The girl at the other end of a long room says she is cold. Shy and nervous
too, I note. She’s going to get some socks, and disappears. She’s slender,
understated, almost childlike in her physical uncertainty. When she returns
she is wearing well-worn slippers beneath her jeans and she curls her feet
under her on a sofa.
This is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the world-famous human rights campaigner, or
preposterous critic of Islam, depending on your point of view. Time magazine
named her as one of itsr 100 most influential people in 2005, rec-ognising
that her demands for reform of the faith in which she was brought up had
placed the issue on the international agenda. In 2004 she had written the
screenplay for Submission Part 1 , a short film designed to expose
the subjugation of women within the Muslim faith. Two months after it was
shown, her fellow film-maker, Theo Van Gogh, was shot dead by an Islamic
extrem- ist. The assailant used a knife to pin a note to his chest saying
that Hirsi Ali would be next.
Subsequent publicity has painted Hirsi Ali as a formidably strong woman,
fearless, uncompromising and almost one-dimen-sional: a designer-clad cipher
who repeats her mantra ad infinitum without apparent emotion. She is against
injustice done in the name of Islam, whether it is honour killings or
circumcision and other forms of brutali-sation to women. She is intolerant
of Muslim fundamentalism. So it is curious to meet her and see that there is
vulnerability beneath the public persona, or to use her language, to find
that the reality does not entirely match the image.
The restricted view of her has come about for several reasons. Since 2002,
when she first received death threats, she has been guarded by security
teams, and until now we have known only the outline of her life: her
migratory upbringing as a Muslim in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and
Kenya, her circumcision at the age of 5, her flight from an arranged
marriage to Holland where she sought asylum, her rejection of Islam, her
emerging campaigning which led her to become a Dutch MP, the controversy
around Submission and her subsequent rejection by the Dutch
authorities.
Now she has filled in the gaps by writing Infidel , her autobiography,
in which we learn of the forces that made her. I ask her to summarise them
in a few words and this is what she says: “Moving — a true nomad. Bigotry
between the clans and the Somalis and nonSomalis, the Muslims and
nonMuslims. Resilience — no sulking, no pouting, giddy up, get going. No
emotions or showing emotions. You are required to behave in a certain way
and as soon as the door closes and you’re in a private sphere, you relax.
“So, my mother, she’s screaming and shouting and breaking the furniture, but
as soon as someone knocks on the door we all go, chin up, pretend that
nothing was happening. This is one of the most salient things: the perfect
face for the outside world, that sense of dignity. Resilience and dignity,
those were the things.”
This is very African, and it explains a lot. She speaks softly, but so
quickly that when I transcribe the tape of our conversation I have to slow
it down to catch every word. Most questions she answers with polemic, but I
know what she believes so I try to disarm her by saying that she doesn’t
look 37. It is true, she wears no make-up and she looks more like 17; the
strain of the past few years has not taken its toll on her face. “Yes, but
it does take it on the mind,” she replies. “I find it easier to let go, not
make a fuss about small things. Every time we are put in a position to think
about life and death it becomes relative to make a fuss about not getting
your coffee right.”
Does she ever do anything frivolous, I ask. “Yes!” she says with a little
snuffly giggle. “A very good social life.” Thank goodness for that.
What she can tell me about her private life is limited by her security. We
are on the East Coast of the US; I am asked not to be more specific, and when
The Times photographer arrives the guards supervise his work to
ensure that the location can not be traced. What we can talk about is Hirsi
Ali’s past.
The middle of three children, she grew up with her mother, an austere and
depressed woman whose moods were not helped by the almost constant absence
of her husband, a rebel leader. Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia, where
aggression was regarded as a survival tactic and your identity revolved
around your clan and family. As a Muslim, she learnt too that it was her
duty to submit to men, and to Allah.
At the same time, Allah was a mysterious force to which she never entirely
related, partly perhaps because of her family’s habit of never explaining
things to children. When she was circumcised, at 5 with scissors and no
anaesthetic, she was told only that this would keep her pure, and in
adolescence she came to believe that submitting to God involved the
suppression of her sexuality and the self. She asked questions and argued;
this theme is always there and would affect her relationships in adult life.
Books, from Jane Austen to crime thrill-ers, told her of a world of freedom,
adventure, individuality and romance and she wanted to fall head over heels
in love, but when she was 22 and her father arranged her marriage to a man
she regarded as a pea-brain, running away was a logical step.
In the Netherlands she felt like Alice in Wonderland. She had to learn to
tell the time (she had used the sun) and swiftly discovered that unless she
could show that she was in fear of persecution she would not be granted
asylum. So she lied, saying she was fleeing war-torn Somalia (she had come
from Kenya), was granted Dutch citizenship and began to enjoy a world that
she perceived as a liberal and tolerant paradise: trains ran on time, there
were gays in the Cabinet, she noted. She studied political
science at university, and as she lived a Western life she slowly came to
understand that a moral framework was possible without religion.
“In the past few years I was in Holland I transgress,” she says. “I have a
boyfriend with whom I sleep without being married to him. I engage and
become good friends, intimate friends, with unbelievers. I become good
friends with Jews, who are a certain sort of unbeliever. Every time a little
voice in my head tells me I’m sinning, I succeed in pushing it behind me
until the eleventh of September. And it’s like a day of judgment when you’re
pushed into this. You have to make a choice. That gap between self image and
reality, it’s too wide and it’s bound to crack.”
So Hirsi Ali began to speak out, but while other commentators took care not
to say anything that might offend Islamic funda-mentalists, she let rip,
knowing that her words would be all the more inflammatory because they came
from within the faith.
“I’m very unambiguous: there’s something in our faith, in Islam, that makes
it legitimate to kill people who are Jews, who are sinners. From
acknowledging that, the change will come. My contribution is to say we can
make it [the change] less bloody and we can make it certain, but we have to
face changing the fundamental principles of the faith, starting with the
concept of Hell.
“I know thousands of Muslims who don’t want to kill other people but they are
afraid that if they disagree with bin Laden, who quotes directly from the
Koran, that they disagree with God and the Koran and the ‘My heart thudded
so hard when he touched me that I thought people must have heard it’
Sister Aziza was different from any other teacher. Thick black cloth fell from
the top of her head to the tips of her gloves and the very limit of her
toes. It was spectacular. Her pale, heartshaped face stood out against a sea
of black. Sister Aziza was young and beautiful, and she had a smile in her
eyes.
“How many of you are Muslims?” she asked. The whole class put their hands up.
But Sister Aziza shook her head, and said, “I don’t think you are Muslims.”
We were startled. What could she mean? She pointed at me. “When was the last
time you prayed?” I quaked inwardly. It had been more than a year since I
had ritually washed myself and put on the white cloth and prostrated myself
for the long ritual submission to God. “I don’t remember,” I mumbled. Sister
Aziza pointed to other girls in the class. All but a few said they couldn’t
remember either.
We were not true Muslims, Sister Aziza sadly informed the suddenly silent
classroom. Allah did not look on us with delight. He could see into our
hearts, and He knew we were not dedicated to Him. The goal of prayer was
constant awareness of the presence of God and the angels, and an inward
submission to God’s will that permeated every thought and action.
We had heard about Hell. The Koran lists Hell’s torments in vivid detail:
sores, boiling water, peeling skin, burning flesh, dissolving bowels, the
everlasting fire that burns you for ever, for as your flesh chars and your
juices boil, you form a new skin. These details overpower you, ensuring that
you will obey. The ma’alim whose class I now had to attend on Saturdays used
to shriek out the taboos and restrictions, the rules to obey, spitting
sometimes with excitement: “You will go to Hell! And YOU will go to Hell!
And YOU, and YOU — UNLESS! . . .”
Sister Aziza believed in Hell. But she didn’t emphasise fear, as other
preachers did. She told us it was our choice. She didn’t mind if we didn’t
pray five times a day. She told us God didn’t want us to do anything without
the inner intention. He wanted true, deep submission: this is the meaning of
Islam.
Often my brother Mahad brought two friends home with him. Gradually one of
them, Yusuf, and I began bumping into each other in the kitchen. He was
interested in me; I knew it, and liked it. There was no touching, but every
so often a meaningful stare made my knees tremble.
Sister Aziza never actually told us we should robe as she did, or not to go to
the cinema or talk to boys. She just read through the verses in the Koran.
Then she talked about them. She said, “I’m not telling you to behave like
this. I’m only telling you what God said: avoid sin.” I knew that sin was
the feeling I had when I was with Yusuf. The sudden, tingling awareness, the
inner excitement. At night I thought about how much I would like to marry
Yusuf when I grew up. I tried to put it in a context where this feeling
would not be sinful.
One evening Yusuf asked if I’d like to go to the movies with him. My heart
pounding, because this was forbidden, I said yes. I took the matatou, the
rattling Kenyan minibus, by myself. There he was, by the lake, where he said
he’d be. We had an hour before the film would begin. As we walked around,
talking, Yusuf fumbled for my hand. My heart thudded so hard when he touched
me I thought people must have heard it.
We sat on the grass and talked about his family. He asked, “How do you feel
about me?” and I said: “I really like you.” He said he really liked me, too,
and we started to kiss.
It was my first kiss. It was wonderful, and went on for a long time. That’s
all we did: held hands, kissed, and then we went to the cinema and he took
me to the bus stop and went away. We didn’t see each other very often. But
the feeling of kissing was the best I had ever felt in my life. But I also
knew that it was evil. I was living on several levels in my brain. There was
kissing Yusuf; there was clan honour; and there was Sister Aziza and God.
Extracted from Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
