Ever since she came into light in my part of the world, I have paid little attention, if at all, to her and what she has to say. Hirsi Ali, to me, is just another ex-Muslim now out to slam Islam and I don’t believe it makes her and those like her, an expert in my religion. To be fair, I don’t even believe any Muslim is an expert in Islam, nor spokesperson and police, for other Muslims. I could well be one of those people, thinking I’m all high and mighty.
I picked this book a few months back. It is well written, Hirsi Ali is a good storyteller. It took me an extra couple of weeks just get on with the last few chapters of this book, starting with one titled “Leaving God”. So poignant, I couldn’t bring myself to read further. When I finally got through it, it wasn’t nearly half as bad as I thought it would be. Apparently, I had gotten myself anxious for nothing. This entry took weeks more of procrastination. Check-and-balancing the whats and whys; and how I could present my comments. Honestly, I am not doing anybody any favours, but for myself. Moreover, her tone is rather meek, so I was not quite all heated up to start punching the keyboard.
This book brings you through Hirsi Ali’s childhood to her days as a Dutch politician and ends with her eventual move to the United States. Her abandonment of God is no different from the usual – it began with questioning Islam and witnessing discrepancies, double-standards and injustices first and foremost of the Muslims around her. Somewhere along the way, she lost her faith in God.
Don’t take that as the sum of the entire book. It is a biography so you will find the inevitable ups and downs of life. I don’t mean to oversimplify her life story, nor do I wish to take her to my breasts – not that she cares for me to do so! Life is tough so get over it. I can be certain she understands that better than I do.
Apostasy is a big deal in Islam. Personally, I think religion is exclusively a personal choice. The Qur’an says there is no compulsion to religion. In my humble opinion, that is all there is to it. We can choose to hold on to a spiritual faith, whichever we are most comfortable with, or we can choose not to. I believe, the only thing we cannot deny is God, the higher being that is nothing like our wretched selves. Again, am I oversimplifying things? Must I get myself lost in some interpretation or another? I don’t think so, because we don’t know. We can make assumptions, but we cannot know for sure.
God is One. That to me, is Islam. The fact that I choose to follow the teachings of Muhammad (peace be upon him) is secondary.
Toward the end of the book, Hirsi Ali states:
The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.
…
I also don’t want my reasoning to be dismissed as the bizarre ranting of someone who has been somehow damaged by her experiences and who is lashing out. People often imply that I am angry because I was excised, or because my father married me off. They never fail to add that such things are rare in the modern Muslim world. The fact is that the hundreds of millions of women around the world live in forced marriages, and six thousand small girls are excised everyday. My excision in no way damaged my mental capacities; and I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.
My central motivating concern is that women in Islam are oppressed. That oppression of women causes Muslim women and Muslim men, too, to lag behind the West. It creates a culture that generates more backwardness with every generation. It would be better for everyone – for Muslims, above all – if this situation could change.
[page 348-349]
No one can argue with that fact. Maybe Hirsi Ali blames Islam for this. I blame the Muslims.
Women have little or no value, regardless of colour, creed and geography. We are for satisfying men’s animalistic lusts, or to be impregnated as a testimony that men’s reproductive organs are functioning at its full capacity. As if being taken by force is not bad enough, some of us have come to voluntarily feed men’s constant need for a hard-on (and it seems that their erections are not necessarily limited to the precursor of sexual activities). In the West, that is called liberalisation of women. So no, I don’t believe the treatment of women in the West is anymore superior than that of the Muslim world or anywhere else. Here, I say Muslim world as opposed to Islamic world, because I don’t believe that Islam the religion teaches the subjugation and oppression of women. People on the other hand, or in this instance the Muslims, are clever to take things further and then label it as original.
Surely we are not too blind or too stupid to see that a great portion of the atrocities and misfortunes in this world, since the beginning of time, is masterminded and perpetrated by the male specie. You may say that I am cynical. As a matter of fact, I too wonder if I am so. That I dwell on the negatives. That I am a man-hater. That I stretch the truth. There are a few good men out there who do great things too. But good things don’t need fixing whereas fcuked up things are beyond fixing. Gotta throw ‘em out and start over. Okay, I’m rambling. Shut up.
Just when I manage to push aside that ugly thought, I am slapped by another instance.
I don’t know…
I would sooner lose faith in humanity than to denounce my Creator.
