Infidel-Review

INFIDEL

By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

 (This is my original review from June 25, 2008. 

To view comments generated by this post click here 
to go directly to the review on my goodreads page

 www.goodreads.com/sewmanybooks) 

Synopsis

The author tells her account of how she became an Infidel in the eyes of Islam. She was raised Muslim and after an abusive childhood and adolescence she began to question her faith. She ran away from an arranged marriage and was granted refugee status in Holland. While there further questioning and more education eventually caused her to turn away from Islam and God.

Review

Although this book was quite intriguing I can only give it 2 ½ stars (at best 3). A book must be much more than intriguing to get 5-stars. I wish it left me with more than a knot in my stomach. I wanted there to be a solution, a guide for what the world can do to help those who are held captive by dominating tradition or family honor. It just wasn’t there. Instead I was left feeling like, it may be okay to uphold stereotypes that all Muslims are violent and potential terrorists…and I’m just not ok with that.

Another item I took issue with was seeing Ayaan slowly question her faith and turn away from God. No matter how backward you may think Islam, or any religion, it is unsettling to me to see someone turn away from God.

In my reading I also found many parallels between Islam and Mormonism. I really wasn’t exciting about possibly being labeled by others as one of the “radical” religions of the world so I then began searching for differences. My favorite difference is that Latter-Day Saint (LDS) doctrine teaches its members to seek truth and find confirmation. We are not encouraged to keep questions bottled up. This then is in stark contrast to Ms. Ali’s account of Islam that any question to the Koran or it’s teaching is unholy and punishable. As a Latter-Day Saint, we believe in continual, constant revelation for our entire church down to each individual member. When we have questions, we are encouraged to ask God. How thankful I am for that and for my own personal witness of many truths.

To a Muslim, this book would probably be classified as what Mormons call “Anti” literature. And as many of us know, we are encouraged to stay away from such things. In order to find out about a religion we should go to the source not to the deviant account. Although I believe the authors account to be true, I hope it is the deviant account. We may never really know. While the majority remains silent, the loud minority will always be the managing voice of the group.