Infidel

If you are an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-mosque-at-ground-zero type, you will love this 2007 autobiography by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If you are a liberal, progressive believer in cultural diversity, religious freedom, and inclusion, as I am, you may find yourself sorely challenged.

Presented as a personal narrative, Infidel tells the story of Ali’s Muslim upbringing in Africa and Saudi Arabia, including her genital “excision” as a child; her abuse from both mother and grandmother; her subordination as a woman; her treatment as a sexual object on her wedding night; her escape from an attempted forced marriage (after her previous one was ruled invalid); her education and liberation in Western Europe; her co-creation of the film Submission, protesting the treatment of women under Islam; her escape from death threats, and her continued life under armed protection from those threats.

The title of the book focuses on Ali's identity as a Muslim who has renounced Islam as both a religion and a culture. In much of the narrative, however, she portrays herself as a victim of Islam who vacillates between submission and resistance before “converting” to a Western cultural identity, embracing political and religious freedom, women’s equality, and secular education.

As a convert to Western culture, Ali claims that, based on her experience of both, Western culture is superior to Islamic culture. She then goes on to directly challenge Western cultural relativism and tolerance of practices such as female genital “excisions,” forced marriages, and honor killings based on respect for cultural difference.

Is Ali’s experience under Islam typical or does she generalize her narrow experience to all Muslims? Why does she paint Islam in such extreme terms as a violent and backward religion, despite exceptions documented in her own narrative? Why does she discount the presence and power of moderate Muslims? Is she exacting vengeance for her own ill treatment by her family or has her experience in the West liberated her from the mental shackles of her upbringing? Are Islamic and Western cultures merely different but equal, or is one superior to the other, as some adherents of each would claim? Is there middle ground between absolute claims of cultural superiority and relativistic claims that there are no moral values that transcend religion and culture?

Regardless of how one answers these questions, Infidel will lend credibility to anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-mosque-at-ground-zero sentiments and sorely challenge liberal, relativistic, culturally inclusive world views.

In terms of literary value Infidel is not one of those non-fiction prose works written in a literary or poetic style. Generally servicable and rhetorically effective, the writing seems less literary than one might expect from a personal narrative, with all the expressive opportunities that that form allows. While well-written, the book seems more focused on information and persuasion than on expression or imaginative literary display.