We Are the Infidels

The description of the life story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, is so full of unusual and extreme adventures that one needs to read the book to absorb it all, page by page. It is hard to imagine what the young woman experienced as a child and into her 20s and how she managed to rise above it and move so far beyond it that she now is in a visible position (well, visible in the media but somewhat under cover and behind security physically) working to help produce the change needed to save today's and tomorrow's Muslim girls and women from similar hardship. I thought that one of the most interesting ideas that we covered at our meeting was that, even with searching, members of our group uncovered very very few similar stories written and published by Muslim women. This underscores the uniqueness of Hirsi Ali's strength. The few books mentioned will be listed at the end of this post.

Hirsi Ali's face is on the cover of her book and in photos on Facebook, but she is under a fatwa and probably doesn't show her face in public often. Maybe she even wears traditional Muslim coverings on the streets of Washington, DC. Well, probably not, but there is a slight parallel one could draw between the hiding of Muslim women under wraps and the current hiding Hirsi Ali must be doing at times.

There are numerous news articles about her on the Internet, dating back to approximately 2006, when she arrived in the United States. Most recently, the news is that she was pregnant, due to deliver in October. Here is a link for an interview article from 2007:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-my-life-under-a-fatwa-760666.html#

It is interesting to read a book by an author who is in the news. I hope to hear that Hirsi Ali is gaining followers and  having successes in the future.

We seemed an island of order in the chaos of the noisy cafe Monday! Although there were more than 20 of us, everyone took turns contributing to the discussion, and everyone listened when someone was talking. Thanks to Pam for finding and nominating this book and working to keep our discussion moving and orderly!

As promised, here are the titles of the few books mentioned that are by/about the feminine Muslim experience: Crossbones, by Nuruddin Farrah; and Princess: A True Story about Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia, by Jean Sasson. That's all, and without looking into it, I surmise that the author of Princess is Western. Other books mentioned on related topics include Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil, by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson; The Bookseller of Kabul, by Asne Seierstad and Ingrid Christopherson (also mentioned in the previous post in this blog); and a book about a woman in repressive Korean society, Ten Thousand Sorrows: The Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan, by Elizabeth Kim.