 | |
| Author | Ayaan Hirsi Ali |
|---|---|
| Original title | Mijn Vrijheid |
| Genre | Autobiography |
| Publisher | Free Press |
Publication date | 2006 |
Published in English | 2007 |
| Pages | 368 |
| ISBN | 0-7432-9503-X |
| Preceded by | The Caged Virgin |
| Followed by | Nomad: From Islam to America |
Infidel is a 2006 autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-Dutch activist and politician. Hirsi Ali has attracted controversy and death threats were made against Ali in the early 2000s over the publication of the book. [1] [2]
Hirsi Ali writes about her youth in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya; about her flight to the Netherlands where she applied for political asylum, her university experience in Leiden, her work for the Labour Party, her transfer to the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, her election to Parliament, and the murder of Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the film Submission . The book ends with a discussion of the controversy regarding her application for asylum and status of her citizenship.
The launch of the book in the Netherlands was considered a success, with the initial print run selling out in two days. [3] A review in de Volkskrant concluded that "anyone who discovers Hirsi Ali's tumultuous history can only sympathise with her". [1] The German edition of the book, Mein Leben, meine Freiheit ("My Life, My Freedom"), debuted in the top 20 of the bestseller list of Der Spiegel . [3] [4]
The book was also well received upon the release of the English edition in 2007. Reviewing the book for The Sunday Times , Christopher Hitchens called it a "remarkable book." [5] Hitchens provided a foreword to the 2008 paperback edition.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum, writing in The Washington Post , said "Infidel is a unique book, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a unique writer, and both deserve to go far." [6] A review in The New York Times described the book as a "brave, inspiring and beautifully written memoir". [7] In an interview, Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria described it as "an amazing book by an amazing person". [8]
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lady Ferguson is a Somali-born Dutch-American writer, activist, conservative thinker and former politician. She is a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, opposing forced marriage, honour killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. At the age of five, following local traditions in Somalia, Ali underwent female genital mutilation organized by her grandmother. Her father—a scholar, intellectual, and a devout Muslim—was against the procedure but could not stop it from happening because he was imprisoned by the Communist government of Somalia at the time. Her family moved across various countries in Africa and the Middle East, and at 23, she received political asylum in the Netherlands, gaining Dutch citizenship five years later. In her early 30s, Hirsi Ali renounced the Islamic faith of her childhood, began identifying as an atheist, and became involved in Dutch centre-right politics, joining the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
Theodoor "Theo" van Gogh was a Dutch film director. He directed Submission: Part 1, a short film written by Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which criticised the treatment of women in Islam in strong terms. On 2 November 2004, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist who objected to the film's message. The last film Van Gogh had completed before his murder, 06/05, was a fictional exploration of the assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. It was released posthumously in December 2004, a month after Van Gogh's death, and two years after Fortuyn's death.
Submission is a 2004 English-language Dutch short drama film produced and directed by Theo van Gogh, and written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali ; it was shown on NPO 3, a Dutch public broadcasting network, on 29 August 2004. The film's title is one of the possible translations of the Arabic word "Islam". An Islamist reacted to the film by assassinating Van Gogh.
Jason Walters or Jamal is a Dutch citizen who was sentenced to fifteen years in prison on charges related to Islamic terrorism.
Maria Cornelia Frederika "Rita" Verdonk is a Dutch politician and businesswoman formerly affiliated with the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and later Proud of the Netherlands (TON), which she founded in 2007. Since 2022, she has been a municipal councillor of The Hague, elected on the list led by Richard de Mos.
The Caged Virgin: A Muslim Woman's Cry for Reason, also published as The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, is a 2004 book by the former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The Caged Virgin was first published in English in 2006.
Hirsi Ali "Magan" Isse, commonly known as Hirsi Magan, was a Somali scholar, intellectual, and political dissident. He was a prominent figure in the Somalian Rebellion, Somali culture, and Somalia's political elite. Magan co-founded the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), a political and paramilitary group that opposed the government's authoritarian policies, and he was imprisoned for his dissent.
Infidel is an unbeliever.
Fortuynism is the political ideology of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. Observers variously saw him as a political protest targeting the alleged elitism and bureaucratic style of the Dutch purple coalitions, as offering "openness, directness and clearness", populism simply as charisma. Another school holds Fortuynism as a distinct ideology, with an alternative vision of society. Some argue that Fortuynism is not just one ideology, but that it contained liberalism, populism and nationalism.
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (2007) is an anthology of atheist and agnostic thought edited by Christopher Hitchens.
The term New Atheism describes the positions of some atheist academics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries. New Atheism advocates the view that superstition, religion, and irrationalism should not be tolerated. Instead, they advocate the antitheist view that the various forms of theism should be criticised, countered, examined, and challenged by rational argument, especially when they exert strong influence on the broader society, such as in government, education, and politics. Critics have characterised New Atheism as "secular fundamentalism" or "fundamentalist atheism". Major figures of New Atheism include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen" of the movement.
Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations is a memoir by Somali-born Dutch-American writer, politician and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It is a sequel to her New York Times bestsellerInfidel. It deals in greater depth than the earlier book with certain aspects of the author's childhood in Somalia, Kenya and Saudi Arabia, and in particular with her family, as well as with her exile from the Netherlands and her present home with the American Enterprise Institute in the United States. The book is critical of Islam and the multiculturalism which the author sees as enabling Muslim extremism. It sets out to make the case that moderate Christian churches should seek actively to convert Muslim believers. The book has been praised by Christopher Hitchens, John Lloyd, and Richard Dawkins.
This is a bibliography of literature treating the topic of criticism of Islam, sorted by source publication and the author's last name.
Ebru Umar is a Dutch columnist of Turkish descent. Under the influence of Theo van Gogh, she gave up a career in management and became a columnist, first for van Gogh's website and, after he was assassinated, as his successor as a regular columnist of Metro. She writes for a number of Dutch magazines and has published four books, often on the topics of feminism and criticism of Islam.
Head in Flames is a postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published by Chiasmus Press in 2009.
Honor Diaries is a 2013 documentary film that explores violence against women in honor-based societies, with particular focus on female genital mutilation (FGM), violence against women and honor killings and forced marriage, and lack of access to education.
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, also published as Heretic: Why Islam Must Change to Join the Modern World, is a 2015 book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in which the author advocates that a Muslim reformation is the only way to end the horrors of terrorism, sectarian warfare and the repression of women and minorities.
De zoontjesfabriek. Over vrouwen, islam en integratie is the title of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's first book, which was published in Dutch in December 2002. It is a collection of all articles that Hirsi Ali had published up till then, and an interview with Dutch feminist author Colet van der Ven.
