Infidel, My Life by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Pocket Books; Rs.440; 353 pp
Whether orthodox mullahs and hardliners like it or not — and one can be sure they dont — the seeds of contemporisation of Islam, arguably the worlds most austere and literally interpreted religion, have been sown. Just as the seeds of reform of the all-powerful church of Rome were planted in the 16th century by disillusioned German priest Martin Luther, and of the Hindu reformation of the 19th century by Raja Rammohun Roy (and later by independent Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru), so the kernels which will flower into enlightened Islam have been implanted into the harsh unyielding soils of the Islamic world by several brave and articulate women, including writers Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh (Lajja, 1993) and Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, My Life published to global acclaim last year.

Its hardly surprising that the harshest critics of Islam, as it is interpreted and practised in most of the contemporary Muslim world, are women. For the simple reason that no major religion, culture or philosophy as blatantly and unapologetically practices gender discrimination — indeed oppression — as Islam. Which is no small thing because Islam boasts an estimated 1.26 billion adherents globally and according to some reports, is the fastest growing religion of the contemporary world.

Yet paradoxically the deprivations, misery and daily humiliations heaped upon women born in the Islamic world by a global conspiracy of a moribund patriarchy boggle the mind and defy imagination. From a young age hundreds of millions of women are denied the fundamental right to equal education and legal and social equality. Moreover as they grow, education is transformed into a favour rather than a right; all courtship rituals are denied with ‘honour killings common. Ditto freedom of choice in marriage where males are legally permitted to practice bigamy and easy divorce. Yet these are minor punishments for the misfortune of being born a girl child in some of the more orthodox Islamic societies of the 21st century.

Just how nasty, brutish and all too often short, is life for hundreds of millions of the worlds estimated 500 million extraordinarily put-upon Muslim women is recounted in Ayaan Hirsi Alis poignant autobiography under review. It starts with a recitation of her birth in 1969, and early years in Somalia ruled by the Soviet-supported dictator Siad Barre who assumed power through the traditional African practice of coup detat after the abrupt departure of the British and Italians — who had divided and ruled the country for over 80 years — in 1960. Born into the Darod clan which had traditionally ruled over the Eritrean peninsula for several centuries, Ayaan had to suffer exile in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya at a young age because her father Abeh Magan was actively engaged in the clan politics into which Somalia degenerated after Barre seized power in 1969. As such he suffered long periods of imprisonment and exile.

Meanwhile raised by an illiterate but highly religious mother who didnt spare the rod, Ayaan attended a madrassa primary school, suffered the excruciating pain of primitive female circumcision, and several years of adolescence in Saudi Arabia where as a single woman her mother had to suffer vile street-level harassment for daring to take her daughter(s) to school. It was only a decade later when in 1979 the family was deported to Ethiopia and Kenya that Ayaan received the basics of a secular education.
How this brave survivor of civil wars in Somalia and Ethiopia negotiated and manipulated her passage out of Africa to Holland where she was granted refugee status, and where she educated herself sufficiently to be accepted into the political science programme of the renowned Leiden University, is absorbingly recounted in this narrative of true grit and courage. If accessible, it is certain to inspire all people — especially women labouring under oppression in the benighted nations of the Islamic world.

Yet what distinguishes Hirsi Ali from other third world women is that even after graduation, she was not content to lead a comfortable life in obscurity in the affluent West. Endowed with deep wells of empathy, this young woman felt it incumbent upon herself to speak up against the incessant cruelties visited upon her sisters within the Muslim immigrant communities in Holland. In doing so she was compelled to challenge ecclesiastical Islam, and indeed the faith itself for tolerating open, uninterrupted and continuous injustice against sisters born into this once liberal religion. Simultaneously she took on the establishment in her new country of adoption, where craven politicians espousing cultural differentiation and liberalism, turned a blind eye to patently illegal acts of commission and omission of the Muslim patriarchy against women of the community.

This soul-searching memoir begins with the brutal assassination of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch film-maker with whom the author had produced a searing documentary visually highlighting routine cruelties visited upon her sisters of the faith in Holland and mainland Europe. It ends with her disgust with and exile from the country of her adoption following an enquiry against her Dutch citizenship on the flimsy ground that she had written her name incorrectly in her immigration application. Once again instead of retiring into private obscurity in the US, she chose to write this straightforward and honest indictment of Islamic orthodoxy to plead the cause of her sisters. By doing so this courageous crusader for gender justice has sowed healthy seeds for the overdue reform and contemporisation of a faith ill-served by its interpreters and practitioners.

Dilip Thakore