This book will make you squirm

I'm not entirely sure how to write this blog post, because I'm uncomfortable with what people might say. But I'll be brave and write what I think anyway, because I think it's important, and because it's something I've been struggling to write about since I arrived here.

I just finished Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memoir, Infidel, a narrative about her time growing up in Somalia, moving to various Islamic and African countries such as Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Ali was also subjected to female genital mutilation (fgm). For much of her teenage years in Nairobi, Kenya, she was a devout Muslim, joining the Muslim Brotherhood and donning a back hijab (the full Muslim cover that only shows a woman's eyes).

Ali eventually moved to Holland, obtained Dutch citizenship, and began to question her Islamic teachings. But the harassment she encountered when she cut her hair and began wearing jeans was nothing compared to the death threats she received and the massive riots that broke out when she made a documentary called Submission, a film-short about the sufferings Islamic women must endure. Without giving away the ending, I'll simply say that Ali's main goal now is to try to wake Western cultures up about the violent messages inherent in Islamic doctrine, and to try to get them to be more conscious about how they integrate these cultures into their own. She's concerned about our fear of questioning other doctrines in order to avoid being racist, and feels that we're guilty of an over-tolerance that's allowing unhealthy and violent Islamic doctrine to flourish in Europe and throughout the world, in places where it directly counters the principles those Western nations are founded on. Ali thinks it's necessary for Islamic women and men to rethink the violent aspects of their religious doctrine and create a new, enlightened form of their tradition.

Infidel is a hard book to read, quite honestly. Partly because her stories about growing up in Africa during the tribal wars, her experience as a female who was often treated like property, her time living in Saudi Arabia, and the threats she got exercising her freedom of speech, are all quietly horrifying (not to mention the most horrifying story of all: her excision).

But it's also hard to read on another level. I grew up in California and have lived in mostly socially liberal communities, and to have a woman whose authority I respect (as someone who comes from the tradition in question) ask me to rethink the value of the extreme multiculturalism and tolerance that I've treasured all my life....well, it's shaking my foundation.

On the one hand, it's clearly so important to have religious and cultural tolerance. This is absolutely undeniable. And I recognize that this is ONE woman's experience in Saudi Arabia and Somalia--two very extreme versions of Islamic life.

But do we do when sects of a religion consistently teach that Jews are evil? What if it consistently teaches that gays are suffering from a disease or a psychological disorder? What if it forces women to have their genitals mutilated, or thinks it's acceptable for women to be locked away in their homes during the day, unable to work, and that they must completely cover themselves when walking outside, and only travel around in public accompanied by a man? Do I have to be tolerant of that?

This is a difficult thing for me to write, but it's a question I have to sit with. Just how valid is every voice at the table? When do you nullify your chance to sit and converse with everyone else with an equal say? I don't think this is just about Islam either--let me be clear. I think there are dangerous elements of these beliefs in other religions too.

That said, I've had students from Saudi Arabia who told me about men and women getting publicly stoned for adultery. They told me about men who were discovered to be gay who were thrown off tall buildings to their death as punishment. I'm here in "secular" Turkey now, where we experience one of the least radical forms of Islam, and I still have students from "liberal" Istanbul who tell me that Jews are awful, greedy people; I have students who will get ostracized for being friends with gays (they think it's a sickness here, and parents will disown their child if they're gay in many parts of the country). As far as women go, many women wear head scarves here (a very complex topic I don't want to go into here), and until recently, women had to get written permission from their husbands to get a job. One of my good friends, an American, constantly gets sexually harassed, even in Istanbul, just because she has pale blonde hair and blue eyes. Is this culture, or religion? Where do we draw the line?

Of course, I feel awful about saying any of these things because Turkish people can also be some of the most kind, most hospitable, and most friendly people I have ever met. I am so grateful for my colleagues and my students and I haven't experienced any of this negativity. But at the same time, I'm not blonde, I'm not gay, I'm not a Jew...I'm a Western woman, bound by different rules. 

I know that I have to be careful to project my Western worldview everything, to think that what I believe is best. And generalizations are very dangerous and I know there are many different expressions of Islam around the world. It also makes me nervous to feel intolerant of a religion, because they are intolerant of others--I know this may seem hypocritical.

But still, how do we address these radical, socially intolerant beliefs? It's one of the most important questions I think we need to struggle with during this day and age, and I think that the way we answer these questions will define us as a culture (because I don't think this is just an American question at all), and as a world.

You can see reviews of Ali's book on the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, or buy it on Amazon (where there are a bunch more reviews) by clicking on their names.