This is probably the best book on a
politician’s or public official’s life I have read. Biographies that involve
political subjects usually bore me in the first few pages and I drop them.
Unlike some biographies, which however they might try not to, still end up
showing the writer singing his or her own praise, I didn’t feel that in this
book. Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes across to me as unscrupulously honest in saying her
faults and making no excuses. She is the quintessential public official.
Following her history, I saw a lot about
Islam and understood things I had only known a side of. I currently live in
Nigeria and the country is officially recognized or registered (one of them,
not sure which) as a Muslim country. I however live in a mixed state – Lagos,
where churches and mosques compete for converts; and traditional worshippers
visit spiritual men called herbalists. Many people are multi-religious - practising
several religions together, jumping from church to mosque to herbalist, to just
being unattached and when problem arises back to church or a mosque or another
herbalist. As Ayaan said, problems really do chase Africans to religion.
Lagos is a relatively peaceful state and
there are no major religion clashes. However in other parts of the country and
predominantly in the Northern Muslim parts, there have been bombings widely known
to be staged by Muslims on infidels. Yet many Muslims rise up to proclaim that
Islam is a peaceful religion. I do not know anything about this. The strange
thing is I have never even seen a Quran up close.
My only observation is that here too, young
ladies are married off early. My mom used to compare me to them jokingly when I
was younger. Telling me to take responsibility as my mates were already mothers
to several children.
The attacks on infidels are staged mostly
against churches and one such attack was even at the UN Headquarters in Abuja,
the nation’s capital. If you really want people to believe in you and not take
your religion slightly, you have to hold yourself uprightly. This terrorism
only gives people bad things to say about Islam.
Beautiful writing made me engross myself
and carried me through Africa telling me things that happened a few years
before me, things I probably read in history books back in school but was not
really interested to hang on to for a long time.
I confess to thinking the writer might have
overstepped her boundaries. Notwithstanding, she made me think of this saying:
“If what you believe in is not worth dying for, then you have nothing to live
for.” It goes something like that. Evidently, the writer believes she must say
these things for the liberation of certain women (even at the expense of dying
for voicing her beliefs). I admire her for this. It is not my position to make
conclusions on the subject of Islam (or maybe I am just too scared). Muslims
ought to read the book and draw their own conclusions. I have never read the
Quran and have no clarion idea of what it contains, so it would be bigoted and
ungainly for me to draw conclusions.
It is tragic what happened to Haweya . She was a strong woman on her own, showing
more resilience and asserting herself years before Ayaan dared. However, her
circumstances seem to have finally overwhelmed her, casting her into an abyss
it was impossible to get out from.
The whole political business also made me
realise that in politics, one has to be flexible. Not flexible in the
connotation of being corrupt, venal and slack or falling short in policy and
other important matters. But flexible in the terms of well… you are dealing
with humans, not robots. There are so many humans living under different
circumstances that it is near improbable to apply the same rules to them all.
Enlightening and enlivening book. I haven’t
felt so blessed to discover a book in a long time. Cheers to Ayaan Hirsi Ali!
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