Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, should be required reading for everyone. Infidel exposes the truth that so many Politically Correct idiots refuse to acknowledge. Islam is NOT a religion of "peace and tolerance". I get tired of hearing that line from every talking head and politician eager for votes. We have to understand that this is a religion based in fanaticism, steeped in violence toward outsiders and each other, and filled with illiterate uneducated superstitious people.

This book is effective on so many levels. From the personal story of her life to an overall indictment of the worlds fastest growing religion. When Ali was a child of five, three adults held her down on a kitchen table, while a fourth mutilated her. " In Somalia, like many countries across Africa and the Middle East, little girls are made "pure" by having their genitals cut out. There is no other way to describe this procedure, which typically occurs around the age of five. After the child's clitoris and labia are carved out, scraped off, or, in more compassionate areas, merely cut or pricked, the whole area is often sewn up, so that a thick band of tissue forms a chastity belt made of the girl's own scarred flesh. A small hole is carefully situated to permit a thin flow of urine. Only great force can tear the scar tissue wider, for sex." Culturally relevant some will argue. That doesn't make it any less evil. Slavery was culturally relevant to our plantation owners in the south, that didn't make it anything less than evil. I'm pretty sure that Hitler and his pals would argue that gas chambers were culturally relevant to the Third Reich as well. Evil is simply that…evil. If its done in the name of religion, or a government.

Ali points out the fatal flaws of multiculturalism. Compassion for immigrants merely perpetuates the cruelty and ignorance. Islam has declared their Prophet to be infallible, and since no one is allowed to question this, it has become, as Ali says, a "static tyranny". At least during the time it took for this child to heal up, the almost daily abuse at the hands of her mother and grandmother abated. Can you imagine hogtying your child, placing them on their belly with their ankles and wrists tied together and then beating them with a stick? And then can you imagine this to be an acceptable, wide spread and common practice, to make sure that girls are, above all, obedient in all ways?

As you can imagine, Ms. Ali is not a terribly popular woman with believers in Islam. And, with the case of Salman Rushdie, the Danish comic strip artist whose name I can't seem to recall, Daniel Pipes, etc., she lives with armed guards. As Michelle Malkin says, "The Religion of Perpetual Outrage strikes again!"

In the meantime, in an effort to appear open and accepting, the West does such stupid things. We attack the religions our systems are historically based on while ignoring the evil wrought by Islam. Look around, tiny little examples exist everywhere, even something as simple as banning the wearing of Christian Chastity rings in one London school, while allowing Muslim headscarves on girls. (I suppose if we encouraged the wearers of the Chastity rings to have their genitals scraped off, it would be less offensive than their wish to wear a ring on their finger…) Oriana Fallaci said, before her death from cancer, "the hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. The clash between us and them is not a military one. It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come." Ali takes this even further, she lived it, and now she warns us all. I just don't know if we have the courage to listen.

(Posted on myspace July 5, 2007 and librarything March 7 2008)