Meika's review

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Copy/paste the text below into your blog. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81227.Infidel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Infidel" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170995660m/81227.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81227.Infidel?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Infidel</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/46245.Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali">Ayaan Hirsi Ali</a><br/><br/> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4969760?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a> rating: 4 of 5 stars<br/>The first half of this book is a littany of horrors. It's muddy and difficult prose, detailing the thousand daily struggles of a girl in Third World Africa. She begs you not to hate the people who inflicted hurt on her and on others, but there's no way for someone not from that world to even comprehend. At one point she talks about living in Kenya, and recalls seeing a youth running from a crowd of people who are calling him a thief, and how they catch him and stone him and beat him, probably to death. It isn't an antiseptic narrative, and it's hard to read it. I had to put it down at one point, to pull myself from the quicksand. <br/> <br/>At the halfway point she makes her break for Holland and thus begins her careful and gradual rejection of Islam as she embraces feminism and a human rights centered worldview. Though she details the numerous crises where people required her skills as a translator (many times she spoke to rape victims or people who had contracted HIV/AIDS) it's with a new sense of optimism that she approaches her own life. She embraces her sense of self as she embraces her mission as a political activist. <br/> <br/>At the end of her memoir it strikes me as ironic that she now lives with 27/7 security detail. She cannot go out alone, without protection. I kept thinking it was sad that she spent so much time talking about how stifling it was to require the protection of male relatives as she was growing up, and felt this tangible sense of freedom when she described being able to ride her bike around where she wanted to. It was almost like watching her trade in one cage for another, and it was frustrating to see that unfold. <br/> <br/>One thing that bothered me was the forward by Christopher Hitchens. It struck me as patronizing and I don't think it was a help to Ali's writing. If anything, his statement "We no longer allow Jews to run separate Orthodox courts in their communities, or permit Mormons to practice polygamy or racial discrimination or child marriage. That is the price of "inclusion" and a very reasonable one," was simplistic and stupid. And it bears mentioning that Mormonism has it's historical roots in North America; it's an entirely different set of arguments to make. *I* felt alienated by this statement, and I haven't been to church in over a decade. Where Ali addresses the issues as multi-faceted and complex with socio-economic, geographical and historical influences... Hitchens reinforces the divide between "us" and "them" that I think Ali is trying to argue shouldn't be there in the first place. What she is saying is these insularized migrant groups, if they choose to seek refuge, should accept the constraints of the society they ask to protect them. Ultimately, her message is compassionate. I think Hitchens misses the point. His foreward is dismissive and worth dismissing. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/271159?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>