Out of the Hijab

...After a childhood spent simmering, Hirsi Ali reached a boiling point that led her to flee to Europe...

...There are plenty of Muslims who want to kill her, and many who regard her as traitorous, or selfloathing, or just plain nuts...

...She found herself exasperated by the stifling of dialogue under the pretense of open-mindedness: If Muslim migrants lagged so far behind even other immigrant groups [in terms of crime and employment], then wasn’t it possible that one of the reasons could be Islam...

...Why was it racist to ask this question...

...Women are denied their social and economic rights in the name of Islam, and ignorant women bring up ignorant children...

...She is not struck by lightning when she associates with “impure” Westerners, not even when she steps into a pub...

...Wherever she found herself, in Mecca or Addis Ababa or Nairobi, a pervasive theme of ascetism runs through her youth: As she grew from child to adolescent, suppression of the will to frolic and make mischief morphed into suppression of the will to question...

...Because of this, Hirsi Ali lived an itinerant childhood, bouncing from Somalia to Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia to Kenya...

...As she began to experiment with a more secular way of life—mentally bargaining with Allah for permission to go out in public without a hijab, for example— she found that the warmth and respect she received from infidels confirmed her belief that the principles of her upbringing had been unsound...

...Tumultuous, to say the least...

...Even so, the broad strokes of her life are undeniably sensational, and make for engrossing reading...

...At the time, though, I could see only that either Abshir or Islam was thoroughly flawed, and of course I assumed it was Abshir...

...Indeed, while studying government, history, and philosophy at the University of Leiden, she fell madly in love with the ideals of the Enlightenment: reason, open debate, and rigorous analysis...

...But before she was catapulted into the maelstrom of European debates about multiculturalism, immigration, and secularization, Hirsi Ali was already living a tumultuous life...

...her mother’s was stern and often abusive...

...She was exhilirated to find her values upended—they were never really hers to begin with—and to discover the ascendancy of reason over zeal...

...Criticizing Islam as an inherently violent religion, without conceding that fundamentalism is exacerbated by poverty or bad governance, has earned Hirsi Ali much scorn...

...Her father was a leading figure of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, the rebel group fighting to unseat the dictator Siad Barre...

...But Hirsi Ali is one of a few vocal proponents of the idea that the problem with Islam exists from its inception...

...Here’s the abridged version: The Somalian refugee to the Netherlands gained acclaim and notoriety for her outspoken criticisms of Islam, and was elected to the Dutch parliament in 2003...

...Abshir and I and all the other young people who joined the Muslim Brotherhood movement wanted to live as much as possible like our beloved prophet, but the rules of the last Messenger of Allah were too strict, and their very strictness led us to hypocrisy...

...Reading Infidel, it is clear that her contempt for much of Islam stems from a deep-seated compassion for humanity...

...She writes in economical, measured prose, with a tone that makes it clear that her mission is to elucidate, not apologize...

...Critics have attacked Hirsi Ali’s lollipopsand-sunshine view of Western values as overly simplistic...

...Her travels exposed her to many different strains of Islam: the tribalism of 1970s Somalia, Saudi Arabian Sunnism, none of them particularly moderate or forgiving...

...Arriving in Germany and, later, in the Netherlands, she was astounded to find that police were helpful and didn’t demand bribes...

...She has been called an “Enlightenment fundamentalist,” and it is true that many of Hirsi Ali’s ideas are immoderate...

...A kernel of self-determination grew, butting up against the reticence expected of her by family, teachers, and peers...

...Honor killings, genital mutilation, and forced marriages were commonplace...

...Unquestioning acceptance of the rising Muslim “pillar” in Dutch society had nasty consequences: Working as a Dutch-Somali interpreter for Immigration Services, Hirsi Ali came into contact with countless Muslim women whose rape and physical abuse by family members was condoned by Dutch authorities in the name of tolerance and cultural relativism...

...But husbands are not obligated to obey their wives, though women must be sexually available to their husbands ‘even on the saddle of a camel.’” And ritualistic tedium: “When entering the bathroom to use the toilet, start with the left foot, and when coming out, put the right leg out first...

...As Somalia descended further into lawlessness, the Brotherhood represented order, reliability, and a unified voice of authority...

...Now, in Infidel, the English translation of her 2006 memoir Mijn Vrijheid, we get to know her prior to her days as a public figure, and to learn about the experiences that laid the foundation for her steadfast, even incorrigible, views about Islam...

...Returning to Mogadishu for a few months in 1990, 20-year-old Hirsi Ali observed the grip that the Muslim Brotherhood had on her clan...

...The story of her childhood is populated by colorful characters who highlight the contradictions she sees inherent in Islam...

...She briefly dated a Muslim Brotherhood imam named Abshir, whose sexual advances during the holy month of Ramadan underscored the hypocrisy of fundamentalism: In hindsight I don’t think of Abshir as a creep at all...

...Her father’s presence in her life was spectral...

...Abigail Lavin is a staff assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...For Hirsi Ali, it is Islam’s injunction to live a life resembling the Prophet’s that has created a “static tyranny,” placing a cap on intellectual progress and innovation...

...You can take issue with Hirsi Ali’s contributions to the debate over Islamic values and practices, but far more important is her unwavering commitment to the debate itself...

...In November 2004, two months after Submission aired on Dutch television, van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight by a Muslim fundamentalist who pinned to van Gogh’s corpse a death threat addressed to Hirsi Ali...

...Sons brought up watching the mother being beaten will use violence...

...Last year she was forced to resign from parliament when it was reported that she had lied on her application for asylum...

...At their best, they are uncompromisingly committed to human rights...

...Still, it is worth wondering whether her inflammatory rhetoric does more to ruffle feathers than to bridge gaps...

...In 2004, she wrote a provocative screenplay called Submission, about the status of women in Islamic societies, which she later made into a film with the help of the director Theo van Gogh...

...He was just as trapped in a mental cage as I was...

...There is the fanatical preacher in Nairobi, Boqol Sawm, who deals in sophistry: “Men and women are equals...

...At their worst, they are fatuous, such as her prescription that Muslims “leapfrog the Enlightenment” by reading Western books...

...It is easy to see how her upbringing engendered distrust of the teachings of the Prophet...

...But gradually she began to see fissures in the Dutch emphasis on self-determination...

...There are plenty of critics of various iterations of Islam: Wahhabism, or the violence of al Qaeda and Hezbollah...

...Islam influences every aspect of believers’ lives...

...Hirsi Ali was herself a victim of the latter two practices...

...She argues that to analyze Osama bin Laden and his movement apart from Islam is to “scrutinize a symptom, a little like analyzing Lenin and Stalin without looking at the works of Karl Marx...

...Everyone is the hero of her own autobiography, and it is prudent to take Hirsi Ali’s recollection of events with a measure of skepticism...