August 11, 2010

Meeting at Donnie's at one PM:

"Nomad" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The author's powerful and provocative views on Islam may bolster those who share her views and alienate others wary of such intolerance.

As an intellectual, a feminist, an ex-Muslim and a political activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has lived a life worthy of a book.

Born in Somalia, raised in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, Hirsi Ali fled to the Netherlands at age 21 rather than submit to a forced marriage. She denounced Islam after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and was deemed a traitor by her family. She soon was elected to the Dutch parliament, vowing to fight for Muslim women in Europe.

Her screenplay for Theo van Gogh's film "Submission," about the abuse and oppression of Muslim women, led to death threats. After Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004, she went into seclusion and then moved to America. She wrote a bestselling memoir ("Infidel"), joined a conservative think tank in Washington and collected awards for her courage and compassion.

Ali's new book, "Nomad," dulls her star somewhat. Touted as a coming-to-America emotional journey, it mostly reads as an anti-Islamic screed. Her former faith, she writes, is "not just ugly but monstrous." Not just the Al Qaeda variety. All Islam.

Intolerance in the defense of freedom is a hard sell, and "Nomad" is a tough jeremiad to read. Other books may examine why Muslim suicide bombers mostly kill other Muslims, or the history of the Sunni-Shia split, or how the fire-and-brimstone Islam of Saudi Arabia differs from that in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic nation. But you'll find none of that here.

Fired with the zeal of a convert, Hirsi Ali insists Islam and the West are locked in "a clash of civilizations," the rallying cry of the Fox News Channel's vox populi. The "dysfunctional Muslim family constitutes a real threat to the very fabric of Western life," she warns. The "Muslim mind," she declares, is "in the grip of jihad." Textbooks "gloss over the fundamentally unjust rules of Islam" and falsely "present it as a peaceful religion." How does she know? Osama bin Laden says so.

"After 9/11," Hirsi Ali writes, "I found it impossible to ignore his claims that the murderous destruction of innocent (if infidel) lives is consistent with the Quran. I looked in the Quran, and I found it to be so."