Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Read Free Book Online

Brotherhood in the first instance simply because they brought order. They did what everyone else believed could not be done: they found a path for these directionless boys who were growing into directionless men. But how exactly did they achieve this feat?
    The overarching message of Boqol Sawm was that this life is temporary. If you lived outside the dictates of the Prophet you would burn in hell for the duration of your real life, the afterlife. But if you lived righteously, Allah would reward you in paradise. And men in particular would receive special blessings if they became warriors for Allah.
    This was not the practice of my mother, much less my father. No longer were we merely people put on earth to be tested, fearing judgment and asking God to be patient with us. Now we had a task and a goal: we were bound together in an army; we were soldiers of God, fulfilling his purpose. Together, in their different ways, Sister Aziza and Boqol Sawm were the vanguard of a militant Islam—a version that emphasized the political ideology of Muhammad’s Medina years (indeed, Boqol Sawm had been trained in Medina). And I fervently embraced it.
    Thus, when Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran called for the writer Salman Rushdie to die after he published The Satanic Verses , I didn’t ask if this was right or what it had to do with me as an expatriate Somali in Kenya. I simply agreed. Everyone in my community believed that Rushdie had to die; after all, he had insulted the Prophet. My friends said it, my religious teachers said it, the Qur’an said it, and I said it and believed it, too. I never questioned the justice of the fatwa against Rushdie; I thought it was completely moral for Khomeini to ensure that this apostate who had insulted the Prophet would be punished, and the appropriate punishment for his crime was death.
    The Islam of my childhood, though all encompassing, had not been overtly political. During my teenage years, however, fealty to Islam became something that went far beyond the observance of daily rituals. Islamic scripture, interpreted literally, was presented as the answer to all problems, political, secular, and spiritual, and my friends as well as my own family began to accept this. In the mosques, the streets, and behind the walls of our homes, I saw the established leaders who emphasized the importance of ritual observance, of prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage—the kind of people I have called Mecca Muslims—being replaced by a new breed of charismatic and fiery imams, inspired by Muhammad’s time in Medina, who urged action, even violence, against the opponents of Islam: the Jews, the “infidels,” even fellow Muslims who neglected their duties or violated the strict rules of sharia. Thus I witnessed the rise of a political ideology wrapped in a religion.
    The Medina Muslims are neither spiritual nor religious in the Western sense. They see the Islamic faith as transnational and universal. They prescribe a set of social, economic, and legal practices that are very different from the more general social and moral teachings (such as calls to practice charity or strive for justice) that are found not just in Islam but also in Christianity, Judaism, and other world religions.
    Even this might not be so bad if the Medina Muslims were prepared to tolerate other worldviews. But they are not. Their idea is of a world in service to Allah and governed by sharia as exemplified in the sunnah (the life, words, and deeds of the Prophet). Other faiths, even other interpretations of Islam, are simply not valid.
    My Apostasy
    My long and winding journey away from Islam began with my own childish propensity to ask questions. In many respects, I was always a kind of “protestant”—in the sense that I began by protesting against the subordinate role that I, as a girl, was expected to accept. At the age of five or six, I remember asking: “Why am I treated so differently from my brother?” That question prompted the next one: