For me, this book was disappointing and unsatisfying. I was hoping for an informed and intelligent treatment of the problem of the status of women in Islam, which would be evidence based and factual, but this is nothing like what I wanted.
Ali seems like no more than an averagely intelligent observer of Islam, though she is certainly well qualified in her opinions, having been brought up as a Muslim and having fled a compulsory marriage to live the unreligious life in the Netherlands. But I, for one, am not interested in her declarations of what 'should' and 'must' happen to Islam, or what the West 'should' and 'must' do to mitigate its extremism, nor in her description of the extremism itself. I don't want to just listen to her proclamations - I want to be given credit to make up my own mind, or to see what is made obvious when relevant research and statistics are presented to me.

For the most part, the book wanders rather eccentrically through topics, presenting a scant few cherry picked facts to back up Ali's opinions. In my view, her lack of a systematic and objective stance actually undermines her own intention, because she comes across as a bit of a chicken licken type of character who tries to convince us of the errors of Islam through her conviction, rather than the weight of evidence. The research that Ali did not bother to read or quote, is what allows her readers to know how representative her own experiences are. Without them, we are left with a diatribe of her views, which are extreme at times, and intolerably culturally biased against Moslems. It is not difficult to understand how her views on the differential treatment of Moslem immigrants failed to gain traction within the labour party in Holland.

You can only read so much of this strongly opinionated style without feeling the author is self indulgent and damaged by her experiences and that we, her audience are having our intelligence insulted. This book does little to contribute to the interesting debate about the rightness or wrongness of outlawing the hijab.

All this is not to say that Ali's biographic work is not worth a look: Infidel sounds interesting, but IMHO this attempt to write non-fiction is a waste of time.