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A review by lpm100
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
dark
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Book Review
"Infidel," by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
5/5 stars
"Black people who are inclined to romanticize Africa might rethink that after reading a book like this."
Of the book:
-351 pages over 17 chapters plus an epilogue.
-Just under 20 pages per chapter, enough to read during a lunch break.
-No index
-Does include photos.
*******
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is intelligent and multilingual. (She speaks Dutch, English, Arabic, Somali, and Swahili-- artifacts of living in so many different countries as a refugee.)
She also seems to be very long suffering. (Female circumcision. Constant moving because of refugee status. Constantly tied hands-to-ankles and beaten by her mother.)
The message of this book (p.348) in the author's own words is about islam, and it 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."
My secondary takeaway message isthat: if you want to dislike a certain type of people, living around them is enough to do just that. In the case of our author, she lived around some very nasty, corrupt and abusive (Arab) people that were Muslim.
And that was enough to make her get her fill of it/them, and move forward to choose her own path.
As I read this book, I'm reminded of an Arthur Golden quote "Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us-so long as we keep in mind that we are missing all those things the rabbit was in no position to observe."
Our Muslim author is the perceptive and articulate rabbit.
In the first half of the book, what we see here is: a very tribal society that is trying to turn into a nation (like much of sub-Saharan and Horn of Africa at that time which is still a work in progress).
In the second half of the book we see the hapless Europeans turning themselves into Eurabia through a certain type of willful ignorance.
Several interesting things that Ayaan observes in each chapter.
1. (6 pps). We have a very nomadic, tribal and primitive society in the process of trying to become a nation state, albeit imperfectly.
2.(18 pps). The first iteration of Somalia was set up as a Soviet client state. The author has her clitoridectomy and female circumcision (Almost 100% of Somali girls had it, and it predated Islam--people thought that if they didn't have it they would become morally depraved.) The long war between Ethiopia and Somalia was one between ancient enemies, Christians and Muslims, mountain people and nomads.
3. (18 pps). Somali and Saudi Islam are two different things (p.42): The first more relaxed and mixed with ancient beliefs, and the second straight Wahhabi. Arabs don't like blacks anywhere in the world, and Saudi Arabia is no exception. Rabid anti-semitism, as well.
4. (6 pps). The Author lived under three different political systems by the age of 10: Police state in Mogadishu; Sharia in Saudi Arabia; The clan system of Somalia.
5. (28 pps) . No Pan-African unity here: Horn of Africa Africans (Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans) think that they are better than the other Africans because of some admixture of Arab blood. Ethiopia has its own calendar that is 7 years and 8 months behind everyone else's. And, also a different time telling system. Tribe (Kenya, etc)≠ tribe (Somalia). Women's shaving of pubic hair (yuck!) is based on some obscene Islamic concept of purity.
6. Somali conversations start with listing one's ancestry (p.99). The female circumcision scar is torn on the wedding night. (It's not pleasant, but there is plenty of blood for proof of virginity!)
7. I know that the Somalians/ Eritreans/ Ethiopians do not like the "blacker" Africans (as we get reminded probably every 10th page in this book). But in reality, they're just as sorry/ inept at statecraft/ cognitively deficient as the rest. Tried and true progression: Independence-->Communism--> governmental breakdown-->Islamism.
8. Author goes and bribes her family out of a refugee camp. Standard fare African corruption: She moves back and forth between Kenya and Somalia by just paying the border guards bribes.
9. Second marriage; emigration abroad. It seems that Ayaan's first husband went to Russia and found himself a white lady and dropped her. (That thing that they say about black guys and white ladies just may not be a stereotype.)
10. Decision to strike out on her own and asylum in Holland; the author seems genuinely appalled that there is a government somewhere that is not the typical African racketeering-operation-as-government. Buses go where they should (and they don't take the passengers on detours to rob and rape them). Entire neighborhoods are constructed and garbage is collected in an orderly fashion (and not just thrown on top of a rubbish heap). Policemen are actually there to help you (and not extort bribes from you). "We Muslims were always boasting about something or the other, but our whole culture was sexually frustrated." (p.195).
11. She had to have a trial by her clansmen, and apparently there was a very well developed algorithm to do just that that was put into practice in Holland. Also: (p.209) "We were Osman Mahamud, not Arabs, and the Osman Mahamud very rarely hit women."
12. Some female circumcisions are a lot worse than others. At least the author got the least bad of them. "Farooni" is practiced on Isaq girls from the north of Somalia. The author describes them (p.223) as... "Not integrating into that society... Not working...... with nothing to do but hang about the Asylum Center and cadge meals... Their reaction was to create a fantasy that they as Somalis knew better about everything than these inferior white people.... The others just chewed qat all night and sat around talking about how horrible Holland was."
13. "For generations, Dutch Catholics and Protestants went to separate schools, hospitals, clubs, shops; they even had separate channels on TV and separate radio stations." ....."The Somali cases were almost always the same, again and again. The husband took all the welfare money, spent it on qat, and when the wife hid the money he would beat her until finally the police intervened."
14. A lot of Dopey White People talk away Islamism by saying that "Muslims preserved Aristotle and invented the number zero." The only one who could see the inanity of this position was our Muslim author. I'm also surprised to find that the Quran was actually written down 150 years AFTER the time of Muhammad. (p.278): "A tiny community of so-called experts on immigration and Europe have been quoting each other for decades, it appeared. All present seemed to think that it would be easy to set up the institutions for a European Islam in peace and harmony."
15. Dutch politics is a story of coalition governments. A lot of times, candidates are vetted internally and sent out when it is known that they can win. Our author was chosen as a result of her work on a think tank. (It is at this point that she ends up under heavy armed security.)
16. The film that got Theo Van Gogh killed was only 10 minutes long. And that only happened after some discussion, because it might have been as short as 5 minutes long.
17. Theo van Gogh may have been suicidal: he was offered protection many times and refused it.
Epilogue: The scandal around Ali's Dutch citizenship actually brought the whole government down. Eventually, she moved to the United States, but she still thinks of herself as a Dutchwoman. (p.348): 6,000 female excisions per day.
Other thoughts:
1. I know a lot of black people in America like to try to romanticize Africa, but after reading a book like this you might give it a second thought.
2. These Somalis were actually *sorrier* than the black people I see every day Stateside. Something like 31% workforce participation for the men, and 18% for the women. (Current statistics.)
3. When you bring people into your country and put them on welfare, they will turn against you. That is what happened with the Arab riots in France. And it is also what happened there in Holland. (p.225) "I felt embarrassed and even let down by the way so many Somalis accepted welfare money and then turned on the society that gave it to them."
4. I don't know who is stupider. Average IQ in Holland, 100. Average IQ in Somalia, 68. 2.1+ standard deviations lower. But then, Dutchmen bring those guys there and try to teach them how to use indoor toilets/ wear gym shoes/ use bus schedules among other things that would be generally useful for living in the 21st century.
An exercise in futility: the Somalis (and, really, all the rest of the Muslims there) chose to remain fixated in the 7th century.
5. If brains are hardware and ideas are software, then: the country full of people with good hardware and bad software is not much better than one full of people with bad hardware. There was no Islamic fundamentalism in the Netherlands until the Dutch brought it themselves, and ditto for Germany. Pim Fortuyn was actually killed by another Dutchman who thought he was defending the rights of Muslims.
6. It is interesting that in spite of what may be a better society in europe, they don't seem to be able to sustainably reproduce themselves. In which case, there's no point. The Muslims may be fixated in the 7th century, but one thing that they do do is have a lot of babies.
*******
Brilliant quotes
(p.346): "People are always asking me what it's like to live with death threats. It's like being diagnosed with a chronic disease. It may flare up and kill you, but it may not. It could happen in a week, or not for decades. Where I grew up, death is a constant visitor. A virus, a bacteria, a parasite; drought and famine; soldiers coming and torturers; could bring it to anyone, anytime. Death comes riding on raindrops that turns to floods. It catches the imagination of men in positions of authority who ordered their subordinates to hunt, torture, and kill people they imagine to be enemies. Death lures many others to take their own lives in order to escape a dismal reality. Death comes to young women giving birth to new life, leaving the newborn orphaned in the hands of strangers. For those who live in anarchy and Civil War, as in the country of my birth, Somalia, death is everywhere."
(p.350): "Even today you can take a truck across the border into Somalia and find you have gone back thousands of years in time."
"Infidel," by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
5/5 stars
"Black people who are inclined to romanticize Africa might rethink that after reading a book like this."
Of the book:
-351 pages over 17 chapters plus an epilogue.
-Just under 20 pages per chapter, enough to read during a lunch break.
-No index
-Does include photos.
*******
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is intelligent and multilingual. (She speaks Dutch, English, Arabic, Somali, and Swahili-- artifacts of living in so many different countries as a refugee.)
She also seems to be very long suffering. (Female circumcision. Constant moving because of refugee status. Constantly tied hands-to-ankles and beaten by her mother.)
The message of this book (p.348) in the author's own words is about islam, and it 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."
My secondary takeaway message isthat: if you want to dislike a certain type of people, living around them is enough to do just that. In the case of our author, she lived around some very nasty, corrupt and abusive (Arab) people that were Muslim.
And that was enough to make her get her fill of it/them, and move forward to choose her own path.
As I read this book, I'm reminded of an Arthur Golden quote "Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us-so long as we keep in mind that we are missing all those things the rabbit was in no position to observe."
Our Muslim author is the perceptive and articulate rabbit.
In the first half of the book, what we see here is: a very tribal society that is trying to turn into a nation (like much of sub-Saharan and Horn of Africa at that time which is still a work in progress).
In the second half of the book we see the hapless Europeans turning themselves into Eurabia through a certain type of willful ignorance.
Several interesting things that Ayaan observes in each chapter.
1. (6 pps). We have a very nomadic, tribal and primitive society in the process of trying to become a nation state, albeit imperfectly.
2.(18 pps). The first iteration of Somalia was set up as a Soviet client state. The author has her clitoridectomy and female circumcision (Almost 100% of Somali girls had it, and it predated Islam--people thought that if they didn't have it they would become morally depraved.) The long war between Ethiopia and Somalia was one between ancient enemies, Christians and Muslims, mountain people and nomads.
3. (18 pps). Somali and Saudi Islam are two different things (p.42): The first more relaxed and mixed with ancient beliefs, and the second straight Wahhabi. Arabs don't like blacks anywhere in the world, and Saudi Arabia is no exception. Rabid anti-semitism, as well.
4. (6 pps). The Author lived under three different political systems by the age of 10: Police state in Mogadishu; Sharia in Saudi Arabia; The clan system of Somalia.
5. (28 pps) . No Pan-African unity here: Horn of Africa Africans (Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans) think that they are better than the other Africans because of some admixture of Arab blood. Ethiopia has its own calendar that is 7 years and 8 months behind everyone else's. And, also a different time telling system. Tribe (Kenya, etc)≠ tribe (Somalia). Women's shaving of pubic hair (yuck!) is based on some obscene Islamic concept of purity.
6. Somali conversations start with listing one's ancestry (p.99). The female circumcision scar is torn on the wedding night. (It's not pleasant, but there is plenty of blood for proof of virginity!)
7. I know that the Somalians/ Eritreans/ Ethiopians do not like the "blacker" Africans (as we get reminded probably every 10th page in this book). But in reality, they're just as sorry/ inept at statecraft/ cognitively deficient as the rest. Tried and true progression: Independence-->Communism--> governmental breakdown-->Islamism.
8. Author goes and bribes her family out of a refugee camp. Standard fare African corruption: She moves back and forth between Kenya and Somalia by just paying the border guards bribes.
9. Second marriage; emigration abroad. It seems that Ayaan's first husband went to Russia and found himself a white lady and dropped her. (That thing that they say about black guys and white ladies just may not be a stereotype.)
10. Decision to strike out on her own and asylum in Holland; the author seems genuinely appalled that there is a government somewhere that is not the typical African racketeering-operation-as-government. Buses go where they should (and they don't take the passengers on detours to rob and rape them). Entire neighborhoods are constructed and garbage is collected in an orderly fashion (and not just thrown on top of a rubbish heap). Policemen are actually there to help you (and not extort bribes from you). "We Muslims were always boasting about something or the other, but our whole culture was sexually frustrated." (p.195).
11. She had to have a trial by her clansmen, and apparently there was a very well developed algorithm to do just that that was put into practice in Holland. Also: (p.209) "We were Osman Mahamud, not Arabs, and the Osman Mahamud very rarely hit women."
12. Some female circumcisions are a lot worse than others. At least the author got the least bad of them. "Farooni" is practiced on Isaq girls from the north of Somalia. The author describes them (p.223) as... "Not integrating into that society... Not working...... with nothing to do but hang about the Asylum Center and cadge meals... Their reaction was to create a fantasy that they as Somalis knew better about everything than these inferior white people.... The others just chewed qat all night and sat around talking about how horrible Holland was."
13. "For generations, Dutch Catholics and Protestants went to separate schools, hospitals, clubs, shops; they even had separate channels on TV and separate radio stations." ....."The Somali cases were almost always the same, again and again. The husband took all the welfare money, spent it on qat, and when the wife hid the money he would beat her until finally the police intervened."
14. A lot of Dopey White People talk away Islamism by saying that "Muslims preserved Aristotle and invented the number zero." The only one who could see the inanity of this position was our Muslim author. I'm also surprised to find that the Quran was actually written down 150 years AFTER the time of Muhammad. (p.278): "A tiny community of so-called experts on immigration and Europe have been quoting each other for decades, it appeared. All present seemed to think that it would be easy to set up the institutions for a European Islam in peace and harmony."
15. Dutch politics is a story of coalition governments. A lot of times, candidates are vetted internally and sent out when it is known that they can win. Our author was chosen as a result of her work on a think tank. (It is at this point that she ends up under heavy armed security.)
16. The film that got Theo Van Gogh killed was only 10 minutes long. And that only happened after some discussion, because it might have been as short as 5 minutes long.
17. Theo van Gogh may have been suicidal: he was offered protection many times and refused it.
Epilogue: The scandal around Ali's Dutch citizenship actually brought the whole government down. Eventually, she moved to the United States, but she still thinks of herself as a Dutchwoman. (p.348): 6,000 female excisions per day.
Other thoughts:
1. I know a lot of black people in America like to try to romanticize Africa, but after reading a book like this you might give it a second thought.
2. These Somalis were actually *sorrier* than the black people I see every day Stateside. Something like 31% workforce participation for the men, and 18% for the women. (Current statistics.)
3. When you bring people into your country and put them on welfare, they will turn against you. That is what happened with the Arab riots in France. And it is also what happened there in Holland. (p.225) "I felt embarrassed and even let down by the way so many Somalis accepted welfare money and then turned on the society that gave it to them."
4. I don't know who is stupider. Average IQ in Holland, 100. Average IQ in Somalia, 68. 2.1+ standard deviations lower. But then, Dutchmen bring those guys there and try to teach them how to use indoor toilets/ wear gym shoes/ use bus schedules among other things that would be generally useful for living in the 21st century.
An exercise in futility: the Somalis (and, really, all the rest of the Muslims there) chose to remain fixated in the 7th century.
5. If brains are hardware and ideas are software, then: the country full of people with good hardware and bad software is not much better than one full of people with bad hardware. There was no Islamic fundamentalism in the Netherlands until the Dutch brought it themselves, and ditto for Germany. Pim Fortuyn was actually killed by another Dutchman who thought he was defending the rights of Muslims.
6. It is interesting that in spite of what may be a better society in europe, they don't seem to be able to sustainably reproduce themselves. In which case, there's no point. The Muslims may be fixated in the 7th century, but one thing that they do do is have a lot of babies.
*******
Brilliant quotes
(p.346): "People are always asking me what it's like to live with death threats. It's like being diagnosed with a chronic disease. It may flare up and kill you, but it may not. It could happen in a week, or not for decades. Where I grew up, death is a constant visitor. A virus, a bacteria, a parasite; drought and famine; soldiers coming and torturers; could bring it to anyone, anytime. Death comes riding on raindrops that turns to floods. It catches the imagination of men in positions of authority who ordered their subordinates to hunt, torture, and kill people they imagine to be enemies. Death lures many others to take their own lives in order to escape a dismal reality. Death comes to young women giving birth to new life, leaving the newborn orphaned in the hands of strangers. For those who live in anarchy and Civil War, as in the country of my birth, Somalia, death is everywhere."
(p.350): "Even today you can take a truck across the border into Somalia and find you have gone back thousands of years in time."