This book should be on the must-read list of every thinking individual in the Western World. It is a clarion alarm to wake up to a brutal and deadly but poorly understood threat.
The murderers that she discusses as elements in Islamic State (IS), Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, the Taliban, suicide bombers and other militant groups are psychopaths. That these killers really believe that they are following the dictates of Allah is not questioned here. The Qur’an (as spelled in the book) and the Hadith have provided them with the only rationalization they need to pour out the hatred pounded into them daily from early childhood. Hatred for anything that deviates from their religious teachings begins in the home.
The author writes, “The totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century had to work quite hard to persuade family members to denounce one another to the authorities. The power of the Muslim system is that the authorities do not need to be involved. Social control begins at home.” (Page 154)
Hirsi Ali states that she is not extraordinary. That is probably the only misstatement in the book. Her writings and personal appearances reveal an uncommon courage in challenging a dangerous religion that has threatened her with murder and repeatedly perpetrated atrocities that clearly demonstrate that they mean what they say. She has spoken out with admirable courage that makes Western apologists for Islam look like the wimps that they are.
Unilateral tolerance is dangerous. The author points out many times that murderous intolerance lies at the very heart of Islam. It is built into the very fabric of the religion.
She asserts that militant Islam cannot be stopped with U.S. drone strikes. The foundation tenets of the religion must brought into question and reformed. She lists what she calls "five theses" (pages 74 and 235):
1. the status of the Qur’an as the last and immutable word of God and the infallibility of Muhammad as the last divinely inspired messenger;
2. Islam’s emphasis on the afterlife over the here-and-now;
3. the claims of sharia to be a comprehensive system of law governing both the spiritual and temporal realms;
4. the obligation on ordinary Muslims to command right and forbid wrong;
5. the concept of jihad, or holy war.
Hirsi Ali divides Muslims into three groups that she calls Mecca Muslims (peaceful and law-abiding), Medina (militant) Muslims, and dissidents. She condemns the Medina group as the perpetrators of the ongoing atrocities that she describes in horrifying detail. She then expresses hope that the last group can stir people to bring about the changes desperately needed to bring Islam into the twenty-first century.
The author’s optimism that Islam can be reformed, although an admirable and most welcome outcome, is also most unlikely. Sharia (religious law approved by a majority of Muslims - page 139), seeks to rule the world and drag mankind back to the seventh century.
Islam, as she has portrayed it, finds a parallel in current Christian fundamentalism and Christian sadistic intolerance of centuries past. Virulent intolerance, stemming from whatever religious or political set of beliefs, is a psychologically defensive posture motivated by fear that questioning the smallest tenet of the faith throws open the entire doctrine to debate and threatens to collapse the whole belief structure. I question that backward, fatalistic, authoritarian and violent Islam could survive that exposure. It would cease to be Islam, the very word a cognate of submission.
Michael Atkins, PhD
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