Courageous gender justice crusader

Infidel, My Life by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Pocket Books; Rs.440; 353 pp Whether orthodox mullahs and hardliners like it or not — and one can be sure they dont — the seeds of contemporisation of Islam, arguably the worlds most austere and literally interpreted religion, have been sown. Just as the seeds of reform of the all-powerful church of Rome were planted in the 16th century by disillusioned German priest Martin Luther, and of the Hindu reformation of the 19th century by Raja Rammohun Roy (and later by independent Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru), so the kernels which will flower into enlightened Islam have been implanted into the harsh unyielding soils of the Islamic world by several brave and articulate women, including writers Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh (Lajja, 1993) and Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, My Life published to global acclaim last year. Its hardly surprising that the harshest critics of Islam, as it is interpreted and practised in most of the contemporary Muslim world, are women. For the simple reason that no major religion, culture or philosophy as blatantly and unapologetically practices gender discrimination — indeed oppression — as Islam. Which is no small thing because Islam boasts an estimated 1.26 billion adherents globally and according to some reports, is the fastest growing religion of the contemporary world. Yet paradoxically the deprivations, misery and daily humiliations heaped upon women born in the Islamic world by a global conspiracy of a moribund patriarchy boggle the mind and defy imagination. From a young age hundreds of millions of women are denied the fundamental right to equal education and legal and social equality. Moreover as they grow, education is transformed into a favour rather than a right; all courtship rituals are denied with ‘honour killings common. Ditto freedom of choice in marriage where males are legally permitted to practice bigamy and easy divorce. Yet these are minor punishments for the misfortune of being born a girl child in some of the more orthodox Islamic societies of the 21st century. Just how nasty, brutish and all too often short, is life for hundreds of millions of the worlds estimated 500 million extraordinarily put-upon Muslim women is recounted in Ayaan Hirsi Alis poignant autobiography under review. It starts with a recitation of her birth in 1969, and early years in Somalia ruled by the Soviet-supported dictator Siad Barre who assumed power through the traditional African practice of coup detat after the abrupt departure of the British and Italians — who had divided and ruled the country for over 80 years — in 1960. Born into the Darod clan which had traditionally ruled over the Eritrean peninsula for several centuries, Ayaan had to suffer exile in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya at a young age because her father Abeh Magan was actively engaged in the clan politics into which Somalia degenerated after Barre seized power in 1969. As such he suffered long periods of imprisonment and exile. Meanwhile raised by an illiterate…