The Redhunter

Born in Somalia in 1969, she was brought up mostly by her mother and grandmother, he r father having been imprisoned by the dicatator Said Barre when she was five. While her mother tended towards more modern ways of doing things, grandmother was intensely traditional, and intent of maintainly the old ways. As such, she made sure that Hirsi Ali and her sister underwent "excism" (or "female circumcision") when they were young. This procedure is described in just enough detail for the reader to cringe. Essentially, with no anesthesia the inner labia and clitoris are cut off with a pair of scissors. She was then sewn shut, with just enough of an opening left for her to urinate and later for menstrual blood to escape.

To make a long story short, she and her family moved several times around the region to escape Barre's wrath, and the civil war raging against him in Somalia. Her family, lived at times in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. In these places she learned English and Arabic. She also met and interacted with Christians and agnostics, mostly in Ethiopia and Kenya. As such, she was exposed to other ideas and ways of doing things. Hirsi Ali

Her father was away for much of the time, sometimes in prison but mostly just off on various adventures, all of which designed to overthrow the hated Barre. She was mostly raised by her mother and grandmother. Hirsi Ali's life family life was very hard, although she didn't really know it at the time. . She describes daily beatings by her mother, which continued almost until adulthood.

Although she was a Muslim, she was also a voracious reader, devouring all books that came her way. As it was these were mostly Western romance novels. While young she did not see the contradiction, but this would soon change.

Hirsi Ali experienced the Muslim Brotherhood firsthand while living in Kenya. She describes how they sent money and preachers, took over the local mosques, and made it their mission to change the way Islam was practiced. In large part they succeeded. Their brand of Islam is very harsh, and they convinced a lot of people that their more moderate practices were not in accordance with what the prophet wanted. Brotherhood preachers insisted on ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE to the various parts of the Quran that justify a husband's dictatorial rule over his wife, wife beating, female circumcision, and the like. No questioning or even discussion was allowed.

The plight of women under Islam is indirectly the subject of much of the book, if only because Hirsi Ali is a woman herself, and saw and experienced many of the horrors that Islamic culture visits upon them.

Despite the presence of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, she grew up reading western romance novels, and dreamed of falling in love Western-style. She was shocked to learn of the way marriages really worked in Islam. On her marriage night, and apparengly thereafter, if the woman shows any interest in forplay she is by definition a whore. Muslim men have a fixation on female virginity that borders on the pathological. Hirsi Ali goes into some detail on this, and some of it bears repeating herSex is not only joyless but mechanical. Afterwards the man immediately goes into the bathroom afterward to wash and thus "purify" himself (the Muslim fixation on purification is nothing short of bizarre). Also, if the woman bleeds on her wedding night (and she better, or else she's a not a virgin and can be killed by her family), the man takes the stained bedsheets and shows them to his family, friends, sometimes the entire neighborhood, and all the men congratulate him.

Hirsi Ali had female friend after female friend tell her these things while she was growing up (she was ner shy about asking questions), and of course she was horrified. That is was not what she thought marriage should or would be like. Worse, she experienced it herself the night of her first marriage (she subsequently ran away from this marriage, getting it annuled some eyars later).

All marriages are arranged ones. Girls barly past puberty were married off to older men on a regular basis. She describes how girls would disappear from school, and then a few years later she would see them with one or two children in tow. In circumstances where she found beforhand that a girlfrend was about to be married, the girl was always petrified. The wedding was joyless and so was their life. As often as not they ended up hateing their husbands. They went from a carefree childhood straight into a life of misery.

Some will object that things like female circumcision, wife beating, arranged marriages and the like are not part of Islam but are cultural holdovers from old times. Hirsi Ali makes the point that while it is true that these predated Islam, today their proponents use Islam to justify them. So it's a distinction without a difference, the point being that it is Islam that needs to be reformed.

Muslim families may appear tightly nit, but it's all with a condition; that each member absolutely obey the various dictates. If anyone, especially a woman, strays, she is at the very least disowned (even by "loving" parents), or even killed by family members.

Wife beatings were (are) at epidemic levels in the Muslim world. At night it was a regular occurance to hear the husband next door (or farther away) beat his wife. Later, in Holland, Hirsi Ali discovered that it was also widespread among Muslim immigrants.

We only know Ayaan Hirsi Ali because she chose to escape from an arranged marriage. In 1992, while in Somalia, a man approached her father while they were at a local Mosque and asked to marry his eldest daugher, Hirsi Ali. After a brief conversation with him her father immediately agreed, and Hirsi Ali was given no say in the matter. Upon meeting him she took an immediate dislike to him. After a brief ceremony in Somalia, she was supposed to travel to Canada to live with him, but fled during a stopover in Germany. She made her way to Holland, and applied for refugee status.

She admits that she invented a story on her application to gain asylum, which she said was a common practice. She also changed her name somewhat, from Ayaan Hirsi Magan to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She also changed her age, saying she was born in 1967 instead of 1969. She did this to escape detection by her Somali clan, who were trying to track her down. She has never hidden this fact, and even while running for parliament was open about these things.

While in the refugee camps in Holland she met people of other cultures, particularly Ethiopians and Bosnians. She was also exposed to the openness of Western society. As a Muslim she had been taught that if a woman simply went outside with any part of her body uncovered, men would go wild with sexual lust. She saw that this was completely false, which led her to question the basis for so many Muslim restrictions.

She also saw the Somali refugees develop a "culture of entitlement". They learned that if you cry "racism" you get what you want, Hirs Ali relates how some even bragged about this to her. Most of them sat around the camps complaining about their situation, rather than doing anything about it.

Hirsi Ali was not one to sit around, however. She got a job as translator, and eventually put herself through Leiden University, graduating with a Masters in Political Science. After this she took a position as a researcher with Wiardi Beckman Foundation, a Dutch think tank.

During this time she came to observe the effects of Dutch multiculturalism, and concluded that it's effects were harmful on both the immigrants and to Holland.
As she tells it, theDutch think they're doing good by letting Muslim minorities like the Somalis live in their own communities, maintaining their own way of life, and attend their own schools. In reality this perpetuates the complaining, the culture of entitlement, and the wife beatings. Female circumcision is widely practiced by these Muslims while in Holland. In sum, multiculturalism breads extremism because Muslim immigrants never integrate, and thus never accept Western values.

Unable to reconcile Islam with the brutal way in which it is practiced in much of the world, Hirsi Ali rejected it and became an apostate. She has not adopted any other religion, and describes herself now as an athiest. She also became quite estranged from her family, and although at times her father would warm up to her, in general ties with family and clan have been cut.

It was Dutch response the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, that shocked her into the realization that most people in the West had no idea of what Islam was about. She heard one politically correct homily after another that Islam was a "religion of peace" and that how "only a small minority were violent". Finally she had to act. She made it her mission to educate the Dutch, and eventually the world, on the realities of Islam; that whatever it was in theory, it was anything but peaceful in practice.

She was approached by the Liberal (VVD (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, a conservative party) Party to run for parliament. She was elected in 2002, although as it turned out they were not part of the government that was formed. She had three goals as a parlamentarian: to make Holland wake up and stop tolerating the oppression of Muslim women, two, to start a debate among Muslims about reforming their faith, and lastly for Muslim women to stop tolerating their abuse and realize that no, they don't have to accept beatings because "it's the will of Allah".

While in Holland she met Theo van Gogh (a descendent of you-know-who) and in 2004 they made Submission Part I, a 10 minute film about the plight of women under Islam. "Submission" is Arabic for "Islam". The writing on the woman's body are passages from the Quran. Here it is

A part II was never made because in November of 2004 Theo van Gogh was murdered by radical Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street. Bouyere ambushed van Gogh as the latter rode to work on his bicycle, shooting him several times, nearly sawing off his head with a butcher knife, then pinning to his chest a 5 page letter. The letter was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and was a threat that she would be next.

Hirsi Ali was already under police protection for threats made against her, but at this point it went to an altogether different level. Security details took her out of the country, and for the next several months she was effectively in hiding.

In 2006 she found her Dutch citizenship revoked when the government ruled that she had lied about her age and name on her application in 1997 when coming into Holland. While true, the entire affair was as much a result of political pressure as anything.
The whole thing was very controversial, and she resigned from parliament over the issue. As it turned out, however, the government fell over the issue. In the end the decision was overturned and she was allowed to keep her citizenship. Despite this trauma, she explains in the book that in the end she holds no grudge.

In 2006 she accepted a position with the American Enterprise Institute. Her role there "will be researching the relationship between the West and Islam; women’s rights in Islam; violence against women propagated by religious and cultural arguments; and Islam in Europe." She maintains her Dutch citizenship, and the government of Holland still pays for her protection.

There was some recent controversy over this, and October 5 Holland announced that they would't pay for her protection while abroad. This forced her to go back to Holland. However, just yesterday it was revealed that she was back in the US, where her protection is now privately funded. The Dutch parliament is due to take up the issue again this week. As Anne Applebaum points out, given that many of the threats against her are from groups based in Holland, and she is essentially defending Dutch values, the least they could do is protect her from assassination.

Hirsi Ali has little patience with those who talk about "moderate" versus violent Islam. To her, the "moderates" are simply those who keep their heads down. She thinks that Islam must truely be reformed, and that Muslims are going to have to "enter into a conversation with Allah" if they are to be successful. As Islam is practiced now, a "conversation with Allah" is inconceivable. To her, this is the crux of the matter.

She also has no patience with those who insist that 90% (or whatever figure) of Muslims are peaceful and it is only a tiny minority who are a problem. Hirsi Ali is not talking about bombings or hijackings. She is talking about the horrors visited upon women in the name of Islam; beatings, honor killings, circumcision, complete denial of rights and total second class citizenship. She also has no patience for those who try and counter her criticism with attacks on Christianity. There is simply no comparison, for example, between the sex scandals rocking the Catholic Church in the US and what goes on under Islam. The former is a crime not approved of by the Bible or officialy by any Christian. On the other hand, it is quite common throughout the Muslim world for Imams to teach that men should beat their wives and kill their daughters if they do not obey ("honor killings"). In fact, one of Hirsi Ali's accomplishments as parliamentarian was make the police gather data on honor killings. They found it was more widespread than anyone had dared imagine.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the bravest women on the planet, and deserves the support of all freedom loving men and women. Whether you agree with all that she says is irrelevant. At the very least, Islam must learn to accept criticism without widespread resort to threats and violence. And she is right; there is no comparison between how Islam and other religions are practiced, for the moral equivalence crowd is simply wrong. I wish Hirsi Ali would adopt Christianity, but given all that she has been through can understand why she is an athiest. It is wrong and bad to say that "Islam is evil". It is also wrong to say that there is no problem with Islam except for a few extremists. Hirsi Ali asks Muslims to speak with Allah and ask the hard questions, for their religion needs to be reformed. She asks the rest of us not to ignore a problem in our midst, as we must not be blinded by multiculturalism or political correctness. In the end, everyone should listen to her.

More

There is, of course, much out there about Hirsi Ali, but in recent months these two articles struck me as worth posting:

She's No Fundamentalist: What People Get Wrong About Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Christopher Hitchens. Here's Hitch on Western intellectuals who essentially say she ought to shut up.

In ACLU circles, we often refer to ourselves as "First Amendment absolutists." By this we mean, ironically enough, that we prefer to interpret the words of the Founders, if you insist, literally. The literal meaning in this case seems (to us) to be that Congress cannot inhibit any speech or establish any state religion. This means that we defend all expressions of opinion including those that revolt us, and that we say that nobody can be forced to practice, or forced to foreswear, any faith. I suppose I would say that this is an inflexible principle, or even a dogma, with me. But who dares to say that's the same as the belief that criticism of religion should be censored or the belief that faith should be imposed? To flirt with this equivalence is to give in to the demagogues and to hear, underneath their yells of triumph, the dismal moan of the trahison des clercs and "the enlightenment driven away." Perhaps, though, if I said that my principles were a matter of unalterable divine revelation and that I was prepared to use random violence in order to get "respect" for them, I could hope for a more sympathetic audience from some of our intellectuals.

Jihadwatch excerpts an interview with her published in Reason magazine (but not available online). Here's a section of the interview

Hirsi Ali: ...There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don't all follow the rules of Islam, but there's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There's nothing moderate about it.

Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, "Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution," he's wrong?

Hirsi Ali: He's wrong. Sorry about that.

And most importantly, regarding the current mainstream Western policy of appeasement and multiculturalism

The problem (of Islam) is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger

Ditto that.