This extraordinary book written by an extraordinary woman is groundbreaking, in that it's one of the rare few which have received acclaim despite its open criticism of Islam as a major ideological paradigm, regardless of where it is found or how it is practiced. One of the author's primary premises, in fact, is that Islam, irrespective of modest efforts to make it more palatable, is essentially a primitive philosophy/repressive desert culture masquerading as a religion, based on as its central tenet, the author argues, the violent subjugation and hatred of women, who are generally considered property akin to livestock. As the author demonstrates, the type of Islam practiced in the various places where she lived as a child and young adult, including in Africa and the Middle East, afforded women no autonomy or control over their own lives, requiring that all women pass from the ownership of fathers, to husbands, and eventually, to sons or other male relatives.
The fact that a book of this type would even be accepted for publication is astounding, but so are the life experiences of its author, and perhaps that's the secret. This astonishing soul offers a personal perspective and description of that which she so effectively denounces. The first section in the author's shocking autobiography describes in graphic, heartbreaking detail her horrific childhood and upbringing, in at least four different countries, and the torture - it's nothing short of that - she continually suffered at the hands of primarily her mother and grandmother, the people who should have been the most responsible for loving and protecting her and her siblings. Instead, her fanatical grandmother was the one responsible for violating even her (somewhat) progressive, activist father's wishes and having her and her sister subjected to female genital mutilation, in early childhood, at the age of five or six, due to the unimaginable (and scarcely credible) belief that failure to subject these young children to this barbaric, horrific, and sometimes fatal mutilation would result in the girls' genitalia growing until they reached the size of a male's ... anatomy. (I'm dubious that they actually believe this latter)
And the atrocities just keep on coming: Ali's descriptions of the constant abuse suffered at the hands of her relatives, inducing even her older brother, who was coddled and often times even encouraged by her clearly mentally ill mother to heap abuse on both his sisters, is beyond heartbreaking. It is clear that her mother was likely bipolar, suffering from clinical depression and quite possibly PTSD, herself a victim of the same abuse she later meted out to her children, after divorcing her first husband and being abandoned by her second, who then took a third wife and started yet another family. Her violent, sadistic mother beat her incessantly, and even permitted others to do likewise, on one occasion, to the point that she suffered a skull fracture and cerebral edema, which could have killed her. Ali's life nearly ended in yet another so-called "honor killing," all for asking the wrong questions. I am disheartened that Ali still somewhat defends her mother, claiming at times that she wasn't really targeting HER, but taking her frustrations out on her for all the disappointments she had suffered throughout her miserable life, just using her as a scapegoat, but I'm unconvinced.
People bristle at the thought, and oft-repeated, phrase that some cultures are better than others, but that's the author's entire credo, in my opinion, which is well-supported, the irrefutable evidence drawn from her lifelong personal experiences, being herself a black, former Muslim woman. As such, it's difficult to disagree with that statement, and herein lies the proof. Yes, this did take place some half-century ago, in some cases, especially in the case of Ali's mother and grandmother... but what's occurring in Somalia currently? From the descriptions offered by modern-day refugees, it appears that the situation is as bad if not worse than it was a half-century ago, especially for women, who have absolutely no protections from the failed-state anarchy which now prevails.
Herself a once-devout adherent to Islam, even in her teenage years, Ali began to question the tenets of the religion of her ancestors, which were often hurled at her by one violent, misogynistic, yet often ignorant and nearly illiterate fundamentalist extremist after another, even before experiencing the stark contrast once she escaped her family and moved to Europe. Initially critical of the ways in which women were treated in Saudi Arabia, which even her father abhorred, Ali began to wear a burka in her teenage years while living in Kenya after being indoctrinated and threatened with the fires of hell and eternal torment by a fanatical teacher at her Islamic school. However, in short order, she could not escape the hypocrisy she saw and the contradictions she encountered, which none of the so-called clerics could engage with.
Indeed, like most fanatical, toxic religions and the leaders who covet power and control, the only answer to Ali's legitimate questions (such as the ridiculous notion that men and women are "equal" in Islam - when one need only read in the Qur'an that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's, women do not receive the same inheritance as a man, and that men are always in control of women) was to sit down and shut up, or to just submit to the incessant abuse and accept your lot in life as the will of God, and await better things in some never-never-land Paradise promised to those who just accept and live with the near-constant torture, dehumanization, deprivation, depression, and invisibility.
Ali's break with her family, and her one-time faith, came in the form of her escape from an arranged marriage to a total stranger in another country, orchestrated by the father who had abandoned her and her entire family. The wedding even occurred in absentia: that is, she was not even present at her own wedding, which was allowed if not even encouraged by fundamentalist Islamic practice. Fortunately for the many women for whom Ali has been an inspiration, she had other ideas and effected an escape en route to Canada, ending up in the Netherlands where she declared and was eventually granted asylum status, although she initially had to lie about both her name and status.
Many books have been written by women critical of Islam: perhaps the most controversial and well-known being "The Rage and the Pride," by Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, herself no stranger to conflict - she was a partisan during WWII - who famously came out of retirement and broke a ten-year hiatus after 9/11, calling for the destruction of Islam itself, but hers is admittedly the voice of an outsider. For Ali, too, 9/11 was a precipitous event which resulted in her eventual complete break with Islam. Other authors, like Mona Eltahawy, a self-described radical feminist and Muslim whose "manifesto" I read recently ("The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls"), are also insider voices whose descriptions of experiences ring similar, although the authors come to different conclusions. Eltahawy remains a believer (despite being sexually assaulted at age fifteen at the hajj) who advocates a "modernization" of Islam, which is seemingly at war with itself, while Ali eventually renounced religion completely.
Why is this book so controversial, resulting in yet another round of abuses in the form of death threats for the author (and the murder of one of her colleagues)? In addition to her criticism of Islam, another of the most profound messages of the book, for me, was the discussion of the overt racism which Ali's family both experienced, and perpetrated, by and against other minorities, including black Africans. This, to me, permanently and irrevocably puts to bed the ridiculous, preposterous notion that "blacks can't be racist," nor other minorities, because they lack the requisite "institutional power." Ali describes the nearly universal attitude of all Muslims she encountered while growing up, specifically a violent hatred of Jews, itself a clear expression of racism, in which nearly all Muslim children were indoctrinated.
She also describes the attitudes of Arabs against blacks, including Somalis, but also other ethnic groups, which is nothing less than directed racism, which, curiously, in turn, her family, specifically her mother and grandmother, then inflicted on darker-than-thou Kenyans who were labeled with all manner of derogatory stereotypes (I won't repeat them here), to the degree that her brother had to lie about the ethnicity of "Kennedy," one of his Kenyan friends, who eventually proposed to Ali, because her family would not otherwise have even allowed him into their home. She rejected Ken's proposal of marriage, even though it would have meant an escape from her toxic, dysfunctional family, then living in a single bedroom in the house of a less-than-welcoming clan member, not the least because he was not of the same ethnicity as her and her family - as such, they would never accept the union, nor would he convert to Islam.
Finally, the book has raised some serious ire because it notes the stark contrast between Islamic-dominant countries and the west, and, specifically, because the author herself notes that the theocracy-oriented former simply doesn't work, resulting in untold misery for tens of millions of people, where women have it the worst of all. I'll let the author speak in her own words, below, as she articulates her views far better than I could. I will just finish by stating that, if all voices are valuable, Ali's is one of the most profound.
--------------------
"It irritated me now when Somalis who had lived in Holland for a long time complained that they were offered only lowly jobs. They wanted honorable professions: airline pilot, lawyer. When I pointed out that they had no qualifications for such work, their attitude was that everything was Holland's fault. The Europeans had colonized Somalia, which was why we all had no qualifications and were in this mess to begin with. I thought that was so clearly nonsense. We had torn ourselves apart, all on our own."
"It was the same sort of defensive, arrogant attitude that I had often seen among people from rural areas who emigrated to the city, whether Mogadishu or Nairobi. Here in Holland the claim was always that we were held back by racism. Everyone seemed to be in a constant simmer of anger about how we were discriminated against because we were black. If a shopkeeper wouldn't bargain over the price of a T-shirt, Yasmin said there were special, discount prices only for white people.... 'If you tell a Dutch person it's racist he will give you whatever you want,' Hasna once told me with satisfaction. There is discrimination in Holland - I would never deny that - but the claim of racism can also be strategic."
"I felt embarrassed and let down by the way so many Somalis accepted welfare money and then turned on the society that gave it to them... I didn't like how they denied misdeeds, even if they were caught red-handed, or how they boasted, or the myths and transparently false conspiracy theories they propagated. I didn't like the endless gossiping or the constant complaints that they were the victims of external factors. Somalis never said 'Sorry' or 'I made a mistake' or 'I don't know'; they invented excuses."
"Europe worked perfectly, every bus and clock of it. Not the first tremor of chaos was detectable... We Muslims were always boasting about something or other, but our whole culture was sexually frustrated."
"Ellen said Dutch women were never circumcised, and neither were Dutch men. Yasmin curled up her face in disgust at that. The minute we left, she started rubbing her skin: when she got home, she washed for hours. 'I sat in their house and ate off their plates, and they are not purified!' Yasmin said. 'She is filthy. This whole country is filthy.' I thought about it. Ellen wasn't filthy, and neither was Holland. In fact, it was a lot cleaner than Somalia or anywhere else I had lived. I couldn't understand how Yasmin could perceive Holland as evil, even though all around us were Dutch people treating us with kindness and hospitality. I was beginning to see that the Dutch value system was more consistent, more honest, and gave more people more happiness than the one with which we had been brought up. Unfortunately, many of these Dutch ideas seemed not to be congruent with Islam."
"Johanna['s] family was very like the whole country: so well-kept, so well-planned, so smoothly run and attractive. It seemed nothing could go unnoticed in such a place. Sometimes that felt constricting, but it also seemed welcoming, and safe. It was a much more attractive model than any family I'd seen in the world I came from."
"I wanted to understand why life in Holland was so different from life in Africa. Why there was so much peace, security and wealth in Europe. What the causes of war were, and how you built peace. I didn't have any answers, just questions. I thought about it all the time. Every contact I had with government, I thought, 'How do you get to have a government like this?' I watched H and E draw up schedules with the other girls they shared their flat with - and it was like the bus timetable: all the girls actually did all the chores. Amazingly, there wasn't even any conflict about it. How did you get to be this way?"
"Government was very present in this country. It could be bureaucratic - sometimes stupidly complex, but it also seemed very beneficial. I wanted to know how you do that. This was an infidel country, whose way of life we Muslims were supposed to oppose and reject. Why was it, then, so much better run, better led, and made for such better lives than the place we came from? Shouldn't the places where Allah was worshiped and His laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers' countries ignorant, poor and at war?"
"When the conductor came to check our student transport cards, Naima would fume that he had stared at her card longer than at the white girls'. She never complained about the violence and humiliation she suffered at home, only about Dutch racism. I think now that this obsession with identifying racism, which I saw so often among Somalis too, was really a comfort mechanism, to keep people from feeling personally inadequate and to externalize the causes of their unhappiness."
"The Enlightenment cut European culture from its roots in old fixed ideas of magic, kingship, social hierarchy and the domination of priests, and regrafted it onto a great strong trunk that supported the equality of each individual, and his right to free opinion and self-rule - so long as he did not threaten civic peace and the freedom of others. Here, in Leiden, was where the enlightenment had taken hold. Here, the Dutch let each other be free. And here, this commitment to freedom took hold of me, too."
"In February 1995 there were huge floods across Holland. When Somalis are faced with catastrophic weather, drought and flooding, they all get together and pray. Natural disasters are signs from God, to show humans they are misbehaving on earth. But the Dutch blamed their government for failing to maintain the dikes properly... Almost everything was secular here. Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly. This man-made system of government was so much more stable, peaceful, prosperous, and happy than the supposedly God-devised systems I had been taught to respect."
"The result was that immigrants lived apart, studied apart, socialized apart. They went to separate schools - special Muslim schools or ordinary schools in the inner city, which other families fled. At the Muslim schools there were no children from Dutch families. The little girls were veiled and often separated from the boys... and [they] avoided subjects that ran contrary to Islamic doctrine. Children weren't encouraged to ask questions, and their creativity was not stimulated. They were taught to keep their distance from unbelievers and to obey."
"This compassion for immigrants and their struggles in a new country resulted in attitudes and policies that perpetuated cruelty. Thousands of Muslim women and children in Holland were being systematically abused, and there was no escaping this fact. Little children were excised [genitally mutilated] on kitchen tables - I knew this from Somalis for whom I translated. Girls who chose their own boyfriends and lovers were beaten half to death or even killed: many more were regularly slapped around. The suffering of all these women was unspeakable."
"Holland's multiculturalism - its respect for Muslims' way of doing things - wasn't working. It was depriving many women and children of their rights. Holland was trying to be tolerant for the sake of consensus, but the consensus was empty. The immigrants' culture was being preserved at the expense of their women and children and to the detriment of the immigrants' integration into Holland. Many Muslims never learned Dutch and rejected Dutch values of tolerance and personal liberty."
"By declaring our prophet infallible and not permitting ourselves to question him, we Muslims had set up a static tyranny.... By adhering to his rules of what is permitted and what is forbidden, we Muslims suppressed the freedom to think for ourselves and to act as we chose. We froze the moral outlook of billions of people into the mindset of the Arab desert in the seventh century. We were not just servants of Allah, we were slaves."
"The kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mindset based on tribal concept of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking."
"It is always difficult to make the transition to the modern world... It was difficult for me, too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason, from excision and forced marriage to sexual emancipation. Having made the journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values."
"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."
The fact that a book of this type would even be accepted for publication is astounding, but so are the life experiences of its author, and perhaps that's the secret. This astonishing soul offers a personal perspective and description of that which she so effectively denounces. The first section in the author's shocking autobiography describes in graphic, heartbreaking detail her horrific childhood and upbringing, in at least four different countries, and the torture - it's nothing short of that - she continually suffered at the hands of primarily her mother and grandmother, the people who should have been the most responsible for loving and protecting her and her siblings. Instead, her fanatical grandmother was the one responsible for violating even her (somewhat) progressive, activist father's wishes and having her and her sister subjected to female genital mutilation, in early childhood, at the age of five or six, due to the unimaginable (and scarcely credible) belief that failure to subject these young children to this barbaric, horrific, and sometimes fatal mutilation would result in the girls' genitalia growing until they reached the size of a male's ... anatomy. (I'm dubious that they actually believe this latter)
And the atrocities just keep on coming: Ali's descriptions of the constant abuse suffered at the hands of her relatives, inducing even her older brother, who was coddled and often times even encouraged by her clearly mentally ill mother to heap abuse on both his sisters, is beyond heartbreaking. It is clear that her mother was likely bipolar, suffering from clinical depression and quite possibly PTSD, herself a victim of the same abuse she later meted out to her children, after divorcing her first husband and being abandoned by her second, who then took a third wife and started yet another family. Her violent, sadistic mother beat her incessantly, and even permitted others to do likewise, on one occasion, to the point that she suffered a skull fracture and cerebral edema, which could have killed her. Ali's life nearly ended in yet another so-called "honor killing," all for asking the wrong questions. I am disheartened that Ali still somewhat defends her mother, claiming at times that she wasn't really targeting HER, but taking her frustrations out on her for all the disappointments she had suffered throughout her miserable life, just using her as a scapegoat, but I'm unconvinced.
People bristle at the thought, and oft-repeated, phrase that some cultures are better than others, but that's the author's entire credo, in my opinion, which is well-supported, the irrefutable evidence drawn from her lifelong personal experiences, being herself a black, former Muslim woman. As such, it's difficult to disagree with that statement, and herein lies the proof. Yes, this did take place some half-century ago, in some cases, especially in the case of Ali's mother and grandmother... but what's occurring in Somalia currently? From the descriptions offered by modern-day refugees, it appears that the situation is as bad if not worse than it was a half-century ago, especially for women, who have absolutely no protections from the failed-state anarchy which now prevails.
Herself a once-devout adherent to Islam, even in her teenage years, Ali began to question the tenets of the religion of her ancestors, which were often hurled at her by one violent, misogynistic, yet often ignorant and nearly illiterate fundamentalist extremist after another, even before experiencing the stark contrast once she escaped her family and moved to Europe. Initially critical of the ways in which women were treated in Saudi Arabia, which even her father abhorred, Ali began to wear a burka in her teenage years while living in Kenya after being indoctrinated and threatened with the fires of hell and eternal torment by a fanatical teacher at her Islamic school. However, in short order, she could not escape the hypocrisy she saw and the contradictions she encountered, which none of the so-called clerics could engage with.
Indeed, like most fanatical, toxic religions and the leaders who covet power and control, the only answer to Ali's legitimate questions (such as the ridiculous notion that men and women are "equal" in Islam - when one need only read in the Qur'an that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's, women do not receive the same inheritance as a man, and that men are always in control of women) was to sit down and shut up, or to just submit to the incessant abuse and accept your lot in life as the will of God, and await better things in some never-never-land Paradise promised to those who just accept and live with the near-constant torture, dehumanization, deprivation, depression, and invisibility.
Ali's break with her family, and her one-time faith, came in the form of her escape from an arranged marriage to a total stranger in another country, orchestrated by the father who had abandoned her and her entire family. The wedding even occurred in absentia: that is, she was not even present at her own wedding, which was allowed if not even encouraged by fundamentalist Islamic practice. Fortunately for the many women for whom Ali has been an inspiration, she had other ideas and effected an escape en route to Canada, ending up in the Netherlands where she declared and was eventually granted asylum status, although she initially had to lie about both her name and status.
Many books have been written by women critical of Islam: perhaps the most controversial and well-known being "The Rage and the Pride," by Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, herself no stranger to conflict - she was a partisan during WWII - who famously came out of retirement and broke a ten-year hiatus after 9/11, calling for the destruction of Islam itself, but hers is admittedly the voice of an outsider. For Ali, too, 9/11 was a precipitous event which resulted in her eventual complete break with Islam. Other authors, like Mona Eltahawy, a self-described radical feminist and Muslim whose "manifesto" I read recently ("The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls"), are also insider voices whose descriptions of experiences ring similar, although the authors come to different conclusions. Eltahawy remains a believer (despite being sexually assaulted at age fifteen at the hajj) who advocates a "modernization" of Islam, which is seemingly at war with itself, while Ali eventually renounced religion completely.
Why is this book so controversial, resulting in yet another round of abuses in the form of death threats for the author (and the murder of one of her colleagues)? In addition to her criticism of Islam, another of the most profound messages of the book, for me, was the discussion of the overt racism which Ali's family both experienced, and perpetrated, by and against other minorities, including black Africans. This, to me, permanently and irrevocably puts to bed the ridiculous, preposterous notion that "blacks can't be racist," nor other minorities, because they lack the requisite "institutional power." Ali describes the nearly universal attitude of all Muslims she encountered while growing up, specifically a violent hatred of Jews, itself a clear expression of racism, in which nearly all Muslim children were indoctrinated.
She also describes the attitudes of Arabs against blacks, including Somalis, but also other ethnic groups, which is nothing less than directed racism, which, curiously, in turn, her family, specifically her mother and grandmother, then inflicted on darker-than-thou Kenyans who were labeled with all manner of derogatory stereotypes (I won't repeat them here), to the degree that her brother had to lie about the ethnicity of "Kennedy," one of his Kenyan friends, who eventually proposed to Ali, because her family would not otherwise have even allowed him into their home. She rejected Ken's proposal of marriage, even though it would have meant an escape from her toxic, dysfunctional family, then living in a single bedroom in the house of a less-than-welcoming clan member, not the least because he was not of the same ethnicity as her and her family - as such, they would never accept the union, nor would he convert to Islam.
Finally, the book has raised some serious ire because it notes the stark contrast between Islamic-dominant countries and the west, and, specifically, because the author herself notes that the theocracy-oriented former simply doesn't work, resulting in untold misery for tens of millions of people, where women have it the worst of all. I'll let the author speak in her own words, below, as she articulates her views far better than I could. I will just finish by stating that, if all voices are valuable, Ali's is one of the most profound.
--------------------
"It irritated me now when Somalis who had lived in Holland for a long time complained that they were offered only lowly jobs. They wanted honorable professions: airline pilot, lawyer. When I pointed out that they had no qualifications for such work, their attitude was that everything was Holland's fault. The Europeans had colonized Somalia, which was why we all had no qualifications and were in this mess to begin with. I thought that was so clearly nonsense. We had torn ourselves apart, all on our own."
"It was the same sort of defensive, arrogant attitude that I had often seen among people from rural areas who emigrated to the city, whether Mogadishu or Nairobi. Here in Holland the claim was always that we were held back by racism. Everyone seemed to be in a constant simmer of anger about how we were discriminated against because we were black. If a shopkeeper wouldn't bargain over the price of a T-shirt, Yasmin said there were special, discount prices only for white people.... 'If you tell a Dutch person it's racist he will give you whatever you want,' Hasna once told me with satisfaction. There is discrimination in Holland - I would never deny that - but the claim of racism can also be strategic."
"I felt embarrassed and let down by the way so many Somalis accepted welfare money and then turned on the society that gave it to them... I didn't like how they denied misdeeds, even if they were caught red-handed, or how they boasted, or the myths and transparently false conspiracy theories they propagated. I didn't like the endless gossiping or the constant complaints that they were the victims of external factors. Somalis never said 'Sorry' or 'I made a mistake' or 'I don't know'; they invented excuses."
"Europe worked perfectly, every bus and clock of it. Not the first tremor of chaos was detectable... We Muslims were always boasting about something or other, but our whole culture was sexually frustrated."
"Ellen said Dutch women were never circumcised, and neither were Dutch men. Yasmin curled up her face in disgust at that. The minute we left, she started rubbing her skin: when she got home, she washed for hours. 'I sat in their house and ate off their plates, and they are not purified!' Yasmin said. 'She is filthy. This whole country is filthy.' I thought about it. Ellen wasn't filthy, and neither was Holland. In fact, it was a lot cleaner than Somalia or anywhere else I had lived. I couldn't understand how Yasmin could perceive Holland as evil, even though all around us were Dutch people treating us with kindness and hospitality. I was beginning to see that the Dutch value system was more consistent, more honest, and gave more people more happiness than the one with which we had been brought up. Unfortunately, many of these Dutch ideas seemed not to be congruent with Islam."
"Johanna['s] family was very like the whole country: so well-kept, so well-planned, so smoothly run and attractive. It seemed nothing could go unnoticed in such a place. Sometimes that felt constricting, but it also seemed welcoming, and safe. It was a much more attractive model than any family I'd seen in the world I came from."
"I wanted to understand why life in Holland was so different from life in Africa. Why there was so much peace, security and wealth in Europe. What the causes of war were, and how you built peace. I didn't have any answers, just questions. I thought about it all the time. Every contact I had with government, I thought, 'How do you get to have a government like this?' I watched H and E draw up schedules with the other girls they shared their flat with - and it was like the bus timetable: all the girls actually did all the chores. Amazingly, there wasn't even any conflict about it. How did you get to be this way?"
"Government was very present in this country. It could be bureaucratic - sometimes stupidly complex, but it also seemed very beneficial. I wanted to know how you do that. This was an infidel country, whose way of life we Muslims were supposed to oppose and reject. Why was it, then, so much better run, better led, and made for such better lives than the place we came from? Shouldn't the places where Allah was worshiped and His laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers' countries ignorant, poor and at war?"
"When the conductor came to check our student transport cards, Naima would fume that he had stared at her card longer than at the white girls'. She never complained about the violence and humiliation she suffered at home, only about Dutch racism. I think now that this obsession with identifying racism, which I saw so often among Somalis too, was really a comfort mechanism, to keep people from feeling personally inadequate and to externalize the causes of their unhappiness."
"The Enlightenment cut European culture from its roots in old fixed ideas of magic, kingship, social hierarchy and the domination of priests, and regrafted it onto a great strong trunk that supported the equality of each individual, and his right to free opinion and self-rule - so long as he did not threaten civic peace and the freedom of others. Here, in Leiden, was where the enlightenment had taken hold. Here, the Dutch let each other be free. And here, this commitment to freedom took hold of me, too."
"In February 1995 there were huge floods across Holland. When Somalis are faced with catastrophic weather, drought and flooding, they all get together and pray. Natural disasters are signs from God, to show humans they are misbehaving on earth. But the Dutch blamed their government for failing to maintain the dikes properly... Almost everything was secular here. Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly. This man-made system of government was so much more stable, peaceful, prosperous, and happy than the supposedly God-devised systems I had been taught to respect."
"The result was that immigrants lived apart, studied apart, socialized apart. They went to separate schools - special Muslim schools or ordinary schools in the inner city, which other families fled. At the Muslim schools there were no children from Dutch families. The little girls were veiled and often separated from the boys... and [they] avoided subjects that ran contrary to Islamic doctrine. Children weren't encouraged to ask questions, and their creativity was not stimulated. They were taught to keep their distance from unbelievers and to obey."
"This compassion for immigrants and their struggles in a new country resulted in attitudes and policies that perpetuated cruelty. Thousands of Muslim women and children in Holland were being systematically abused, and there was no escaping this fact. Little children were excised [genitally mutilated] on kitchen tables - I knew this from Somalis for whom I translated. Girls who chose their own boyfriends and lovers were beaten half to death or even killed: many more were regularly slapped around. The suffering of all these women was unspeakable."
"Holland's multiculturalism - its respect for Muslims' way of doing things - wasn't working. It was depriving many women and children of their rights. Holland was trying to be tolerant for the sake of consensus, but the consensus was empty. The immigrants' culture was being preserved at the expense of their women and children and to the detriment of the immigrants' integration into Holland. Many Muslims never learned Dutch and rejected Dutch values of tolerance and personal liberty."
"By declaring our prophet infallible and not permitting ourselves to question him, we Muslims had set up a static tyranny.... By adhering to his rules of what is permitted and what is forbidden, we Muslims suppressed the freedom to think for ourselves and to act as we chose. We froze the moral outlook of billions of people into the mindset of the Arab desert in the seventh century. We were not just servants of Allah, we were slaves."
"The kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mindset based on tribal concept of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking."
"It is always difficult to make the transition to the modern world... It was difficult for me, too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason, from excision and forced marriage to sexual emancipation. Having made the journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values."
"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."
