So now I'm on page 270 of Infidel. You may be wondering why I don't just finish the book and write some sort of composite review, but I find some value in recording my impressions when they are fresh...like an evolving relationship with a supposedly evolving character.
As I near the end of the book, I am seeing more and more of what I had picked up on earlier in the book - that many, if not all, of her conclusions about Islam are simplistic and logically fallible. She states her conclusions point-blank, and doesn't even acknowledge the existence or possibility of counterarguments. I'm at the point in the book right after she learned of the 9/11 attacks and is reevaluating her views on Islam. Her colleague states that this attack is due more to socioeconomic, political and cultural matters than it is to religious belief. She denies his position vehemently, using as proof that because, for example, the hijackers weren't Palestinian, there is no way this can be related to the Palestine-Israel conflict. Or that because they themselves are not poor and oppressed, it has nothing to do with social and political oppression. For someone who fancies herself deeply connected to rationalism and Western Enlightenment, she doesn't exhibit much in the way of either logical consistency or sociological sensitivity. Just because the hijackers claim to be committing crimes in order to attain religious reward doesn't preclude the fact that (1) the hijackers' version of religion is taught and encouraged by social circumstances and that this version may be entirely distinct and even antithetical to the religion itself; and (2) that the hijackers don't have to be poor, or Palestinian for that matter, to feel tied enough to those causes that they feel the need to act for them.
Although the attacks cannot be justified, some holistic explanation is in order, something that pinpoints a problem that needs to be intelligently addressed. Racist, simplistic conclusions that are not related to the core issue are not going to help. That the Dutch commentators point to Islam's history of peace and intellectual fervor doesn't make them somehow out of touch with reality, as Hirsi Ali states. Instead, these commentators are looking for reasons why a culture that bred tolerance and rationalism can suddenly be used to justify totally barbaric acts against humanity. Particular religious interpretations feeding off of peripheral issues are the problem, not the core itself - otherwise the entire history of Islam would be about violence and hatred.
To the extent that she uses her own experiences of poverty and oppression as a way of reaching conclusions about Islam, she seems oblivious to other causes of socioeconomic depravity. She also doesn't realize that the Islamic Empire itself was vastly more wealthy and sophisticated than the Western world. By viewing all of Islam through the lens of the current global situation and, even more narrowly, her particular experience of Islam is to discount a million factors and influences, ranging from the political to the social and to the psychological results of such influences.
From the moment she steps into Europe, she remains completely enamored. She acknowledges in passing that Holland does have some problems, but overall, it seems to her that the Dutch are living an almost idyllic life. It's unfortunate that in all of Holland she didn't find a compassionate, rational Muslim to connect with (or at least she conveniently excludes such characters from her book) but that such Muslims exist is, I'm sure, something she learned of from her colleagues or readings. But she ignores the possibility of such a thing - a modernized, intellectually-aware Muslim, and chooses instead to conflate all things bad and poor with Islam and Muslims, as if one cannot be extricated from the other. That her initial childish impressions of Europe and modernization were not at some point tempered by intellectual subtlety is not merely unfortunate, but evidence of a conscious disregard for anything that would shake her predetermined notions of Islam and Muslims.
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4 comments:
Asma, I completely agree! I'm about to board a plane and am on 300, but I wanted to read your post because her chapter on Leaving God made it sound that just because she was Muslim, it was ok for her to bash Islam. It seems that a lot of what she believes Islam embodies is due to how she was brought up. I think she did meet a few moderate Muslims along the way, including the imam she was briefly enamored with, but refused to acknowledge a moderate Islam because she only seemed to want to believe in the fanaticism she was once a part of. I believe that a lot of the terrible things embodied in Somali and Saudi culture took place in the name of Islam and that is why she can't seem to disentangle the culture from the religion. She often speaks of domestic violence and I was reminded of the chapter in Living Islam Out Loud where the writer volunteers at a battered women's shelter and is able to free women from the beatings using the Qu'ran, it's a shame Ayaan couldn't find anything positive in the Holy Book.
Mehreen, I, too, was reminded of Mohja Kahf's piece in Living Islam Out Loud...some of the book club members asked, "so what should we get out of this book? We see women oppressed in the name of Islam...and we should do what?" and my answer was based entirely on Kahf's story of reaching out to women who are suffering and explain to them in a logical, sound way, with adequate and compelling proof, that Islam does NOT condone their suffering.
As for the imam she was enamored with...I am not sure 'moderate' is the term for him, since he openly espoused one view and then practiced another. Though all this confusion may have, in practice, yielded 'moderation', at the core it seems he is more 'confused' than 'moderate'.
Whenever I read her or hear her speak she points out she is criticizing the Islam that results from a very literal reading of the Koran and that is fairly popular at the moment. She does talk about reforming Islam. A similarly literal reading of the Bible leads to a similarly harmful religion.
I'm definitely seeing that sort of rhetoric toward the end of the book...but it doesn't seem to jibe with the statements she sprinkles throughout the rest of the book about, e.g., her father's interpretation being a 'mere interpretation'. Even her silence in response to her father's statement that Islam itself doesn't condone the oppression of the women suggests that she thinks Islam in all forms is oppressive. I understand her point that religion is often used as a justification and even a motivation for horrible acts, but there are so many other intervening factors between that religion-action gap that she completely downplays.
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