Infidel

Abstract

In Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s goal is to provide “a subjective record (p. xii)” of her extraordinary life, a life that straddles six countries – Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Holland, and the United States – in merely three decades. The book’s title, however, suggests that this personal narrative probes well beyond the travels and escapades of a young African girl in times of deep economic strife and political instability. Rather, Infidel maps out a spiritual journey in reverse, what might be described as an anti-Islamic emigration “from the world of faith to the world of reason – from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation” (pp. 347-48). The work is divided into two parts. The first, “My Childhood,” tracks HirsiAli’s early years on the move with hermother, sister, and brother as her father, beloved but perpetually absent, waged coup after coup against Muhammad Siad Barre with the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF). Often he was deported or jailed.As a result, family life for HirsiAli was far fromideal.After narrating her own birth, six weeks early, shemuses, “[p]erhaps my parents were happy” (p. 17). Tales of economic destitution, political corruption, and a mother who possessed all the symptoms of a severe depressive or schizophrenic suggest the young girl suffered great physical and emotional violence throughout her early years. Clearly, at a young age, her coping strategy was to lash out against her elders through ridicule and rebellion, despite the inevitable consequences. As a child, HirsiAli often spat at her grandmother.When hermother ordered her to make ink for the ma`alim who taught her the Qur’an, HirsiAli locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out for hours.Another time, she was too tired to wash up the dishes after dinner, so she hid them all, crusted, in the refrigerator for a day. As a teenager, she devoured sensual romance novels and trashy thrillers that aroused in her sexual feelings, even though she “knew that doing so was resisting Islam in the most basic way” (p. 94). She also stole visits and kisses with a number of boyfriends, knowing full well her family’s disapproval. These seemingly petty alternatives to direct conflict with authority figures and institutions were, perhaps, the only avenues available to the young Hirsi Ali to assert any control over hostile forces that denied her power over her own existence. These episodes reveal a world that, for Hirsi Ali, is ...