Ayaan Hirsi Ali Has Lived a Fascinating Life

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia, where clan allegiances were of utmost importance. They were how you knew your place in the world, where you belonged. As an adult, she speaks of how when she returned to Somalia, knowing her clan and how that clan fit into the world there helped her feel she belonged, even as Somalia was being torn apart by a civil war, and her own inner world was being shaken as she questioned all her beliefs.

She grew up with a progressive father, who becomes a criminal when his bid to take over the government fails, and the Somalian government becomes Communist. He is later captured and put in jail, and for many years while Ayaan was a child, she never knew him, never saw him. While her father was imprisoned and her mother was away visiting him, her grandmother had the five-year old Ayaan undergo the ritual genital mutilation of female circumcision, against her father's wishes. She describes how her grandmother and other elderly female relatives held her down as a strange man cut away her labia and clitoris, and it is harrowing. It is no wonder she has become such an activist against such mutilating rituals. She speaks often of how the procedure is not even completely successful, for it does not remove the desire of the woman, it only removes her ability to have an orgasm from one source of stimulation. As an adult in the Netherlands, she crusuaded to have rituals such as this labeled child abuse, and to have their protection under the religious freedom act removed.

Her family lived in Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia for a time, but had to move around because of her father's political leanings. They moved to Kenya, where she was exposed to a charismatic teacher named Sister Aziza, and she adopted the Sister's teachings entirely, down to wearing the hidjab, the traditional full-body robe that masks the body, revealing only the hands and face. She attempts to emulate the Sister and to conform to the Muslim ideals, but inner doubts eat at her. She joins the Muslim Brotherhood, but she questions everything, even going so far as to boldly ask questions at meetings held with charismatic Muslim leaders. She hopes that one of them will have an answer for her- but they all continue to tell her the rote answers she has found in the Qu'ran. Dissatisfied and seeking better answers, she reads the Qu'ran herself. She also rebels against her mother's authority, enrolling in a secretarial school and getting her certificate after completing her regular schooling.

Her mother flatly refuses to allow her daughter to work, and sends both of them back to Somalia in the hopes that their father will be able to tame their wayward ways. Ayaan was excited to be returning to the home of her childhood, but soon discovered that it was nothing like the place she had left. To her chagrin, living there proved even more restrictive and impossible than living with her mother. Her every move was criticicized, her every action weighed and gossiped about. She sought answers in her religion again. Finally, she found a job, working for the United Nations. This led to her discovery of just how much fighting was actually going on around her, and how much unrest and corruption was actually happening in the government. She found herself realizing why the people were turning to the Muslim Brotherhood for answers, help, banking, schooling, and jobs. She found herself growing more curious about government and rule in general, but she could not indulge the curiosity just yet.

She also fell into a fateful error- she married a cousin, Mahmud Muhammad Artan, and he took her virginity. It was a marriage that her family did not recognize, as neither her father nor her brother were consulted about it, and immediately after taking her virginity, her husband left, and they never saw each other again. The marriage was later annulled by her father when he gave her in marriage to another man.

Soon after her marriage, she and her sister were forced to leave Somalia as refugees, and it is during her time spent fleeing the war and the bleakness that she encountered there that she truly begins standing on her own two feet. She helps her Uncle save his family, and soon after that her father arranges a marriage for her. She goes to Germany to visit relatives, and while there flees to the Netherlands and requests asylum there to escape her arranged marriage.

She has admitted that she made false statements while requesting her refugee status, and it created quite a stir later on, but initially, in 1992, she was granted residence status, and eventually became a Dutch citizen, something she remains very proud of. Her amazing journey did not end there, however. As a refugee, she rejected the usual course of welfare, instead taking courses in Dutch and in social work, and then studying political science at the University of Leiden. While studying, she worked to earn income as a Somali-Dutch translator, a career that brought her into contact with Somali women in the asylum centers. The extent of their stories- many of them battered wives- left deep impressions on her, and spurred her to seek a way to change their fortunes when she later became a politician.

When she earned her master's degree in political science, she entered public service, working with a scientific institute linked to the left-wing Social Democratic Party of the Netherlands. Her work contributed to her continuing to feel more and more disenchanted and dissatisfied feelings with the religion of her youth, and eventually- after the attacks of 9/11, and seeing Dutch Muslims celebrating in the streets, and after reading the Atheist Manifesto of Herman Philipse- she renounced it.

After renouncing her religion, she began to formulate her critiques of Islam and Islamic culture, and published many news articles and became a frequent speaker on Dutch television and in public debate forums. She published her first book, (entitled The Son Factory) and it was then that she began receiving death threats. (In Islam, an apostate must be killed- and a female apostate is even worse than a male one.)

In November 2002, after several disagreements with the Social Democratic Party, and after meeting Gerrit Zalm, the leader of the conservative Liberal Party, she switched to the Liberal Party and ran for election to parliament. She was elected, and during her tenure, she made several controversial statements about Islam. She also produced a movie with Theo van Gogh called Submission, where a woman provocatively dressed in a semi-transparent burqa had excerpts from the Qu'ran projected on her skin. The text referred to the subordinate role of women, which justified the brutal treatment exemplified in other women that were seen in the movie. (As an example, a woman who had been flogged would be shown when a quote justifying such action was projected on the woman in the burqa.) The film sparked incredible controversy, which became violent when Mohammed Bouyeri, a member of the Hofstad Group, murdered van Gogh in broad daylight on a street in Amsterdam on November 2, 2004. A letter attached to the body with a knife was addressed to Ayaan, and listed the reasons for his death and the fatwa against her. Ayaan was deeply disturbed by this, and blamed van Gogh's death on the failure of van Gogh to take her warnings seriously, and on the Dutch intelligence group's unwillingness to take the rumblings they were hearing seriously. Following a scathing television expose that revealed she'd lied about her name, birth date, and reason for asylum, the integration minister announced that her citizenship had to be invalidated. She was forced to resign from Parliament, and give up her precious Dutch citizenship. Fortunately for her, the renunciation of her citizenship created an outrage among the Dutch who valued her contributions, and the Dutch Parliament reinstated her refugee status (essentially the equivalent of a US Green Card) fairly soon after the initial debacle.

She found herself surprisingly unworried about the loss of her job, though the loss of her citizenship weighed upon her. She turned to America, and a job offer from the American Enterprise Institute, where she works and continues to call for equality for ALL women, regardless of religion and location. She continues to protest Islam's degradation and suppression of women, and thus suffers death threats for her "apostasy."

In January of 2006, while receiving an award from Reader's Digest, she called upon the people of the Western World to pay attention to Iran, to work actively to prevent them from gaining nuclear power. She stated that she had never heard of the holocaust as a person growing up in the Middle East, and that her case was hardly unique. She continues to speak out on how we in the West can make the world a better, safer place, and she continues to work to bring Islam into the 20th century. She is currently working on another book, Shortcut to Enlightenment, a philosophical fantasy about a visit by Muhammad to the New York Public Library, and what conclusions he would draw after reading books by various Enlightenment philosophers. She is still under a heavy guard because of the threats on her life.

She would never call herself a hero- but I do, because her bravery in the face of all the opposition against her is astonishing and inspiring. I am humbled and grateful that there are still people like her in the world.