This book came to me highly recommended by my wife and I was not disappointed. An awesome and gripping account of this extraordinary woman's life. A cliffnotes version of her story follows. In 1969, she was born into the Darod clan (Osman Mahamoud sub-clan) in Mogadishu, Somalia to an American educated father who was politically active in the opposition movement against former dictator Siad Barre. Barre placed Ayaan's father in jail for several years while she was young. As a child of six in Mogadishu, she and her younger sister underwent genital mutilation at the insistence of her grandmother. Portions of the labia and clitoris were removed and the vagina sown shut leaving only a small hole for urination. After her father's escape from prison, the family lived first in Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and finally Nairobi, Kenya. Best I can determine, her strong-willed mother was certifiably insane and beat the children mercilessly. I'm talking hands and feet bound with rope then an Abu Ghraib style stick whipping. Her father was often in Ethiopia working with the government opposition forces which sent her mother into greater depression. Ayaan was sent to local schools in Kenya where she picked up English and Swahili to go along with her native Somali and some Arabic learned in Saudi Arabia. The second school she attended in Nairobi was Muslim Girls' Secondary School and it was here that she was first introduced to a fundamentalist form of Islam promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood. It was during this period of her life that Ayaan did her best to be a good Muslim girl covering her body in public and praying five times per day.
Her mother drove her father away (who married another wife in Ethiopia where he spent most of his time) and the family fell into poverty. Ayaan and her sister went to secretarial school with the hopes of earning money to help provide for the family. At this point, she reconnected with her Somali roots by moving back to Mogadishu to live with family. She worked as a secretary for an NGO but the situation in Somalia was rapidly deteriorating. Her father's opposition group had invaded Somalia and was battling the Barre government. Ayaan was around 20 at this time and discovering men. She had her fist kiss with a Kenyan, non-Muslim boy back in Nairobi. She had dated and kissed a young Imam in Mogadishu but was still a virgin. That changed when her aunt decided to marry her off to a close maternal cousin without the required consent from the males in Ayaan's family. According to Ayaan, she agreed to the hasty marriage solely out of lust. She was married in a brief ceremony, taken to a motel, and had her shut vagina ripped open through blunt force applied by her new husband's penis. The next day, he flew to Russia to study and she never saw him again. The wound took weeks to heal. Just before the Barre government fell and as the country was descending into utter chaos, Ayaan and her sister just managed to get back across the boarder into Kenya.
But life was rough for Ayaan back in Kenya. Their house was filled to overflowing with refugees. Ayaan's mother decided all the housework was her responsibility and her sister refused to help. Then her father showed up back in Kenya only to arrange a marriage to a relatively wealthy Somali from Canada. She tried to refuse to marry the guy but her dad would have none of it. She didn't even attend the marriage ceremony, he stood in for her as is allowed by their law. That's when Ayaan determined to take control of her own life. Her husband got her a ticket to Germany where she was to wait with relatives for a visa to Canada. Once in Germany, she ran away from her minders and sought asylum in the Netherlands. In the hopes of getting her application approved, she gave a false name (Ali is not her true last name), birth date, and changed a few of the chronological dates. The Dutch approved her application and she began working manual labor while going to school to learn Dutch. Having gained proficiency in Dutch, she became an official translator which paid well but her dream was to go to university and study political science. Through grit and determination, she not only got into the prestigious Leiden University but graduated with a masters. During her time in the Netherlands, she fell away from the Muslim faith seeing it basically as unfair and cruel. How could such an unfair religion come directly from a merciful God?
This is the point where Ayaan Hirsi Ali the political activist emerged. She went to work for a think tank but, aside from her official duties, wrote and spoke against the Dutch government funding Muslim schools. She felt all Muslims should attend standard Dutch public schools to assist in their integration into Dutch society. This position aligned her with politicians on the Dutch right such as Pim Fortuyn. Ayaan continued to speak out against Islam and warn the Dutch about the dangers the religion posed to their secular government and about the abuse of women sanctioned within Islam. She began receiving threats at this time and the local police began protecting her. At age 34, she was recruited to run for the Dutch parliament as a conservative. The controversial statements on Islam continued. In particular was a magazine interview where she called the prophet Mohammad a pedophile for taking a six year old wife and then consummating the marriage when the girl was age 9. The death threats intensified and her protection shifted from the local police to the DKDB (something akin to the US Secret Service). One event pushed the profile of Ms. Ali well beyond national Dutch politics.
"Hirsi Ali wrote the script and provided the voice-over for [the 10 minute film] Submission, a film directed by Theo van Gogh, which criticized the treatment of women in Islamic society. Juxtaposed with passages from the Qur'an were images of Muslim women who had been abused by men. One woman was provocatively dressed in a semi-transparent burqa, under which texts from the Qur'an were projected on her skin. The texts referred to the subordinate role of women. Other women in the film showed signs of physical abuse." Link. Below is the film from youtube.com.
Theo van Gogh was later assassinated by radical muslims because of this movie. Ayaan was forced into hiding and unable to continue her duties as a member of the Dutch parliament. Due to the false statements in her application for asylum many years ago (which she never hid), the Dutch immigration authorities attempted to revoke her citizenship (but this was overturned on appeal).
Ms. Ali has moved to the United States to work for the Neocon think-tank, American Enterprise Institute. The nature of the beast which is the American Enterprise Institute is readily apparent by a quick glance at their fellows and alumni: John R. Bolton, Lynne V. Cheney (yeah, Dick's wife), Newt Gingrich, Frederick W. Kagan, Michael A. Ledeen, Richard Perle, and Sen. Fred Thompson. Link. I was deeply disappointed to hear that a woman fighting against radical Islam chose to join the premiere Neocon think tank. This is the place where the foreign policies of George W. Bush have been formulated. Has not Bush driven nearly all the middle east into the hands of the radicals? The US invasion of Iraq is the primary fuel firing the spread of radical Islam. War is not the answer to the problem Islam poses in the world and the American Enterprise Institute fans the flames of war at every instance.
On a personal note, Ms. Ali's story meant alot to me. I dated a Somali woman of the Darod clan who fled Somalia at the time of the civil war against Barre. She also had been subjected to vaginal excision. This book helped explain the family pressures this woman faced and the frenzy it would have caused within her family had she married a foreigner (much less someone not of her clan). I was told these things in the past but I lacked a full comprehension of the situation. Now I know.
