Ayaan hirsi ali movies

Both are extremely intelligent, articulate and successful women with courage and integrity. Both are equally critical of "tribal" or "desert" Islam to which both were attracted for a time. One is now a self-confessed infidel, the other a believer. How is it that each took such divergent paths toward the common goal of living their lives in freedom?

Is there a broader lesson to be learnt beyond Islam? Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in a politically tense Somalia which exploded into civil war, and which in turn ushered in an increasingly dominant, exclusive, violent form of political Islam. During her family's forced migration to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya as political refugees, the family lived in strongly Islamist enclaves.

Forcefully mutilated genitally as a child, at 22 Ayaan fled to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage. There she learnt to stand on her own feet, went through university and entered parliament.

Atheist revolution

Classed as an infidel and condemned by a fatwa, she is now at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D. There she helped found and now directs the AHA Foundation, established to defend the rights of women in the West against militant Islam. Ayaan published a collection of essays entitled The Caged Virgin , and has published two volumes chronicling her personal journey from Islam to atheism and freedom under the titles Infidel and Nomad.

Three key elements of Islam, as she experienced and understood them, led her to reject the faith. First, that a Muslim's relationship with God is one of fear to an Absolute who demands total submission. Second, Islam's only moral source is the Prophet, to the exclusion of so-called secular wisdom. Third, and finally, that Islam is strongly dominated by a sexual morality derived from tribal Arab values where "a woman is reduced to her hymen.

Ayaan likewise rejects liberal interpretations of the Qur'an as irrelevant.