Ayaan Irsi Ali. Infidel, Free Press, 2007, ISBN 0-7432-9503-X

This is a nightmarish, mind-shattering book. A time-travel book back one thousand years into a grim, primitive time. Everybody knows that Islam was spread with sword and fire — in one word, by terror. Nothing has changed its predatory essence.

The author, Ayaan Irsi Ali, is a Somalian born Dutch citizen who had an exceptionally disadvantaged childhood — first in Mogadishu, later in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and then Nairobi, Kenya. She survived malaria, pneumonia, female genital mutilation without any anesthesia, and a bandit who held a knife to her throat but then decided not to cut. She survived her sadistic mother’s daily beatings; her Qu’ran teacher’s beating that fractured her skull, and her father’s heartless action to marry her off to the first-comer. After such torments and trials you would think that Muslims would sympathise with Irsi Ali? No, they want to murder her, making a mockery of Allah the merciful, Allah the beneficent!

While the family lived in Saudi Arabia, ruled by the fundamentalist Muslims, from where they were deported in 1979, everything was associated with sin. If a girl’s white headscarves shook loose, that was sin. Men were flogged, women were stoned. After the Friday noon prayer you could go and watch the executions, where heads and hands were cut off. Saudi women were regularly beaten by their husbands. How is it possible that in our day and age no human rights organisation has done anything to abolish such terrible and primitive practices?

When Irsi Ali became a teenager she tried very hard to be a good Muslim, wearing approved garments and praying a lot. At the same time she had enough sense to graduate from high school. She realised, that education was important. She learned English and read English literature. Her expertise in English was the magic key, which opened the door to her freedom.

Irsi Ali’s father enjoyed the attractions of polygamy. He married four times, including remarrying his first wife. When it suited him, he just walked off and left the wives to fend for themselves and his children. The first wife was a government official and able to bring up their two daughters, but Irsi Ali’s mother had to beg his clan for money to feed his children. The third wife had only one child. In actual fact polygamy is simply a factory for producing babies. What an existence, filled with noise and prayer. No songs, no dances, no parties, no music, no art, theatre or fiction literature.

It is very obvious that Islam is incompatible with the idea of modern democracy. Infidel has already had a huge impact on the whole world, and even if the irate Muslims happen to murder Irsi Ali, her message remains alive: that Islam has to succumb to reform to become humane and acceptable to the modern world. It is wrong for the West to be supertolerant of primitive practices of Islam.

Märkmed: