Infidel
This month we are looking at women’s history making this weeks book Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. So let’s do this.
The foreword points out that this book is really two books in one. The first part is about Hirsi Ali’s childhood, what shaped her and led her to part two, her freedom. Part two is about the choices she made as an adult that set her on her current path.
The introduction is the ending. She mentions to honor her friend Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker that made Submission Part 1 with Hirsi Ali, which led to his own assassination at the hands of Muslim extremists in November 2004, approximately 2 months after the film released. For the record, it is available on YouTube, you can watch it there, it’s only 10 minutes long but it’s a powerful 10 minutes to watch. And she circles back to Theo’s assassination at the end because this event forced her into hiding for several months, and would ultimately contribute to her decision to leave Dutch politics and relocate to America. But that’s the end of this segment of her life. To get there, we go to the beginning of Hirsi Ali’s life.
And she start’s by answering the question: “Who are you?”
“I am Ayaan, the daughter of Hirsi, the son of Magan.”
And for the first 22-ish years of her life, her name was Ayaan Hirsi Magan, and in the way of all Somali people, she was raised knowing every member of her tribal descent going all the way back like 800 years. Ali was the name of her I think great-grandfather, and she would adopt that later when she landed in Holland.
So, Ayaan Hirsi Magan was born November 13, 1969 in Mogadishu, Somalia, to Hirsi Magan Isse and his second wife Asha. Hirsi Magan was in prison shortly after Ayaan’s younger sister, Haweya was born. Ayaan was the second born, she had an older brother Mahad, and the two did not get along. In true Islamic fashion, Mahad was the golden child, and spoiled by her grandmother and mother. Her grandmother thought Ayaan was a stupid child, a self-image that would be reinforced throughout her childhood.
Somalia was hard for Asha with a husband in prison, especially because he was a political prisoner in Siad Barre’s communist government, he had attended Columbia University in New York and believed democracy was the way forward for Somalia, not communism, as Siad Barre was pushing it.
One day when Mahad was 6, Ayaan was 5, and Haweya was 4, while their mother was out, I think trying to see their father in prison, their grandmother had a man come to the house and circumcise all the children. Mahad went first as the oldest and as the boy, and was a typical circumcision, a removal of the foreskin. Women...at least in the west...are not routinely circumcised. And it’s more commonly known as female genital mutilation. In Ayaan and Haweya’s case it was brutal...I mean, it’s always brutal, but female circumcision can range from a very small removal of just the tip of the clitoris, to removal of the labia and clitoris followed by stitching them up almost entirely, leaving just a tiny hole for urine to trickle out of.
Now, that is just one of, and arguably the biggest horror, that fell upon Ayaan during her childhood. And to her mothers credit, Asha was PISSED when she got home and found out the children had been cut without her knowledge or consent. Hirsi Magan was not a fan of cutting and also disapproved.
Eventually, Hirsi Magan would escape prison and the family would move with him to Saudi Arabia. Then to Ethiopia, then to Kenya. Ayaan would learn Arabic and Swahili for sure. The most widely spoken language in Ethiopia is Amharic and I don’t remember if she mentioned learning that while living there. Her mother far preferred Saudi Arabia, considered that the most sophisticated and most Islamic of countries...which compared to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, it undoubtedly is. Asha hated Ethiopia, because this was a Christian nation and she considered Ethiopians to be godless heathens...since they weren’t Muslim.
It was when the family moved to Kenya that Asha and Hirsi’s marriage would fall apart and he would eventually leave the family there, penniless and stranded, as Asha did not believe she should be working outside the home. And so the family fell back on the clan ties that traced back 800 years, communicating with the clan leaders in Kenya for assistance and housing as needed. Ayaan was expected to do all the housework, being the eldest daughter, and Haweya just flat refused.
Ayaan was beaten. A lot. She describes being horribly beaten by her mother, frequently, for various household infractions. The beatings only stopped when a religious “scholar” came by and Ayaan and Haweya refused to participate in his lessons one day because he talked in circles and didn’t make any sense. The adults all stepped out and Ayaan figured she might mitigate the beating if she finished the housework, but realized the gate had been left open. But when she went out to close the gate, the ma’alim was there and he beat her so bad he fractured her skull. She survived, barely, and her mother stopped beating her at that point.
But, she was Muslim, and Asha wanted her children to be educated in Islam, and so Ayaan went to a Muslim school, and would eventually join a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Kenya she met her first love, a friend of her brothers, Kennedy. This was...basically a harmless childhood flirtation. In the west. In Kenya, among her heavily religious and heavily segregated clan life...well, she’s actually a little bit lucky that her faith in Allah had her repelled by Kennedy when he announced he was atheist.
After that, Ayaan and Haweya decided to return to Mogadishu in Somalia, where they would live with their father’s first wife. This was normal and expected among the clans in Somalia. While there, Ayaan would become even more embroiled in Islam and while her brother initially made a match for her with Abdellahi. But Ayaan was in love with Abdellahi’s brother, a rather serious and up and coming imam Abshir.
Their relationship unraveled under the hypocrisy of Islam. After one very impassioned sermon about the dangers of sin and temptation or something like that, Abshir attempted to kiss Ayaan. And all feeling for him basically died in her. She’s very clear that she does not blame Abshir for this. He was caught in the same hypocritical trap she was.
Now...throughout all this...she’s reading. Not just the Quran and the hadith. But literature. She’s fluent in at least four languages by this point: Somali, Swahili, Arabic, and English. So she’s reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and harlequin romances from America. And she’s bothered by the fact that she has no say in her own life. But...well, 1990 Somalia is not exactly the safest place to make a stand on this matter.
But she tried to. Sort of. She began hanging out with her Aunt Khadija, who was her mothers older half-sister. Khadija would influence Ayaan in several ways. Khadija had supported Siad Barre, and compared the Muslim Brotherhood to a cancer. And it was at Khadija’s house that she would meet Mahmud, Ayaan’s cousin. They would fall into mad lust and elope. Sort of. Eloping in Somalia involved a guardian to speak on Ayaan’s behalf, and because she had made a match herself, that guardian could not be her brother or her father. In their case, their cousin Ali Wersengeli stood for Ayaan’s guardian, and Ayaan and Mahmud were married.
They spent one night together before he left for a job opportunity in Russia. And then they never saw each other again. She received a letter a few years later from a woman in ...I think Finland….saying she was in love with Mahmud and wanted confirmation that he was not married. Ayaan happily said nothing had ever happened and they were just cousins and closed that chapter on her life.
After her one night with her husband, things in Mogadishu were spiraling. This was not the episode portrayed in Black Hawk down, but the events that led up to that moment in history were building. Ayaan and Haweya got out just before that, returning to their mother in Kenya.
After helping family refugees into Kenya, Ayaan was reunited with her father, just in time for him to announce he had made a match for her with Osman Moussa, a relative in Canada. Ayaan said many times she did not wish to marry, but her wishes were completely ignored. And since her presence was not actually needed for the marriage ceremony in Islam, she found herself married to Osman Moussa and shipped to Germany to wait with his family there while he arranged her passage to Canada.
In Germany, she took her chance. She talked to a cousin or nephew or something, told the family she was going to visit a friend in Holland, and once in Holland, she lost herself in a refugee camp, taking the name Ayaan Hirsi Ali to dodge her family. And here is where part two starts.
She is very blunt in admitting that she lied to get refugee status in Holland. I don’t know if running away from a forced marriage and possible honor killing when her lack of virginity was discovered would have gotten her refugee status. She changed her name to make it harder for her family to locate her while she figured out her next moves...the lying on her name would have been enough to get her status denied. And during her first meeting with the Refugee Aid office, she told the absolute truth about her forced marriage. The office staff told her that would not be enough of a reason. So when she had her first official meeting with the government lawyer who was to help her navigate the process, she gave them a detailed account of what it was like being a refugee from Mogadishu, an account she was able to accurately provide from her own experience helping other refugees cross into Kenya. And she changed her birthdate to November 13, 1967...again to throw off her family.
It worked for awhile, but eventually, they found her. And basically put her on trial...her family, not the Dutch. Her Dutch trial would come much later. But her family did find her in the refugee camp, and held basically a quorum, with one of the elders sitting as judge. Now, she wisely held all meetings at the refugee camp. This prevented them from dragging her kicking and screaming through the streets of Holland. And after everything was laid out, they gave Ayaan a chance to respond. And she carefully and cogently said No...she did not want to remain married to Osman Moussa. And since her refugee status had already been granted, the elders took her no and left.
And she set about becoming fluent in dutch, which allowed her to find work as a translator. As someone fluent in multiple languages spoken by refugees, she made very good money as a translator. Which allowed her to work her way through college, where she earned a degree in Political Science, shrugging off the condemnation of stupidity she had lived under her whole life.
She initially found work in a labor party think tank. Which lasted until she began publishing articles and making public appearances in regards to her opinions on Islam. Now, just to be clear...the Labor Party did not expel her. In fact, they supported her right to free speech. It’s that, while her ideas coalesced into written form, she eventually found a home with the Liberal party….not to be confused with the weirdness that is the current liberal party here in the United States...the Democrats. Think more classically liberal. And her mission was to help Muslim women.
Now….while standing for election, and she explains a bit of the electoral process in Holland, which is not at all like the electoral process here in the states….is when she first really fell afoul of the Islamists. And some credible threats started coming in. She would ultimately win her seat and then end up semi-nomadic for more than a year while security tried to locate her a safe place to live where she would still be able to do her job. During this time, she had come to embrace atheism. And this angered the Muslim population. She loudly decried the hypocrisy and disgrace of Islam, it’s from her that the west is aware that the prophet married a 6 year old and consummated it when she was 9. So...yeah. Islam has NO perspective on criticism.
One might think that, with the inclusion of credible death threats that horribly disrupted her life and cost her friendships, she would make deporting as many Muslims as possible her platform. But, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is very much a big picture thinker. Deporting everyone does nothing to change minds. She wanted to shut down religious schools...which was a hard pass in Holland, where more than Muslims wanted to send their kids to religious schools of their choice. Additionally, if the men are sent back, the women would likely also go. And then they are unquestionably worse off than they would be in Europe, where they at least had the CHANCE to make their own way.
Much like she did. She was given advice by the refugee center and other refugees to just sit back and collect the welfare checks. But she wanted more than that. She wanted to be master of her own fate, and took the opportunities presented to her to do exactly that.
In August 2004 she was invited to interview on a local show, and the show would usually include video clips from past Dutch television so everyone could reminisice over the cultural impacts. Well, since she was not born in Holland and had only been a citizen for like 6 years, she asked if she could bring in a film project she’d been thinking of making with local director, Theo van Gogh. They said yes, and Submission, Part One was quickly directed and produced.
The death threats began immediately. She tried to get a protective detail for Theo, but he waived it off. He didn’t think anything would come of it. On November 2, 2004, he was butchered by Islamist extremists. And Ayaan went into witness protection for like 18 months. She had barely been allowed to return to work when she was basically forced to resign as her Dutch citizenship was put in jeopardy based on the false statements of her initial petition for refugee status.
She was actually ok with this. She was already done with politics and had a job offer from an American Think Tank, The American Enterprise Institute. She did go along with whatever the Dutch came up with to settle her citizenship question quickly and efficiently that would NOT have her sent back to Somalia prior to moving to America, before relocating, and publishing this memoir.
What struck me in the epilogue is where she considers herself lucky, saying “How may girls born in Digfeer Hospital in Mogadishu in November 1969 are even alive today? And how many have a real voice?”
Which is true. But equally true is the maxim that in the end, you make your own luck. She saw her chance and she took it. She set her heart on true north, and never deviated from that course. I have no doubt she still has a death sentence from Islam. Again...no sense of humor, those religious extremists.
She really is an amazing author. As depressing and hopeless as part one was, part two was uplifting and inspiring. This book shows the full gamut of the human experience, from torture, to near death, to war, to survival, to escape, to hope, to triumph. It reads like a novel and puts a different perspective on life….For someone who was born and raised in the absolute safety of America, it tells a story of perseverance and survival that I will likely never realize in my own life. Something that gen Z might consider for perspective. I’m just saying...choosing to identify as impossible pronouns is in no way comparative to fleeing a forced marriage under fear of death because you’re NOT a virgin.
So yeah. I liked this book. I am fully impressed by the sheer determination of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and I hope someday to hear her speak in person.
