, routinely endured the incredibly cruel and painful surgeries without anesthesia or antibiotics, generally in their own home. I hate to mention this because it’s is so awful, but I think we can no longer ignore these things. You can read more about female genital mutilation by reading the World Health Organization’s website.
As Ali grows older and watches the horror around her, the constant killing and continual treatment of women as inferior to men, she slowly begins to crack through the scar tissues of guilt and fear that had be so methodically instilled into her.
After being married off to a man she neither knew nor loved by her father, as was the custom for all women, she flees to Holland on her way to her husband in Canada and seeks asylum in the country.
Her story continues as she adapts to life in a modern world instead of on a dirt floor. She must face the demons of her past and question the values that were literally, beaten into her nearly every week of her life. She works hard to make the most of this opportunity to leave behind her painful past, getting an education, working hard and finally beginning to share her first-hand experience as a Muslim woman with the outside world. She discusses the 9/11 attacks and the death of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, whom had helped her produce a provocative film about the inhumane treatment of women in Islamic countries.
Amazing book. I highly encourage everybody to read it. I learned so much about African culture and the inner-workings of Islam. I understand so much more now and it’s so disturbing. I am even more committed to the causes of women’s equality throughout the world. You owe it to yourself, as a woman (and any many that loves a woman), to be aware of this on-going global tragedy.
GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: I’m so incredibly lucky and blessed to gave just been born in this country and to a loving family.
