Has anyone else read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel? I am almost finished and I’m interested in what people think. What’s on your book shelf?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
It’s a history of McCarthyism in America, or more broadly, a history of the relationship between the US and the USSR. Pretty interesting book.
I just finished reading Jeff Sharlet’s The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
It’s riveting and very eye-opening; not only does it look at American fundamentalism through an entirely different prism (much as Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine did for American capitalism) it sheds light on a whole new facet of American foreign policy.
Buy it!
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s anti-Islam diatribe is a piece of propagandistic crap. If you want to read something real about Islam, try reading something from Karen Armstrong, who is a well recognized and well-respected authority on religion, and who does not have an axe to grind about Islam one way or another. I recommend starting with her book A Brief History of Islam.
I don’t think the story of her life is propagandistic crap. I think her experiences with Islam in Somalia and Kenya were so negative that she tends to generalize about that brand of Islam as if it is the norm, which in many significant ways it is not.
Obviously, genital mutilation, if you have been unlucky enough to experience it, it going to have the potential to put you off the belief system responsible for it. The question is, to what degree is Islam responsible?
In any case, it is worth a read.
Except that her “experience” with Islam has been at least partially fabricated to sensationalize it, and make her into more of a victim than she was.
As for FGM, while it is a terrible practice, it is important to be aware that it is not an Islamic practice whatsoever. It is, in fact, according to most Islamic authorities who have addressed it, distinctly UNIslamic. For starters, in Islam a woman is as entitled to sexual pleasure within marriage as is her husband.
FGM is a practice that apparently originated in Africa among non-Muslims (animists, if I recall correctly), and was, unfortunately, adopted by Muslims, Christians, and others on that continent. It is most commonly practiced in Africa where it is widely used by non-Muslims, including Coptic Christians in Egypt and elsewhere. It is not used in the Muslim world NEARLY as much as the propaganda would lead you to believe, and is mostly confined to Africa.
Perhaps surprisingly, FGM has turned very few girls and women against their religion, be that religion animism, Christianity, or Islam, so it does not seem very likely that this is what has made the author so eager to help further the cause of the islamophobe demonizers.
What we need is not more books like this, but more books by knowledgeable people who are trying neither to promote, nor to demonize Islam. That is why I recommend Karen Armstrong’s book, among others.
FMG is not necessarily related to religion. It is also prevalent among Christians in e.g. Kenya and Ethiopia.
she addresses the issue in her book. I don’t fully agree with her interpretation but I also am sympathetic to it. What I think is a valid criticism is that she makes it seem like FGM is a strictly Islamic practice.
But her argument, if I may paraphrase, is that FGM as it is practiced by Somalis is very tightly intertwined with a culture of virginity that is heavily promoted by their Islamic teachers. It’s less cause and effect than a kind symbiotic relationship.
I think there is merit in that argument, but she abuses it and takes it beyond what I think is supportable by the facts.
As for Hurria’s accusation that she has somehow exaggerated her hardships, its very hard for me to see where that is the case. I didn’t live her life, but the accusations she addresses are that she was not excised and that she was a willing marriage participant. Obviously, the facts of her life make it obvious that she wasn’t a willing bride…she fled. And I have no reason to believe she wasn’t excised.
Booman, most of her claims about her family, her allegedly “forced” marriage, her sister’s situation, etc., etc., have been found to be simply untrue. In fact, the government of Holland considered stripping her of her citizenship for lying in order to be admitted into the country. She has been deeply discredited in Holland.
She has, for all practical purposes, fabricated her life.
All of that is b.s.
You are clearly buying a smear campaign against her.
Whatever the merits of her ideas, those lies about her background are totally discredited.
Sorry, but SHE is the one who has been discredited.
And by the way, when she came to the United States she presented her credentials to all kinds of conservative “think tanks” and was turned down by every one except the American Enterprise Institute, the lovely neocon think tank that helps guide the Bush administration.
“An article about her being discredited in Holland for lying in order to obtain refugee status:
MP in immigration row to leave Netherlands
“Somali-born politician admits lying to get asylum“
Some comments on a documentary produced and shown in Holland:
“The documentary I believe demonstrates, in devastating fashion, that Hirsi Ali is an even bigger fraud than she is given credit for by people with genuine knowledge about the subjects she pontificates on. Why? Because she is an invented persona. As you may know, her reputation is built on her purported suffering as an oppressed Islamic woman, forced marriage, and determination to escape not only this forced marriage but the purported consequence of leaving it – an honour killing at the hands of her shamed relatives.
Among the facts revealed by this documentary, that I can of course not independently verify:
Zembla = Dutch television documentary programme produced by VARA (left of center) broadcasting organisation
VVD = Free People’s Democracy, main liberal (i.e. right-wing) Dutch political party (currently governing coalition member)
News from Zembla: VVD Knew that Ayaan Hirsi Ali Invented her Escape Story
The VVD parliamentarian Ayaad Hirsi Ali is in actual fact named Ayaan Hirsi Magan. She falsified her date of birth upon arriving in the Netherlands and invented a story to obtain asylum here. She also tells a very different story about her marriage than her ex-husband, her brother, and an aunt who were present at her wedding. Hirsi Ali claims she was married off [against her will by her family], others deny this. This and other issues are examined in the Zembla documentary The Holy Ayaan. Zembla conducted research in the Netherlands and Canada, went to Kenya and Somalia, and spoke with people who knew Ayaan well but have never before talked about her. Zembla discovered contradictions in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s life story.
Ayaan spent the first seven years of her life in Somalia. The Magan family left the country before the civil war began. Father Magan was an opposition leader against the dictator Siad Bare. After the family briefly lived in Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, it moved to Nairobi (Kenya). There Ayaan and her family obtain refugee status. They live there twelve years. Ayaan’s schooling is financed by the UN refugee organisation UNHCR.
In 1992 Ayaan arrives in The Netherlands via Germany. She has never been clear about her escape story: “I thought. ‘if I tell the truth I will be sent back to Germany. Because the rules are very clear if you apply for asylum in The Netherlands: You first have a discussion with someone from Vluchtelingenwerk [an organisation of volunteers that assists refugees]. The discussion thoroughly prepares you [for your formal interview with the authorities]’.”
By remaining silent about her background, she unjustly obtained a residency permit in The Netherlands. According to international agreements you can’t obtain refugee status in two different countries. Yet Ayaan obtained this status in both Kenya and The Netherlands. Because Kenya was according to the [Dutch] Ministry of Foreign Affairs a safe country, Somali refugees who arrived from Kenya were supposed to be sent back to that country. [NB: Many were]. Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Zembla: “I invented the entire story. I also didn’t state that my name is Ayaan Hirsi Magan, but that it is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I did not tell that I was born in 1969, but said I was born in 1967.”
Hirsi Ali states that she informed the VVD leadership about her invented story before she was presented by it as a candidate for parliament. The party confirms that this was not seen as a problem. Hirsi Ali says in Zembla that her father married her off [i.e. against her will] to a Somali man in Canada. She was purportedly against the wedding and also not present on her wedding day. In Zembla Osman Quare (her ex-husband) states: ‘We were in love with each other and she was present at the wedding’. Her aunt, Faduma Osman (who was present at the wedding) says: ‘She was there and she was very happy. I didn’t hear her complain’.” Her brother Mahad tells: “Ayaan was there, her husband was there, and so was my father. It was a big event’.” Ayaan however insists on her version of events. “I was not there and I know where I was”.
ZEMBLA: `The Holy Ayaan’, Thursday 11 May 2006 at 20.20 on NPS/VARA on Netherlands 3.
From an article in The Economist (sorry, you have to have a subscription to see the whole article):
“the muddy account given in this book of her so-called forced marriage becomes more troubling when one considers that Ms Hirsi Ali has built a career out of portraying herself as the lifelong victim of fanatical Muslims. Another, even more disturbing story concerns her sister Haweya’s sojourn in the Netherlands. In her earlier book, “The Caged Virgin”, which came out last year, Ms Hirsi Ali wrote that her sister came to the Netherlands to avoid being “married off”. In “Infidel”, however, she says Haweya came to recover from an illicit affair with a married man that ended in abortion. Ms Hirsi Ali helped Haweya make up another fabricated story that gained her refugee status, but the Netherlands offered her little respite. After another affair and a further abortion, Haweya was put into a psychiatric hospital. Back in Nairobi, she died from a miscarriage brought on by an episode of religious frenzy. “It was the worst news of my life,” Ms Hirsi Ali writes. Mental illness, abortion, failed marriages, illicit affairs and differing interpretations of religion: much as she tries, the kind of problems that Ms Hirsi Ali describes in “Infidel” are all too human to be blamed entirely on Islam. Her book shows that her life, like those of other Muslims, is more complex than many people in the West may have realised. But the West’s tendency to seek simplistic explanations is a weakness that Ms Hirsi Ali also shows she has been happy to exploit.
Hurria, Yes. This performance artist is now a recipient of right-wing welfare at the AEI and has her face and video interview plastered on the front page of the on-line WaPo. Ms. Hirsi Ali is an extremely intelligent, pretty, poised fraud.
You forgot dangerous in your string of adjectives.
Yes, her story has been discredited but using the row dreamed up by Rita Verdonk doesn’t help your argument.
She only went after Hirsi Ali to make her own point about immigration–of course, this is about immigrants of a certain background. E.g., it was Verdonk who proposed a ban on women wearing burquas. She is a case of crass grandstanding.
Remember, Verdonk’s shenanigans ultimately got her kicked out of the right-wing VVD.
Verdonk nothwithstanding, Hirsi Ali lied in order to be admitted to Holland as a refugee. She lied about her name, her year of birth, and she lied about her personal background and circumstances in order to qualify for asylum. She also fabricated a life history for the purpose of selling books, selling herself, and selling a vicious anti-Islamic/anti-Muslim agenda. In some cases she has changed her stories with the telling (e.g. the story about her sister).
And by the way, one DOES have to wonder whether she lied about her name and her year of birth in order to conceal her identity so no one could locate her family and associates from her past in order to check out her story.
are you willfully lying?
She entered Holland on the lam from her husband and family. And they still tracked her down. And she never denied that she used a false story to gain refugee status.
That’s what SHE claims. Her story has not held up under scrutiny.
I am just finishing Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals.”
Fantastic read. Senator Obama seems, so far anyway, to be paralleling Lincoln.
me too! best nonfiction I’ve read in several years. Obama does indeed seem to be taking some lessons from Lincoln’s campaign.
i’m not well informed about the post Civil War era, so I’m about to start Eric Foner’s Reconstruction.
I have on my bookshelf and have read “A Brief History of Islam.” Karen Armstrong is “the” authority in my view.
Armstrong is a very interesting woman. And a great writer.
So, why are you wasting time on anti-Islam fabricated crap like that book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
It’s a stunningly touching book. Have you read it?
There is a moment about two-thirds of the way through where it makes a transition from a strictly autobiographical memoir to a political and cultural criticism of Islam. The transition is rather abrupt, but she does lay the predicates down for several hundred pages.
I would not dispute that the latter third of the book can be seen as an attack on Islam that lacks a lot of nuance, but the first two-thirds of the book are quite amazing.
But the first two-thirds of the book are partially fabricated.
Yes, I think you’re right about Karen Armstrong–she is VERY good, very thorough. Just damned impressive.
I’ve read The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It’s very good, and definitely made me a fan.
And by the way, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book is also a pack of lies. It turns out things did not happen quite the way she tells them.
She is not the only woman to make stuff up in order to jump on the islamophobia gravy train, nor is she the most brazen fabricator, but she is among those “former Muslims” and so-called “Muslim reformers” who have found a way to profit from the fact that Muslims have become the Communists of the 21st century.
Yes, sometimes it does seem you can say anything you like about Muslims and get published, no matter how factually problematic your story, so long as the story itself reinforces popular stereotypes. Forbidden Love and Burned Alive come to mind.
Jim Douglass has a fantastic new book out titled JFK and the Unspeakable…Why He Died and Why It Matters. A product of some 15 years of research, Douglass brings to light Kennedy’s true turning to a deep vision of a peaceful and disarmed America and the opposition this created within the security state that ultimately killed him for daring to follow this vision. Kennedy was joined in this turning by Khrushchez who had realized within the hellish possibilities of the Cuban missile crisis that they had to join together to rid the world of nukes. Khrushchev communicated with Kennedy by long, hand written letters smuggled to him inside of newspapers. Douglass is also at work on books about the assasinations of Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. Three hundred and eight nine pages with one hundred pages of foot notes and not one unremarkable page ! Truly a deeply important book for today and the quest for a sane and peaceful country. It will change your view of history AND make you realize that we have to think about, and plan for the very real possibility of an attempt on Obama’s life before the election. It was hard to type that last sentence, but, when you read Douglass’ book, the same stark conclusion will become apparent. Obama is simply not the candidate that the security state can accept. To read this book is to both weep and hope.
I’m about half way through Jim Webb’s new book A Time to Fight. It’s a very good read.
Paragraphs three, four, and five of chapter one, but there is quotable material on almost every page.
Two pages later. Damn I wish I could write like that.
I’m reading Cybermancy by Kelly something or other.
Heh. I had to get a little goofy for a minute.
I just started White House Ghosts: Presidents and their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger. So far, so good.
Hirsi Ali? Well, I don’t dismiss her experiences or those she may have witnessed but I don’t know if her methods will really help those women and girls who are abused. She’s very willing to say bad things about Islam–and no doubt there are some very bad things about it, indeed, i.e. the obsession with virginity.
But of course, Islam is hardly the first or only religion to obsesses over virginity. If she’s really fearless, she’d tell the folks fond of purity balls that theirs is a sick and perverted obsession. But that won’t happen.
That said, I’d love to borrow your book. If I can play with my favorite Shih Tzu first. 🙂
Booman, you might be interested in this critique of Ali. I have not had the time yet to read her myself. I’m currently avidly reading Avi Shlaim’s Lion of Jordan. The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace. It’s throwing new light (for me) on the conundrum in the Middle East.
Oh, I gotta read that. I have said before, when the history of the Middle East in the twentieth century is written, the name Hussein of Jordan will loom very large on the page.
King Husseuin of Jordan was not the “wonderful courageous enlightened ruler” he is portrayed as being. He was a typical U.S. puppet dictator who did what he thought he had to do to please his western masters, and oppressed, tortured, and gave favours depending on who opposed and who supported him, just as they all do.
I stocked up through a book club about six months ago, but I haven’t been reading much, outside of the net readings. It’s still an interesting collection, and I have read some, and I hope to get back into the reading habit soon. Here’s an extended list of readings for the last year or so (I’m including some pre-book club stuff at the bottom).
Secrets of the Kingdom; the inside story of the Saudi-US connection – Gerald Posner
American Theocracy – Kevin Phillips
The Greatest Story Ever Sold – Frank Rich
Conservatives Without Conscience – John Dean
No Place To Hide – Frank O’Harrow Jr.
It Can Happen Here; authoritarianism in the age of Bush – Joe Conason
Lies My Teacher Told Me; everything your history textbook got wrong – James W. Loewen
Fooled Again; how the right stole the 2004 election & how they’ll steal the next one too – Mark Crispin Miller
The Republican War On Science – Chris Mooney
State Of Denial; Bush at war part III – Bob Woodward
Guns, Germs And Steel; the fates of human societies – Jared Diamond
SOME SLIGHTLY OLDER STUFF
What’s The Matter With Kansas; how conservatives won the heart of America – Thomas Frank
Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man – John Perkins