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The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam Paperback – Bargain Price, April 1, 2008
Born in Somalia and raised Muslim, but outraged by her religion's hostility toward women, Hirsi Ali escaped an arranged marriage to a distant relative and fled to the Netherlands. There, she learned Dutch, worked as an interpreter in abortion clinics and shelters for battered women, earned a college degree, and started a career in politics as a Dutch parliamentarian. In November 2004, the violent murder on an Amsterdam street of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, with whom Hirsi Ali had written a film about women and Islam called Submission, changed her life. Threatened by the same group that slew van Gogh, Hirsi Ali now has round-the-clock protection, but has not allowed these circumstances to compromise her fierce criticism of the treatment of Muslim women, of Islamic governments' attempts to silence any questioning of their traditions, and of Western governments' blind tolerance of practices such as genital mutilation and forced marriages of female minors occurring in their countries.
Hirsi Ali relates her experiences as a Muslim woman so that oppressed Muslim women can take heart and seek their own liberation. Drawing on her love of reason and the Enlightenment philosophers on whose principles democracy was founded, she presents her firsthand knowledge of the Islamic worldview and advises Westerners how best to address the great divide that currently exists between the West and Islamic nations and between Muslim immigrants and their adopted countries.
An international bestseller -- with updated information for American readers and two new essays added for this edition -- The Caged Virgin is a compelling, courageous, eye-opening work.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Preface
Breaking Through the Islamic Curtain
The attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, prompted the West to launch a massive appeal to Muslims around the world to reflect on their religion and culture. American President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and numerous other leaders in the West asked Muslim organizations in their countries to distance themselves from Islam as preached by these nineteen terrorists. This plea was met with indignation from Muslims who thought it was inappropriate to hold them responsible for the criminal conduct of nineteen young men. Yet the fact that the people who committed the attacks on September 11 were Muslims, and the fact that before this date Muslims in many parts of the world were already harboring feelings of immense resentment toward the United States in particular, have urged me to investigate whether the roots of evil can be traced to the faith I grew up with: was the aggression, the hatred inherent in Islam itself?
My parents brought me up to be a Muslim -- a good Muslim. Islam dominated the lives of our family and relations down to the smallest detail. It was our ideology, our political conviction, our moral standard, our law, and our identity. We were first and foremost Muslim and only then Somali. Muslims, as we were taught the meaning of the name, are people who submit themselves to Allah's will, which is found in the Koran and the Hadith, a collection of sayings ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad. I was taught that Islam sets us apart from the rest of the world, the world of non-Muslims. We Muslims are chosen by God. They, the others, the kaffirs, the unbelievers, are antisocial, impure, barbaric, not circumcised, immoral, unscrupulous, and above all, obscene; they have no respect for women; their girls and women are whores; many of the men are homosexual; men and women have sex without being married. The unfaithful are cursed, and God will punish them most atrociously in the hereafter.
When my sister and I were small, we would occasionally make remarks about nice people who were not Muslim, but my mother and grandmother would always say, "No, they are not good people. They know about the Koran and the Prophet and Allah, and yet they haven't come to see that the only thing a person can be is Muslim. They are blind. If they were such nice and good people, they would have become Muslims and then Allah would protect them against evil. But it is up to them. If they become Muslims, they will go to paradise."
There are also Christians and Jews who raise their children in the belief that they are God's chosen people, but among Muslims the feeling that God has granted them special salvation goes further.
About twelve years ago, at age twenty-two, I arrived in Western Europe, on the run from an arranged marriage. I soon learned that God and His truth had been humanized here. For Muslims life on earth is merely a transitory stage before the hereafter; but here people are also allowed to invest in their lives as mortals. What is more, hell seems no longer to exist, and God is a god of love rather than a cruel ruler who metes out punishments. I began to take a more critical look at my faith and discovered three important elements of Islam that had not particularly struck me before.
The first of these is that a Muslim's relationship with his God is one of fear. A Muslim's conception of God is absolute. Our God demands total submission. He rewards you if you follow His rules meticulously. He punishes you cruelly if you break His rules, both on earth, with illness and natural disasters, and in the hereafter, with hellfire.
The second element is that Islam knows only one moral source: the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad is infallible. You would almost believe he is himself a god, but the Koran says explicitly that Muhammad is a human being; he is a supreme human being, though, the most perfect human being. We must live our lives according to his example. What is written in the Koran is what God said as it was heard by Muhammad. The thousands of hadiths -- accounts of what Muhammad said and did, and the advice he gave, which survives in weighty books -- tell us exactly how a Muslim was supposed to live in the seventh century. Devout Muslims consult these works daily to answer questions about life in the twenty-first century.
The third element is that Islam is strongly dominated by a sexual morality derived from tribal Arab values dating from the time the Prophet received his instructions from Allah, a culture in which women were the property of their fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, or guardians. The essence of a woman is reduced to her hymen. Her veil functions as a constant reminder to the outside world of this stifling morality that makes Muslim men the owners of women and obliges them to prevent their mothers, sisters, aunts, sisters-in-law, cousins, nieces, and wives from having sexual contact. And we are not just talking about cohabitation. It is an offense if a woman glances in the direction of a man, brushes past his arm, or shakes his hand. A man's reputation and honor depend entirely on the respectable, obedient behavior of the female members of his family.
These three elements explain largely why Muslim nations are lagging behind the West and, more recently, also lagging behind Asia. In order to break through the mental bars of this trinity, behind which the majority of Muslims are restrained, we must begin with a critical self-examination. But any Muslim who asks critical questions about Islam is immediately branded a "deserter." A Muslim who advocates the exploration of sources for morality, in addition to those of the Prophet Muhammad, will be threatened with death, and a woman who withdraws from the virgins' cage is branded a whore.
Through my personal experiences, through reading a great deal and speaking to others, I have come to realize that the existence of Allah, of angels, demons, and a life after death, is at the very least disputable. If Allah exists at all, we must not regard His word as absolute, but challenge it. I once wrote about my doubts regarding my faith in the hope of starting a discussion. I was immediately confronted by zealous Muslims, men and women who wanted to have me excommunicated. They even went so far as to say that I deserved to die because I had dared to call into question the absolute truth of Allah's word. They took me to court to prevent me from criticizing the faith I had been born into, from asking questions about the regulations and gods that Allah's messenger has imposed upon us. An Islamic fundamentalist murdered Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who helped me make Submission: Part I, a film about the relationship between the individual and God, in particular about the individual woman and God. And he threatened to kill me, too, a threat that others have also pledged to fulfill.
Like other thinking people, I like to tap into sources of wisdom, morality, and imagination other than religious texts -- other books besides the Koran and accounts of the Prophet -- and I would like other Muslims to tap into them, too. Just because Spinoza, Voltaire, John Stuart Mill, Kant, or Bertrand Russell are not Islamic and have no Islamic counterparts does not mean that Muslims should steer clear of these and other Western philosophers. Yet, at present, reading works by Western thinkers is regarded as disrespectful to the Prophet and Allah's message. This is a serious misconception. Why should it not be permitted to abide by all the good things Muhammad has urged us to do (such as his advice to be charitable toward the poor and orphans), while at the same time adding to our lives and outlook the ideas of other moral philosophers? After all, the fact that the Wright brothers were not Islamic has not stopped Muslims from traveling by air. By adopting the technical inventions of the West without its courage to think independently, we perpetuate the mental stagnation in Islamic culture, passing it on from one generation to the next.
The most important explanation for the mental and material backlog we Muslims find ourselves in should probably be sought in the sexual morality that we are force-fed from birth (see chapter 3, "The Virgins' Cage"). I would like to invite all people like me who had an Islamic upbringing to compare and contrast J. S. Mill's essay "On the Subjection of Women" (1869) with what the Prophet Muhammad has to say on the subject of women. Both were undeniably interested in the role of women, but there is a vast difference between Muhammad and Mill. For instance, Mill considered his beloved wife an intellectual equal; Muhammad was a polygamist and wrote that men have authority over women because God made one superior to the other. Mill, a model of calm reason in the face of contentious issues, argued that if freedom is good for men, it is good for women, a position that today most of the modern world considers unassailable.
Yet any investigation into the Islamic trinity by a Muslim is thought to be an act of complete betrayal of the religion and the Prophet. It is extremely painful for a believer to try to question. And it is extremely painful for a believer to hear that other Muslims are questioning the Islamic trinity. Muslim's strong emotions and condemnations of people who do question the trinity impress outsiders, myself included, especially when they are expressed on a massive scale by entire communities and even nations, as has happened in Egypt, Iran, and Indonesia.
Think, for instance, of the murder of Theo van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam, a Western city in a Western democracy, for exercising his free-speech rights to look critically at Islam in Submission: Part I, the film he and I made. While you may have heard of the death threats that have been made also against me for this film, you may not know that when I initially spoke on the immoral practices of the Prophet Muhammad, more than one hundred fifty complaints were made against me to the police and the gover...
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFree Press
- Publication dateApril 1, 2008
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
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- ASIN : B002PJ4JJW
- Publisher : Free Press (April 1, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- Item Weight : 7.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
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About the author
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, was raised Muslim, and spent her childhood and young adulthood in Africa and Saudi Arabia. In 1992, Hirsi Ali came to the Netherlands as a refugee. She earned her college degree in political science and worked for the Dutch Labor party. She denounced Islam after the September 11 terrorist attacks and now serves as a Dutch parliamentarian, fighting for the rights of Muslim women in Europe, the enlightenment of Islam, and security in the West.
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I highly recommend reading this book and the others, "Infidel" and "Nomad". All are page turners - many page turners of horror - but WE NEED TO READ THESE TRUTHS. We need to be active in protecting women and girls from Islam here in the USA and other countries. God Bless Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Yes, I know she is now an atheist, and at the same time, she highly recommends Christians to preach the love of Jesus Christ to Muslim women. I totally agree.
Remember when Jesus held the rock in his hand when the Pharisees brought the adulterous woman to him for the crowd to stone her. "You who are without sin, caste the first stone." Islam still has the stone, and uses them.
We need to stay their hand.
Though her rhetoric is toned down from that of her self identified Muslim lesbian friend Irshad Manji, whom she interviews in a chapter called “Bin Laden’s Nightmare,” she is nonetheless, at times, quite spirited and poignant. After claiming that the typical Muslim’s relationship with God is one overwhelmingly based on fear that sees Muhammad as the only moral source because of his infallibility, she lambastes Arab values concretized in the seventh century that view women as “production plants,” male property, having been essentially “reduced to her hymen” (xi). According to Ali’s observations, Islamic values maturate an obsession with virginity (19), conceiving women who have had pre-marital relations as “used object[s],” permanently useless (20). This type of mindset has led to ten to fifteen hymen restoration surgeries each month in Dutch hospitals (5). Ali says that women, who have sex, whether willingly or otherwise, inevitably face an intense honor and shame culture. In order to protect dignity, some families engage in everything from name-calling, kicking the woman out of the home, forcing them to marry their partner, to outright killing them. Ali points out to her readers that this is not entirely uncommon; the U.N. reports that five thousand girls are murdered annually on this basis (20). Sometimes, in order to avoid these repercussions, some women resort to abortions. However, even then, these women usually fear severe punishment in the afterlife since abortion is typically viewed as an unforgivable sin (104).
Ali bemoans that all too often sexual violence, rape, and other kinds of abuses are safeguarded since many women suffer silently when exploited in fear of the afore mentioned consequences (16). Since pre-marital sex is viewed as sin and sex in general is such a taboo topic amongst the religious, accidental pregnancies occur, disease rates increase and contraceptives are perceived as unnecessary. Since everything most Muslim women know about sexual morality has been force-fed from birth, many women have not had the opportunity to think any differently than they do (xiii, 16). In this fashion, Ali is convinced that women have been socialized to believe in their own oppression (61).
Ali continues to uncover probably the most disturbing tradition that has been adopted by virgin crazed cultures in over thirty countries, including Islamic peoples in Kenya, Sudan, Somalia, Egypt and Indonesia. It is the practice commonly but misleadingly referred to as female circumcision (119). Ali says that if male circumcision involved removing the male glands and testicles, then the 1 to 1.4 million girls who are robbed of their genitals every year, according to Amnesty, could be rightfully considered circumcised (119). The word circumcision connotates something that is acceptable and according to Ali, culture, tradition, and religion will never be able to justify what she refers to as “child abuse” (92, 122). Ali says that as early as age four, the girl’s clitoris, the outer and inner labia are cut off, and the walls of the vagina are scrapped with sharp objects like fragments of glass, razor blades, or a potato knife. Finally, the young girls are stitched-up, known as infibulation, and their legs are bound together so that the walls of the vagina grow together (23, 167-8). The obsession with virginity is such that many families wait to see the fruit of their efforts confirmed by blood stained sheets on the night of her wedding (23-4).
In this clarion call for women’s emancipation, Ali recounts her own personal story. Her grandmother secretly had her and her sisters genitalia mutilated (70-1). She witnessed religious leaders psychologically and physically torturing her sister until she suspiciously died of exhaustion (73). Ali herself was hospitalized for twelve days after being blindfolded by her Koran teacher and beaten mercilessly until he finally threw her against the wall and cracked open the base of her skull (86). Though she says Muslims are rarely reared to be self-critical (xvii), and ask questions about Islamic fundamentals (9, 92), after her own personal trauma, she studied and reflected extensively upon her own faith. She came to see Allah, angels, demons and life after death as at the very least disputable (xii). She now finds the teachings of Muhammad “outdated” (80), and from a Western point of view, she says Muhammad is a “perverse man,” a “tyrant,” and “against freedom of expression” (81). She notes, “If you don’t do as he says, you will end up in hell” (81). Her eventual rejection of Islam resulted in her father rejecting her as his daughter for six years (78).
Emerging from this kind of turbulent upbringing, it is no wonder that she would begin to question the sacredness of her religion. However, unlike most questioners who see their doubts as a test or trial from God, she concluded that God was like Santa (79); an “invention” (76) and “submission to His will meant nothing more than subjecting yourself to the willpower of the strongest” (76). On top of it all, as if she had not suffered enough, in November of 2004, her friend and colleague Theodore Van Gogh was murdered for producing a film critical of Islam based on a transcript that she authored. Many might accuse her of leaving Islam because of her bad experiences with people, events and circumstances that have nothing to do with proper Islam. However, Ali realizes and is careful to point out there are multiple forms of Islam (10), that there is a difference between the Koran and life on the ground (27). Nevertheless, she sees a close link between culture, religion and Islam that unfortunately preserves many pre-modern values (44). Though female circumcision is not prescribed in the Koran, it is not condemned either. Along these lines, most Muslim jurists do not condemn the practice since it helps sustains their fixation with virginity.
Ironically, even though Ali is an outspoken feminist, a champion for women’s liberties, she uses language that is not gender neutral. She refers to “mankind’s” progress (7), rather than the more inclusive “humankind.” Also, throughout the work, there is a subtext that displays an unjustified infatuation with the West (40). She acts as if the West possesses some kind of high moral standard as opposed to the East all the while disregarding the U.S.’s pre-emptive wars, use of depleted uranium in their munitions, confusion about whether water-boarding is torture, bloated military budgets at the expense of healthcare, education and housing, and our vast imperial presence around the world (35). Since she is a citizen of the Netherlands, maybe she is primarily thinking of her new home, not the West in general?
Ali does not appear to seek out the root of Islamic terrorism, in fact, she even goes so far as to accuse people who blame the West as people who are not taking responsibility for their own actions (38). This is like putting the primary blame on the animal that has been cornered for lashing out. Of course exploited, disenfranchised, marginalized, oppressed people will resort to almost any recourse at their disposal. It is not that there is not blame for some of the unjustifiable tactics used by some Muslims during war, but the big picture must always be kept in view. The West has been involved in hegemony for the last 50 years and to casually overlook our one sided support for Israel, our military bases in Saudi Arabia, and continued domination of Iraq, so called “terrorism” will only multiply.
There really is no place for Ali’s romanticizing of the West. She acts as if Christian societies since the Reformation are no longer prejudice, restricted in thought, or possess superstitions like present day Islam (40). This is plainly absurd. I would like to know what Christian societies she is referencing. It surely could not be the U.S. where there is no limit to its superstitions from snake handlers to people praying to St. Andrew to protect their road-trips. It certainly could not be the Philippines where their vehicles are so heavily immersed in gaudy religious décor showcasing Mary and Jesus in order to keep evil spirits at bay that the circus would have a hard time producing more apt vehicles for their clowns.
Lastly, for a book that aims at breaking women free from the bondages of what Ali perceives to be an oppressive, male dominated religion, overall, it was only lightly Koranic. There were only a few passages that she appealed to as source evidence. However, she is not a Koranic scholar, and the general tenor of the book is one that observed generalities based on various seemingly straightforward statistics. That there are serious problems in Islamic countries is unarguable, the extent to which Islam and the Koran in particular is responsible is still an open question. Nevertheless, a push for people of all traditions, and all religions to be more self-critical of their practices, doctrines, habits, and lives is a song that needs to be sung to every tribe, Islamic or otherwise.
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Quand aurons nous le courage, dans nos sociétés Européennes évoluées, de lutter vigoureusement contre les pratiques abominables que subissent, chez nous, nos soeurs musulmanes?
Bravo pour Ayaan Hirsi Ali
著者自身、ソマリア出身の元ムスリムであり、イスラム教の慣習に耐えかねてオランダに難民として渡った過去を持っています。のちに彼女はオランダで通訳として同じような境遇の女性を助け、オランダ下院議員も務めたわけですが、その経験をもとにしたルポルタージュ風の内容。
著者は、ムスリム女性がアラーに対しその窮状を訴える映画「Submisson」の脚本も書いていますが、実はこの作品の監督、テオ・ヴァン・ゴッホ氏は過激なイスラム教徒によって殺害されました。もちろん筆者自身も命を奪われる危険にさらされています。その事実から「どうしてイスラム教では言論の自由が認められないのか?」(言論の自由の無い正義が存在するのか?)という問題提起に始まり、西欧のジャーナリズムが報復を恐れコーラン批判ととれる報道を自粛する事の是非や、異文化尊重の旗印の下、西欧諸国にイスラム学校を設立する事が結果的にイスラム教徒を「隔離」し、彼らの啓蒙を妨げ内向的にしている、という主張に続いていきます。
昨今、多文化主義こそ良しとされ、異なる文化の共存を容認するのが美徳であるというような風潮がありますが(私も基本的に賛成ですが)、「文化」という美辞を盾に、人権侵害とも言える悪しき風習が干渉を免れているのではないか、という主張にはハッとさせられました。結果として多くのムスリム女性が、割礼による身体的障害や、旧態依然とした男性至上主義社会に苦しめられていると著者は訴えます。
どうしても内容が西欧社会(特にオランダ)に向けられている部分はありますが、興をそぐほどではありません。イスラム教に興味がある方はもちろん、異文化共存について考察を深めたい方にもおすすめしたい一冊です。
同じくイスラム女性の窮状を訴えた本では「Burned Alive(生きながら火に焼かれて)」も読みやすくおすすめです。