Source
Aug. 29, 2009
By Shelly Reuben
She
has the high cheekbones and long, lean body of a fashion model. She has
the eyes of a seeker of truths. She has the background of an Islamic
terrorist.
Her name is Ayaan Hirsi Ali and she wrote the book,
"Infidel." She is so intelligent, brave, and beautiful, I wonder that I
cannot look up to the heavens and see a trail of stardust igniting the
darkness behind her as she streaks like a comet across the sky.
Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia. She was brought up in Somalia, Saudi
Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. "Infidel" is about what it is like to be
raised Muslim and to have absolutely no option of exercising her
intellect, her emotions, or her free will because she is, was, and will
always be female.
At age 22, she fled an arranged marriage to Europe and settled in
Holland. To her horror, she discovered that all of the oppressions to
which Islamic women were subjected had emigrated, with Muslim families,
to the West. It was then that she made her decision: “The most
important thing I could do with my life was expose the reality of those
women’s lives to people in power and make sure that existing laws
demanding equality between the sexes were applied. Mine was a combat of
action, not ideas. I should stand for Parliament.”
Doing so, Hirsi Ali wanted to achieve three things. First, to make
Holland “stop tolerating the oppression of Muslim women in its midst.”
Second, to “spark a debate among Muslims about reforming aspects of
Islam so that people could begin to question, and criticize, their own
beliefs.” And third, to educate Muslim women about “how bad, and how
unacceptable, their suffering was.”
In January 2002 at age thirty-three, Ayaan Hirsi Ali became a
member of Holland’s Parliament. A week later, a local radio program,
announced: “Hirsi Ali Calls Prophet Muhammad a Pervert.”
In an interview she had given three weeks earlier, she described the
fifty-four-year-old Prophet’s Allah-approved marriage to a six-year-old
child, consummated when the girl was only nine. Then, showing more raw
nerve and common decency than any politician I can think of, Hirsi Ali
added, “By our Western standards, Muhammad is a perverse man, and a
tyrant.”
Within minutes of that broadcast, her life was threatened,
her career as a Parliamentarian was almost over, and members of her own
party were demanding that she “apologize for causing such commotion,”
insisting that they would help to “protect her from herself.”
Infuriated, she responded, “If the Prophet Muhammad went to bed with a
nine-year-old, 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. As for being protected from myself, that
is condescending, and inexcusable.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali knew more than anyone should ever know about the
inexcusable. Her grandmother taught her fear. “A woman alone is like a
piece of sheep fat in the sun…Before you know it, the ants and insects
are crawling all over it, until there is nothing left but a smear of
grease.” That same grandmother, when she was five years old, decided
that she had be purified by “having her genitals cuts out.” She was
spread-eagled on the floor and held down for a blacksmith/circumciser
“…the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner
labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a
piece of meat.”
Welcome to the glories of being Muslim and a five-year-old female in Somalia.
Highlights from Ali’s childhood included constant beatings.
Her mother “…tied my hands to my ankles, and then with a stick or a
wire she would beat me until I begged for mercy…” The preacher who
taught her the Quran, “…hit me with all his strength with a sharp
stick…grabbed my braided hair and pulled my head back, and then he
shoved it against the wall. I distinctly heard a cracking noise.”
Hirsi Ali experienced a brief honeymoon of the spirit when, at the
happily misnamed Muslim Girls’ School (most of the students were
Christian), she was exposed to Western literature and read Huckleberry
Finn, Wuthering Heights, Cry the Beloved Country, 1984, thrillers,
romance novels, and Valley of the Dolls. “All these books, even the
trashy ones, carried with them ideas—races were equal, women were equal
to men—and concepts of freedom, struggle, and adventure that were new
to me.”
Ideas
generated thought and thought generated rebellion. All, of course, were
quashed. In this repressive atmosphere, Ali became entranced by the
rigors of Islam, began to abase herself and to feel abased. She prayed
five times a day, and joined a discussion group of young Muslims
“convinced that there was an evil worldwide crusade aimed at
eradicating Islam, directed by Jews and by the whole Godless West.”
Nevertheless, she always “…found it uncomfortable to be opposed to the
West. For me, Britain and America were the countries in my books where
there was decency and individual choice.” For a while longer, she
continued to believe and she continued to pray. Then one day, after
being taught that, “A man’s sinful erotic thoughts were always the
fault of the woman who incited them,” she stood up and asked, “Don’t
women also have desire for male bodies? Couldn’t they be tempted by the
sight of men’s skin?”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali had begun to think, and there was no turning back.
Her saga continues with her escape to Holland…her election to
the Parliament…the movie she made with Theo van Gogh which encouraged
Muslim women to defy Allah…Theo’s murder by a an Islamic fanatic who
stabbed a five page letter onto his chest addressed to Hirsi Ali…more
threats to her life…and her eventual move to the United States, where
she now lives and works, protected by armed bodyguards.
In the preface to her book, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes, “People ask me if I
have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The
answer is no: I would like to keep living. However, some things must be
said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to
injustice.”
There are very few people not thrown directly in my path whom
I would like to meet. This incredible woman is one of them. Should we
ever come face-to-face, I would look directly into her beautiful, deep,
dark, intelligent eyes, and with unequivocal admiration declare,
“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”
Gelinkt door Joop
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