Haroon Siddiqui, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
9. Haroon Siddiqui, Being Muslim.
Being Muslim is part of the Groundwork Guides series, which are designed to be "an overview of key contemporary political and social issues," as well as provide "a lively introduction [to the topic] and a strong point of view." A few dozen pages into this book, I had started thinking of it as a Cliff Notes for Islam -- in many ways, it is a primer on Islam for non-Muslim westerners -- except that it was, well, livelier. And more opinionated. ;-)
Haroon Siddiqui is apparently controversial in his profession as a newspaper columnist, but I found this book to be expansive and even-handed. What I liked best about it, in fact, is how well Siddiqui makes it clear that it is very difficult to begin a sentence "Islam is--" or "Muslims are--" and end it in a way that is true to the breadth of Islamic practice or Muslim experience. Similarly, Siddiqui tends to highlight that many of the things that Westerners criticize Islam for -- for example, state-sanctioned violence against women -- are controversial within Islam. For example, when discussing religiously-justified violence against Muslimahs, Siddiqui cites Islamic feminists such as Zainah Anwar of Sisters of Islam and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, who critique patriarchal practices of Islam as being anti-Islamic distortions of the Prophet's teachings.
At times, Siddiqui seems given to making "no true Scotsman" arguments about what is or is not a true expression of Islam. However, when he does so, he is clearly responding to Western propaganda that Islam is inherently backward, patriarchical, violent, etc. He does not deny that there are major problems within many Islamic societies, nor that Islamic faith or law is intimately tied up in some of those problems. However, he often provides fuller context for many of those issues (f'rex, he discusses non-religious causes of anti-Western feeling, where such feelings exist), and he often critiques human rights abuses in Islamic nations from an inherently Islamic perspective (f'rex, he criticizes the failure of sharia courts to adhere to Qur'anic rules of evidence or Qur'anic penalties for false accusation in the administration of adultery cases).
In all, I found Being Muslim to be a nuanced response to Western anti-Islamic propaganda, debunking some criticisms, expanding on others, providing both perspectives and background that Westerners are often unaware of, and sometimes turning the criticism back on Western society. He also challenges the moral authority of Western writers to critique Islam, charging that anti-Islamic propaganda often intensifies the very problems that propagandists are supposedly concerned about, and that the propaganda encourages human rights abuses against Muslims by or within Western nations. The volume itself is quite slim, but includes ample references and an essential reading list for people who wish to explore some Siddiqui's themes and arguments further.
All in all, it's an engaging (and manageably short) antidote to the things that "everyone knows" (i.e., the notions that are bandied about Western, non-Muslim societies) about Islam and Muslims.
10. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the Somali-born, ex-Muslim, Dutch Member of Parliament who became notorious for her critiques of Islam, especially with respect to religiously-sanctioned violence against Muslimahs among Muslim immigrants to Holland. She was also the author of the concept and screenplay for Theo Van Gogh's short film Submission, which criticizes Islam for justifying and encouraging violence against women.
Hirsi Ali's autobiography is divided into two parts: "My Childhood," which covers her life with her family in Somali, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya (and runs from her childhood through her early twenties); and "My Freedom" which covers her life in Holland, after she ran away from an arranged marriage.
"My Childhood" is a rich portrait of Hirsi Ali's early life. It documents the culture clash with her grandmother (who had been raised as a nomad and unsuccessfully tried to instill nomadic values and skills in Ayaan); the family upheavals caused by her father's imprisonment; the way the Somali clan structure took care of the family during her father's many and prolonged absences, including his eventual abandonment of them; the conflict between her father's modern sensibilities and the sentiments of more traditional members of the family (her maternal grandmother and aunts performed genital excision on Ayaan and her sister against their parents' wishes); her mother's frustration with her own life, and her resultant abuse of Ayaan and her sister; Ayaan's observations on the differences between Somali, Saudi, Ethiopian, and Kenyan societies; Ayaan's teenage adoption of fundamentalist Islam; her religiously-forbidden romances with two young men (one a non-Somali, one a fundamentalist preacher); her (first, secret) arranged marriage to a cousin; her brushes with the Somali Civil war-- There is a lot of material in there. And while that list sounds as if the first half of the book should be utterly depressing, I didn't find it to be so.
The second section, in which she rejects her arranged husband and runs away while en route to join him in Canada, discusses her education in Dutch university, the development of her political sensibilities while working as a Somali-Dutch translator, becoming an atheist, and eventually being elected to Dutch Parliament on the personal platform of protecting immigrant Muslimah from familial and community violence. Her autobiography ends about a year after the murder of Theo Van Gogh, with the political maneuverings that revoked and re-instated Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship, and her decision to emigrate to the United States.
Reading Hirsi Ali and Siddiqui back-to-back to each other was, um, challenging. (In a good way!) Whereas Siddiqui perceives violence against women as a distortion of Islamic teachings, and sees the economic frustrations of the Muslim world as the continuing effects of colonialist practices, Hirsi Ali directly faults Islam itself for being a strong contributing factor in both issues. Siddiqui considers the within-Islam critiques of Islamic feminists superior to the critiques of Westernized, secularized Muslim feminists (who he perceives to support Muslimah rights only insofar as Muslimah choose to reject their faiths); Hirsi Ali rejected her faith (in part) because she found it impossible to reconcile the Qur'an (including its direction to Muslims that the Qur'an must followed in its entirety and without interpretation) with her belief that women should have full equality and self-determination. And so on.
When considered more closely, the two authors are often considering very different scopes and goals. Siddiqui is discussing the full breadth of the Muslim world and Islamic thought, encouraging Westerners to realize that when they say "Muslim," they are discussing far more societies and far more diversity in thought than the speakers likely realize. Hirsi Ali is specifically discussing Islam as currently exported from (and funded by) Saudis; when she critiques tolerance and multiculturalism, she is specifically critiquing Dutch political and social philosophy, which she feels has erred in tolerating "cultural differences" that should never be tolerated. (In the section of the book in which she joined the Dutch conservative party, she explains that Dutch conservatism is still extremely liberal compared to many other countries, such as the United States, and she expanded upon her differences with the party on many other sections of their platform, including immigration.) Siddiqui sees westernized, secularized Muslims as outsiders; Hirsi Ali, although an atheist ex-Muslim, sees herself as part of the Muslim world and rails against those who would deny Muslims their own Age of Enlightenment. (She is currently working on a novel consisting of dialogues between the Prophet and Enlightenment philosophers.)
Anyway, I recommend them both, and I think they make excellent foils to each other. Both authors make a strong case for a perspective that deserves serious and sincere consideration, and whichever way the reader eventually chooses to fall politically (and I'm not convinced that the two viewpoints are mutually exclusive), one would be well-served to keep in mind the perspective supplied by the other.
Being Muslim is part of the Groundwork Guides series, which are designed to be "an overview of key contemporary political and social issues," as well as provide "a lively introduction [to the topic] and a strong point of view." A few dozen pages into this book, I had started thinking of it as a Cliff Notes for Islam -- in many ways, it is a primer on Islam for non-Muslim westerners -- except that it was, well, livelier. And more opinionated. ;-)
Haroon Siddiqui is apparently controversial in his profession as a newspaper columnist, but I found this book to be expansive and even-handed. What I liked best about it, in fact, is how well Siddiqui makes it clear that it is very difficult to begin a sentence "Islam is--" or "Muslims are--" and end it in a way that is true to the breadth of Islamic practice or Muslim experience. Similarly, Siddiqui tends to highlight that many of the things that Westerners criticize Islam for -- for example, state-sanctioned violence against women -- are controversial within Islam. For example, when discussing religiously-justified violence against Muslimahs, Siddiqui cites Islamic feminists such as Zainah Anwar of Sisters of Islam and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, who critique patriarchal practices of Islam as being anti-Islamic distortions of the Prophet's teachings.
At times, Siddiqui seems given to making "no true Scotsman" arguments about what is or is not a true expression of Islam. However, when he does so, he is clearly responding to Western propaganda that Islam is inherently backward, patriarchical, violent, etc. He does not deny that there are major problems within many Islamic societies, nor that Islamic faith or law is intimately tied up in some of those problems. However, he often provides fuller context for many of those issues (f'rex, he discusses non-religious causes of anti-Western feeling, where such feelings exist), and he often critiques human rights abuses in Islamic nations from an inherently Islamic perspective (f'rex, he criticizes the failure of sharia courts to adhere to Qur'anic rules of evidence or Qur'anic penalties for false accusation in the administration of adultery cases).
In all, I found Being Muslim to be a nuanced response to Western anti-Islamic propaganda, debunking some criticisms, expanding on others, providing both perspectives and background that Westerners are often unaware of, and sometimes turning the criticism back on Western society. He also challenges the moral authority of Western writers to critique Islam, charging that anti-Islamic propaganda often intensifies the very problems that propagandists are supposedly concerned about, and that the propaganda encourages human rights abuses against Muslims by or within Western nations. The volume itself is quite slim, but includes ample references and an essential reading list for people who wish to explore some Siddiqui's themes and arguments further.
All in all, it's an engaging (and manageably short) antidote to the things that "everyone knows" (i.e., the notions that are bandied about Western, non-Muslim societies) about Islam and Muslims.
10. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the Somali-born, ex-Muslim, Dutch Member of Parliament who became notorious for her critiques of Islam, especially with respect to religiously-sanctioned violence against Muslimahs among Muslim immigrants to Holland. She was also the author of the concept and screenplay for Theo Van Gogh's short film Submission, which criticizes Islam for justifying and encouraging violence against women.
Hirsi Ali's autobiography is divided into two parts: "My Childhood," which covers her life with her family in Somali, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya (and runs from her childhood through her early twenties); and "My Freedom" which covers her life in Holland, after she ran away from an arranged marriage.
"My Childhood" is a rich portrait of Hirsi Ali's early life. It documents the culture clash with her grandmother (who had been raised as a nomad and unsuccessfully tried to instill nomadic values and skills in Ayaan); the family upheavals caused by her father's imprisonment; the way the Somali clan structure took care of the family during her father's many and prolonged absences, including his eventual abandonment of them; the conflict between her father's modern sensibilities and the sentiments of more traditional members of the family (her maternal grandmother and aunts performed genital excision on Ayaan and her sister against their parents' wishes); her mother's frustration with her own life, and her resultant abuse of Ayaan and her sister; Ayaan's observations on the differences between Somali, Saudi, Ethiopian, and Kenyan societies; Ayaan's teenage adoption of fundamentalist Islam; her religiously-forbidden romances with two young men (one a non-Somali, one a fundamentalist preacher); her (first, secret) arranged marriage to a cousin; her brushes with the Somali Civil war-- There is a lot of material in there. And while that list sounds as if the first half of the book should be utterly depressing, I didn't find it to be so.
The second section, in which she rejects her arranged husband and runs away while en route to join him in Canada, discusses her education in Dutch university, the development of her political sensibilities while working as a Somali-Dutch translator, becoming an atheist, and eventually being elected to Dutch Parliament on the personal platform of protecting immigrant Muslimah from familial and community violence. Her autobiography ends about a year after the murder of Theo Van Gogh, with the political maneuverings that revoked and re-instated Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship, and her decision to emigrate to the United States.
Reading Hirsi Ali and Siddiqui back-to-back to each other was, um, challenging. (In a good way!) Whereas Siddiqui perceives violence against women as a distortion of Islamic teachings, and sees the economic frustrations of the Muslim world as the continuing effects of colonialist practices, Hirsi Ali directly faults Islam itself for being a strong contributing factor in both issues. Siddiqui considers the within-Islam critiques of Islamic feminists superior to the critiques of Westernized, secularized Muslim feminists (who he perceives to support Muslimah rights only insofar as Muslimah choose to reject their faiths); Hirsi Ali rejected her faith (in part) because she found it impossible to reconcile the Qur'an (including its direction to Muslims that the Qur'an must followed in its entirety and without interpretation) with her belief that women should have full equality and self-determination. And so on.
When considered more closely, the two authors are often considering very different scopes and goals. Siddiqui is discussing the full breadth of the Muslim world and Islamic thought, encouraging Westerners to realize that when they say "Muslim," they are discussing far more societies and far more diversity in thought than the speakers likely realize. Hirsi Ali is specifically discussing Islam as currently exported from (and funded by) Saudis; when she critiques tolerance and multiculturalism, she is specifically critiquing Dutch political and social philosophy, which she feels has erred in tolerating "cultural differences" that should never be tolerated. (In the section of the book in which she joined the Dutch conservative party, she explains that Dutch conservatism is still extremely liberal compared to many other countries, such as the United States, and she expanded upon her differences with the party on many other sections of their platform, including immigration.) Siddiqui sees westernized, secularized Muslims as outsiders; Hirsi Ali, although an atheist ex-Muslim, sees herself as part of the Muslim world and rails against those who would deny Muslims their own Age of Enlightenment. (She is currently working on a novel consisting of dialogues between the Prophet and Enlightenment philosophers.)
Anyway, I recommend them both, and I think they make excellent foils to each other. Both authors make a strong case for a perspective that deserves serious and sincere consideration, and whichever way the reader eventually chooses to fall politically (and I'm not convinced that the two viewpoints are mutually exclusive), one would be well-served to keep in mind the perspective supplied by the other.