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Holistic Guidance - Infidel
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List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $10.20
Your Save: $ 4.80 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Free Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 949.2073092
EAN: 9780743289696
ISBN: 0743289692
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2008-04-01
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her astonishing life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya, to her intellectual awakening and activism in the Netherlands, and her current life under armed guard in the West. One of today's most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following an Islamist's murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the movie Submission. Infidel is the eagerly awaited story of the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished -- and sometimes reviled -- political superstar and champion of free speech. With a gimlet eye and measured, often ironic, voice, Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will, and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely ruled by despots. In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat -- demonized by reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from her family and clan -- she refuses to be silenced. Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: One Woman's Story
Comment: I know the purpose of a review is to comment on the book, rather than other reviewers. However, I must say that giving one star to this book because other women have gone through "worse" or that the reviewer doesn't agree with Ali's personal feelings is, to me, utterly ridiculous. This is her story and her coming of age. Do we minimize her amazing story because her repeated beatings weren't as "bad" as other women? Do we ignore her story because we don't agree with her? No. This is her story, her life, and her journey. She's not telling you to agree with her. I myself wonder at her ability to survive it all. Her intellectual and emotional feelings about Islam, again, are HER feelings. I'm certainly not an expert on Islam, but I feel it is condescending and patronizing to state that she confuses religion with culture. She's lived with and in Islam all her life: doesn't that make her rather an expert on the subject? You may not agree with the path she has taken, but please don't minimize her understanding of Islam or her journey. Let's use her story and her life as a first step towards discussion and understanding.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Courageous Lady
Comment: Succinctly put, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one courageous lady. She overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to escape the persecution of islam in her native Somalia and become a free woman, a Dutch citizen, and a member of the Dutch Parliament.
For people who have been lulled into thinking that islam is a religion of peace, some serious rethinking is in order. Granted, as practiced, islam varies somewhat from country to country--some being worse than others--but the ignorance, warfare, barbarism, horrible treatment of women, hatred of everything and everyone un-moslem, and blame-everyone-else attitude all seem to be prevalent everywhere in the islamic world. Ayaan vividly tells of this--not from research but from her own life experiences.
If you want to read an amazing story of literal slavery to liberty, you must read this book. Once you get within the first few pages, if you are anything like me, you will have a difficult time putting it down until you have finished.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Infidel
Comment: amazing story, amazing book, amazing woman. I am highly impressed with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her book. The book was a page turner and Ali is a gifted writer. She is a strong voice for women everywhere.
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Summary: A must-read for all, politicians included
Comment: This is a gripping book with a fascinating autobiographical story, as well as a focused analysis of what Muslim communities in the West today are like. Ali has the experience, as a formerly observant Muslim and (brief) member of the Muslim Brotherhood, to provide insights and to make an excellent case for every point.
It's must reading for all politicians, as well as all Americans.
This could be the most memorable book I've read all year.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Comment: If one text has succeeded in challenging the complacency of the West, indeed of supposedly enlightened people the world over, to the rising threat of fundamentalist Islam, it is Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. From her perspective as a woman who has survived the treacherous grip of Islam over both her body and her mind, Ayaan counters the oft repeated proclamation that Islam is "a religion of peace." Narrating her own intimidating journey through oppression and hatred in Islamic Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and the rapidly growing Muslim enclaves of Kenya and Europe, Ali rehashes in masterful and often touching prose her harrowing trials and the series of cruel acts perpetrated against her in the name of the religion she herself so desperately clung to.
Young Ayaan survives her mother's descent into insanity, her abusive male relatives, female circumcision, and constant religious and tribal warfare by dreaming of the life she can only read about in Western novels. She is finally forced to choose between her dreams and the harsh reality of life as a subservient Muslim woman when her father promises her hand in marriage to an aging Somali expatriate who has come to seek a proper traditional wife in Kenya. Her choice is flight, but reaching her imagined paradise in liberal Western Europe she discovers that Islam has arrived ahead of her, bringing with it so much of the terror she had naively hoped to have left behind. After a soul wrenching self-examination, Ayaan cuts the final cords to the religion and culture of her birth, to become a one woman crusade against the oppression perpetrated by Islam, and innocently defended by the "accepting" European Left.
For anyone who is left unsatisfied by the all-encompassing doctrine of cultural relativism, Ali is a breath of fresh literary air. When we unquestioningly "accept" Muslim culture, are we also accepting the horrific abuse of Muslim wives and daughters? What of religious and ethnic minorities suffering throughout the Muslim dominated Arab world and East Africa? Ayaan convincingly argues that in our zeal to be inoffensive, we have allowed for a level of intolerance and violent hatred that would not be tolerated in any other religion. It is time, Ali is telling us, to force an enlightenment in the Muslim world, to bring it up to the same standards by which we judge the Christian West.
Quill says: Infidel is a must read!
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