INFIDEL
By Aayan Hirsi Ali
£12.99
This is a strong book by a strong woman. It has been published at a time when reactions to Islam are growing less tolerant and will serve to incite more to despise this faith. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a well-known figure, and here she tells her story of her journey from Somalia to America and Muslim to atheist. It is a readable book, a real page-turner, and it is a very important book for Christians.
Ali writes well, her opening is striking as she describes her mother’s and grandmother’s upbringing in nomadic clans in Somalia. Life is harsh and honour-based, Islam a mere veneer on ancient animistic culture.
Civil war
As Ali changes her focus to her own beginnings the situation changes. In the horrendous civil war of the 1970s and 80s her father is a political activist and some-time prisoner. The family has to keep moving from city to city; Mogadishu to Mecca and Nairobi. Ali suffers with her brother and sister physical and verbal abuse from her headstrong mother. She undergoes the horrors of female ‘circumcision’ aged five, has friends who are flogged publicly for being in the country without a male protector.
Her life is limited and she looks forward only to an arranged marriage to the right clan member.
It is in her teens that Ali comes across the Muslim Brotherhood — the organisation seen to be at the root of much modern day fundamentalism. A revival erupts in Nairobi — people can’t get enough of preaching and praying and public morals are transformed. Ali herself strives to follow the prophet’s teaching, and struggles to accept her teacher’s answers — but eventually concludes, ‘We were all hypocrites’. The burden the prophet placed on his followers is too much.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali managed to escape Somalia and ended up in Holland; but that is not the end of the story. When there, she is granted refugee status, studies for a degree and becomes an MP. Her mission is to alert the West to the oppression of women in Islam and pave the way for reform and questioning. This mission has led her to death threats, and a colleague of hers, Theo Van Gogh, to assassination. Our climate is changing and many are listening to her voice, though, of course, both Westeners and Muslims deny the validity of her claims.
It would be easy for Christians to feel smug about this book — we knew Islam was this bad all along! But instead it should cause us to pray with increased compassion for Muslims, and to think hard. We need to think about how graceless Christianity is no different from Islam, we need to think about how we use our freedom, and we need to think about how we can share the gospel with those dominated by a worldview based on honour and fear.
Sarah Allen
Home
Archives
Subscriptions
Adverts
Find a church
About us
Contact us
Site Map
Printable