Generalizing Islam and Muslims

A review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali latest book Infidel by Ian Buruma;

"The underlying theme of this remarkable tale is sexual repression and gradual liberation. Not only was an uncircumcised woman treated as a demon in her clannish society, but Hirsi Ali was called “filthy prostitute” by her own mother when she had her first period. She was tortured by guilt when she was kissed for the first time by a Kenyan boy. Even in the Netherlands, she still felt disgusted by Ethiopian girls because they revealed their legs. But finally she rebelled against the duty of Muslim women to submit to Allah, and to their fathers, brothers and husbands. Hirsi Ali feels that she was set free, sexually, socially, intellectually, by the West, starting with Danielle Steel.

This uplifting story of liberation is entirely plausible, but it gives Hirsi Ali’s descriptions of life in the West an idealized, almost comic-book quality that sounds as naïve as those romantic novels she consumed as a young girl. Whereas the picture of Hirsi Ali’s childhood is full of nuance and variation, the images of the Netherlands could have been lifted from some patriotic Dutch children’s book: “so well-kept, so well-planned, so smoothly run and attractive.” And: Holland was “the capital of the European Enlightenment … the center of free thought.” Comparing the lack of aggression in a Dutch school with her own childhood experiences, she concludes that “this is why Somalia is having a civil war and Holland isn’t.”

All this warms the cockles of my Dutch heart, of course, but it offers up the West as a caricature of sweetness and light, which is then contrasted not to specific places, like Somalia, Kenya or Saudi Arabia, but to the whole Muslim world. Because of this, Hirsi Ali tends to fly into a rage when the inhabitants of this Garden of Eden fail sufficiently to appreciate their good fortune. Europeans who argue, for example, that Muslims might feel more at home in the West if we offered a modicum of respect for their religion, instead of insulting them at every turn, are “stupid” or worse, for it is indeed Hirsi Ali’s holy mission to “wake these people up,” to convince us that the justification for 9/11 was “the core of Islam,” and the “inhuman act of those 19 hijackers” its “logical outcome.”

There is no doubt that many Islamic societies, especially in the Middle East, are in deep trouble for many reasons: political, historical, social, economic and religious. Revolutionary Islamism is seen by a growing number of Muslims as the only answer to failed secular dictatorships and corrupt, oil-rich elites, as well as to the economic and military domination of the United States. And European Muslims, often confused and alienated, feel its fatal attraction. Hirsi Ali is quite right that this force must be resisted. Enlightened reform of religious practices that clash with liberal democratic freedoms is necessary. But much though I respect her courage, I’m not convinced that Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s absolutist view of a perfectly enlightened West at war with the demonic world of Islam offers the best perspective from which to get this done."