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

“Why am I not a boy?”
    As I grew older, I questioned more of what I heard. Had anyone ever been to hell? Could anyone tell me that it was in fact a real place, which appeared to those condemned to it exactly as it was described in the Qur’an?
    “Stupid girl, stop asking so many questions!” I can still hear those words from my mother, my grandmother, my Qur’an teachers, sometimes followed by a slap with the back of a hand. Only my father tolerated inquiry. For her part, my mother simply became convinced that I was bewitched. To doubt, to question, made me in her eyes “feeble in faith.” The exercise of my reason itself was forbidden. But the questions never stopped coming, eventually leading to this one: “Why would a benevolent God set up the world like this, marking one half of the population to be second-class citizens? Or was it just men who did this?”
    But even those questions were just the first hesitant steps down a long road. My next and perhaps biggest step away from Islam came after an answer—one my father gave—rather than a question.
    In January 1992, my father raced to my mother’s flat after Friday prayers at the mosque. A man had offered to marry one of his daughters, and he had named me. The man, Osman Moussa, was a member of our clan who was living in Canada. He had returned to Nairobi to choose a bride from among his extended family members. He had his pick of the Westernized Somali girls living in Canada, but he wanted a traditional girl. And with a civil war then raging in our country, Somali brides in Nairobi could be had for free. I was traded in less than ten minutes; Osman Moussa would establish a bond with the Magan family, my father’s lineage, and my father would now be able to claim relatives in Canada. It was a simple transaction, part of that system of kinship relations that has governed Somalia—and much of the rest of the world—since time immemorial.
    When we were introduced, my intended husband told me that he wanted six sons. He spoke in half-learned Somali and half-learned English. I told my father I did not want to marry him; he replied that the date had been set. What I did not have to do was consummate the marriage. That would wait until I had journeyed to Canada. The air ticket was eventually bought, too. I would be going by way of Germany.
    I did not leave Kenya until July. When I arrived in Germany, I walked around the clean streets of Düsseldorf, pondered my options carefully, and shortly thereafter took a train from Bonn to Amsterdam, claiming to be a Somali asylum seeker fleeing the civil war, but in reality fleeing my arranged marriage and the wrath of my family and clan for breaking the marital contract my father had made.
    I have told my story at length in my memoir Infidel , so here I can be brief. I ended up at a refugee screening camp, was granted asylum, worked hard to get off welfare and learn Dutch, received a university degree, and ended up writing, debating, and then being elected to the Dutch Parliament. What is relevant here is my gradual exit from Islam.
    When I arrived in Holland in 1992 I was still a believing and practicing Muslim. I began to shed the practicing part of my faith first. Even so, I was constantly bargaining with myself, finding ways to create circular proofs that I was still a believing, obedient, devout Muslim. When I sent photos home to my family, I made sure to dress with the utmost modesty and to cover my hair. In January 1998, when I rushed back to Nairobi because of my sister’s death, I dug up my old clothes and when I knocked on my mother’s door I was dressed pretty much like all the other Somali women there. With my mother and my brother I prayed the required five times a day for the duration of my weeklong visit. As soon as I returned to Holland I switched back to my nonobservant state.
    I didn’t recognize this distancing immediately; it was only clear in hindsight. If you had asked me anytime between 1992 and