583. Infidel- Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2007)- Summary

583.  Infidel- Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2007)
Islam means submission and its root is the base for the Arabic word for freedom.
This book is a biography of a young Somali woman who eventually rejects the Islamic way of life.  She realized, as time passed and she had contact with non-Islamic people, that Jews were not the monsters she had been taught that they were.  Christians were not pigs who would burn in hell because they happened to be born Christians instead of Muslim.  The authors review of surgery performed on young girls to guarantee that they would be virgins at time of marriage are subjects I find most difficult to express. The story itself sets women off as less human than a man.  Such as system puts women at the disposal of men.  To define the practice as just makes language almost meaningless.
She came to realize that government to achieve quality must be secular, that tolerance is derived from a willingness to see that there are other ways to look at life.  
I was numbed when I read that young muslim women greedily read Harlaquin novels.  Novels which I have always condemned as literature of the lowest quality, but her story made me realize that even these simple novels contain something utterly absent in the Muslim world- the presence of free will.
Her father arranged a marriage for her.  When on her way to Canada where her husband lived, she escaped and went to Holland.
Many Westerners condemn Western colonialism and imperial capitalism as the reason for chaos in so many African countries. Ali sees it differently. Somali has civil war and Holland does not is summed up in her assessment that in Somali a child is taught to hit first, in Holland aggression is not acceptable and institutions exist to control and deal with aggression.  In Somali aggression is the answer.
She wondered why in shelters there are so many Muslims who have suffered beatings. Beatings are accepted in Somali society.  Muslim education does not teach contemplation, thought, drawing conclusions, gather evidence, examine and question. Muslim education is rote learning, paradigms, dogma, no questions, just submission to Allah’s will,  Allah will solve problems, there is no self will, Allah replaces that.
She admitts that spouse abuse exists in Holland and racism but it is not approved by society at large and instututions are in place to deal with it.

She learned that freedom is intimidating because it requires constant thought and deep responsibility on one’s part.
The book gives detailed description of her sister’s difficulty with life and final death. Muslim culture had sapped her sister’s will, she could find no direction, discover no purpose to her life.
Her sister died. She does not blame Islam yet she does it was part of helped to shape a culture which sucked the marrow out of life and removed hope, presented countless problems and because there was no room for questions, discussion and thought eliminated any means of drawing conclusions.
She was amazed that people could break up and a woman fall in love with someone else and there was no murder or aggression. A woman could choose.  This was something which Ali had never seen until her arrival in Europe.
In a discussion with her father she once said that a state ruled by Islam could not be safe because humanity is varied and Islam requires that all be the same.  It is totalitarian.

She read an article by Paul Scheffer.  In it he said that social unrest would be the result of  the presence of Muslim people  who denied rights to women, homosexuals and rejected separation of church and  state.  She did not accept this until she saw two planes strike the World Trade Center in New York.

After watching a program on TV  that a gay teacher was harassed by Moroccan students she wrote a letter to  the news editor stating that Islam had never gone through a “process of Enlightenment that would lead people to question its rigid approach to individual freedom.  Islam didn’t just oppose the right of homosexuals to live undisturbed. Anyone who had been to an abortion clinic or a women’s center could readily see that the sexual morals of Islam can only lead to suffering”.
Full realization came when she saw planes strike World Trade Center in New York on September 11.  She prayed that Muslims were not the attackers.  She said that evening that America was not like Holland;  America would retaliate.  Hollanders, she found looked for excuses: colonization, American imperialism, a self indulgent society  The Dutch found it inconceivable that a people could murder and make war in the name of religion.
“It was not a lunatic fringe who felt this way about America and the West.  I knew that a vast mass of Muslims would see the attacks as justified retaliation against the infidel enemies of Islam.
People talked of the Islam that was peaceful and civilized.  Ali seems to say that that religion no longer exists.  It has become backward and primitive and intolerant, bent on controlling all thought and keep women in suppression.  Men in a way are also suppressed because any questioning is squeezed out from a very early age.
She came to question state support of parochial schools.
Poverty she says does not cause terrorism- poor people are too busy with sustenance  living.  Intellectuals flock to the west.  Claims of racism had little to do with reality.  Other blamed USA and its support of Israel.  The attackers were not Palestinians, not poor- it was religious belief.  She watched Osama Bin Laden’s old interviews in which he quoted the Quran:
When you meet the unbelievers, strike them in the neck.
If you do not go out and fight, God will punish you severely and put others in your place.
Wherever you find the polytheists, kill them, seize them besiege them, ambush them.
You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as friends: they are allies only of each other. Any one who takes them as an ally becomes one of them. 
This from the hadith:
The Hour (of Judgement) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.
Ali says the she read the Quran.  These she says are quotes from the Quran. It pained to check but there they were.
She says the no Muslim can now ignore the conflict between reason and religion.
Muslims were taught that life on  earth was/is temporary.  Does this cause someone to question injustice in everyday life? Prevent innovation? What mechanism was there in Islam to adjust to modern concepts of human rights?  What role would debate, argument, collection of facts, logic have in accommodating human diversity? 
She calls the Islamic system “static tyranny”.  “It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women and harsh in war.”
She cautions again and again on the blunder in not coming to grips with the fundamental nature of Islam and the West’s perpetuating guilt about past mistakes of imperialism. These are not the root of the problem, not poverty, but a religion which views all those not part of Islam as not expendable but in need of elimination.
She mentions the difficulty of writing articles which honestly discussed these matters.  News agencies did not want to offend, parties did not want to contribute political disruption or injure a party’s chance at election.
She belonged to a think tank for the Labor Party. She recommended research into causes of unemployment crime due to cultural issues.
“Most women in Holland cold walk the streets on their own, wear more or less what they liked, work and enjoy their own salaries and choose the man they wished to marry.  They could attend university, travel, purchase  property.  And most Muslim women in Holland simply couldn’t.  She asked: How could you say that Islam had nothing to do with that situation?  And how could that situation be in any way acceptable?
Ali:  “When people tell me that it is wrong to make this argument- that it is offensive, that it is inopportune at this particular moment- my sense of basic justice is outraged. When, exactly, will it be the right time?  Dutch parents breed their daughters to be self reliant; many, perhaps most, Muslim parents breed them to be docile and submissive. As a result, immigrants’ children and grandchildren don’t perform the same way as Dutch young people.
At this point Ali became an atheist.
She sees danger in the relativism of the Left.  If you think it is ok, then it is ok.  This is the formula for using the power of the intellect to make no decision, ironically a vote for the status quo.  (It seems to me that Leftists in their resistance to ideas by Conservatives have become reactionary and intrenched.  The essence of human rights is not found in hard and fast adherence to the status quo but in a willingness to change and adjust to changes in society. Curious isn’t it?)
Once elected to Parliament  Ali’s interview she had before the election was aired.  In it she said that Muhammad was a perverse man and a tyrant.  Death threats increased.  There was uproar. She was under guard at all times.  She was confronted by members of her own party (Liberal Party) for her remarks.  She said:
“What surprises me is not that one person in this room has asked “Is this true?’ If the Prophet Muhammad went to bed with a nine-year-old girl, then according to Dutch law he is a pedophile. If you look at how the Prophet Muhammad ruled, he was a lone ruler, an autocrat, and that is tyranny. In Parliament Ari did get bills passed fro support for Muslim women.
“Many well meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these Westerners are the ones who misunderstand Islam.  The Quran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse, so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience or their community.  ...I wanted non-muslim  people to stop kidding themselves that “Islam is peace and tolerance.”
Government at her insistence began to keep statistics about honor killings.  The news was appalling. Ali’s ideas were no longer looked at as kooky ideas.
”What matters is abuse, and how it is anchored in a religion that denies women their rights as humans. What matters is that atrocities against women and children are carried out in Europe. What matters is that governments and societies must stop hiding behind a hollow pretense of tolerance so that they can recognize and deal with the problem.”
She meets Theo van Gogh, movie director.  They make a 10 minute movie, Submission: Part One revealing Islamic lack of consideration for women.  In Christianity and Judaism one is not submissive to God but in Islam one is utterly submissive to Allah.
She suggests that Islam must be modernized.  But to do so requires dialogue with God.  At the moment this is insolence for such dialogue means that one is equal to Allah.  Ari asked for protection for Theo.  No one saw any reason for concern.
Theo was butchered. Not murdered but butchered.  If you want to know the details, read the book for yourself.
Events seemed to unfold rapidly.  Upheaval in Holland.  The government feared for Ali’s life.  She was shuttled off to the USA.  Upon her return there was a movement to have her citizenship revoked. It was. Then more turmoil.  A movement to have her citizenship reinstated. It was. By then she lived in the USA working for a think tank (American Enterprise Institute).  She does not complain or blame the Dutch but it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that someone(s) saw security in having her out of Holland.
At the end of the book she reflects upon events and circumstances.  Radical of Islam do not understand how committed Westerners are to an open society. She is thankful that someone with her background could achieve such success.  Once she encountered  Saudi Arabia’s Islam.  It is wishful thinking by Westerners to imagine that Islam practices peaceful tolerance: hands are still cut off, women are still stoned, etc.
The thinking she saw in Saudi Arabia is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. Tribal concepts determine right and wrong. “It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy and double standards.  It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam.”
“The message of this book...is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.”
“Life is better in Europe than it is in the Muslim world because human relations are better, and one reason human relations are better is that in the West, life on earth is valued in the here and now, individuals enjoy rights and freedoms that are recognized and protected by the state. To accept subordination and abuse because Allah willed it-that, for me, would be self-hatred.”