Reviewed by Rod Liddle
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INFIDEL: My Life by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Free Press £12.99
Hirsi Ali’s extraordinary autobiography tells the story of how a courageous, Dutch-domiciled Somalian woman renounced her religion with articulacy and resolve and then suffered the consequences from both enraged Muslims and the confused liberal democracy in which she lived. Her journalistic collaborator, the film-maker Theo Van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 by an enraged savage from the Maghreb; Ali meanwhile suffered death threats while being simultaneously vilified by the very people she had naively expected might support her commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. In the end, she fled Holland much as she had fled Somalia, with regret and incomprehension. If ever anyone deserved a Nobel prize, it is Hirsi Ali; but don’t bet on it. Her book is not well written. But hell, you can’t have everything.
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