DAR AL HARB - U.S.A. - NY: AYAAN HIRSI ALI INTERVIEWED BY CAROLE ZIMMER OF BLOOMBERG

How `Infidel' Hirsi Ali Rejected Islam, Survived Death Threats
By Carole Zimmer

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- At 37, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has already lived several lifetimes: as a Muslim woman who escaped an arranged marriage at age 22 and later renounced her faith; as a Dutch citizen and member of parliament; as a writer and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington.

In her new memoir, ``Infidel,'' she tells how she came to view Islam as an instrument of terrorism. Hirsi Ali, who was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, also wrote the screenplay for the film ``Submission: Part I,'' which depicts a veiled Muslim woman with verses from the Koran projected on her skin. When its filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, was found murdered in 2004, there was a note staked to his chest containing a death threat against Hirsi Ali.

The author, who travels with bodyguards, spoke with me at Bloomberg headquarters in New York.

Zimmer: You consider yourself a former Muslim. What has Islam meant in your life?

Hirsi Ali: Islam means submission to the will of Allah. Growing up, I lived and slept and ate and dreamed Islam. In the first 10 years of my life in the Netherlands, I managed to do exactly the same as the Dutch. My faith became a very private matter. Then after 9/11 I was shocked. And after it became clear that the attacks were committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, I now had trouble between what the Koran tells me to do, what Allah tells me to do and my own conscience.

Muslim Feminists?

Zimmer: But you had trouble with the role of women in Islam before 9/11. That was something that was very restricting to you.

Hirsi Ali: It was restricting. I had learned to lie to myself that it's not really God who gave us a subordinate position, it was men who were doing it. And like the other so- called Muslim feminists, I was exercising mental gymnastics in which I would read in the Koran only those verses that said men and women were equal.

Zimmer: But at some point you decided you could no longer be a Muslim because of bias, because of restrictiveness, because it no longer represented who you were?

Hirsi Ali: It was a very gradual process, living in the Netherlands, attending university. I wasn't able to plead ignorance anymore. The question after 9/11 was: Is this what I believe in? I think the core of the problem lies within the doctrine of Islam, and it's very important to separate Islam as a doctrine from Muslims, the adherents. It's the adherents who are varied. But Islam itself is unfortunately not going through a reformation. It hasn't gone through enlightenment, and it's become an instrument today for terrorism, for subjugation and for hatred.

Salman Rushdie

Zimmer: Do you worry about your life when you say things like that? You quote Salman Rushdie in your book, noticing what happened to him when he wrote something that people thought was critical of Islam.

Hirsi Ali: As long as I have protection, I don't worry about my life. Theo van Gogh, who made the film with me, the only reason that he got killed was because he did not have security around him. In Islamic countries there are many individuals who say we have to adapt our faith and our way of life to modernity, and often they get exiled or killed.

Zimmer: When I was in the Netherlands, I spoke to a member of parliament who sponsored a law that women should not wear burqas in the Netherlands. And in France women can't wear head scarves to schools. What do you think of laws like that?

`Primitive' Morality

Hirsi Ali: After the terrorist attacks and the security measures that had to be carried out, there are places such as train stations, airports, the Parliament where your face has to be visible. But when it comes to reasons why women are either subjected to wear the veil or decide to wear it, that is a matter of the sexual morality within Islam that says if you show any part of the body, men will then get into a lustful state. That I find primitive, and I think that is what we should be debating.

We should be debating the dogma of virginity within Muslim countries, where girls who are suspected of not being virgins are either beaten or killed. We have to be looking into forced marriages or female genital mutilation. And in Europe, for example, in the Netherlands, saying we're going to ban the wearing of the burqa but financing Islamic schools, where little children are groomed to think and behave in extremist ways, is very defeatist and doesn't work.


Pertinent Links:

1) How `Infidel' Hirsi Ali Rejected Islam, Survived Death Threats