INFIDEL By Aayan Hirsi Ali £12.99
This is a strong book by a strong woman. It has been published at a time when reactions to Islam are growing less tolerant and will serve to incite more to despise this faith. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a well-known figure, and here she tells her story of her journey from Somalia to America and Muslim to atheist. It is a readable book, a real page-turner, and it is a very important book for Christians.
Ali writes well, her opening is striking as she describes her mother’s and grandmother’s upbringing in nomadic clans in Somalia. Life is harsh and honour-based, Islam a mere veneer on ancient animistic culture.
Civil war
As Ali changes her focus to her own beginnings the situation changes. In the horrendous civil war of the 1970s and 80s her father is a political activist and some-time prisoner. The family has to keep moving from city to city; Mogadishu to Mecca and Nairobi. Ali suffers with her brother and sister physical and verbal abuse from her headstrong mother. She undergoes the horrors of female ‘circumcision’ aged five, has friends who are flogged publicly for being in the country without a male protector.
Misogyny, rights & Rowling
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