Vivid portrait

AYAAN HIRSI ALI'S story turned her from a devout Muslim into a fierce critic of fundamentalism. In this often harrowing, but also uplifting, autobiography, she reveals how this came about.

Some will no doubt see this autobiography as simply an anti-Muslim tract. It isn't, but it takes a severely critical perspective on fundamentalist oppression, dogmatic belief and feudal cultural systems.

Ali grew up in a middle-class family in Somalia, but still suffered the trauma of genital mutilation as a child - a widespread practice in Somalia - at the behest of her grandmother.

Later she escaped from a forced marriage and, after sojourns in Ethiopia and Kenya, sought refuge in the Netherlands, where she experienced an intellectual, political and sexual freedom unimaginable in Somalia.

There, she also found help and support, learnt the language, went to university and even became a Liberal Party MP.

She gained worldwide notoriety after making a film with Theo van Gogh about how Islam oppresses women. Van Gogh was subsequently murdered by a fundamentalist Muslim.

Her book takes you on a journey through hell as she and her family flee from country to country in their attempt to escape inter-clan terror, persecution and oppression.

Ali writes that her mother was driven to the verge of madness by her "imprisonment" in an unsatisfactory marriage and the imposed subservience. She sublimates her frustration and rage by taking it out on her daughters in horrific beatings and cruel restrictions.

From an early age, Ali says, she had an enquiring and questioning mind and, although she attempted to behave like a good Muslim and believe in a just God, she felt that she was continually confronted with a reality that was far from just.

In Islam, as with most religions, evil and sin are virtually synonymous with sex and sensual pleasure. The source of all this seductive evil is, of course, womankind.

In the madrassas, long debates are held about which parts of a woman's body are most seductive and thus pose the most social danger if exposed.

She reveals how the depth of local corruption and hypocrisy in north Africa, coupled with imperialist domination, has impelled young people to seek radical alternatives.

With Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern oil-rich countries pouring money into promoting their forms of Islamic fundamentalism, increasing numbers of young people have turned to the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islam for answers. It is tragically ironic that Western payments for Arabian oil are fuelling the very fundamentalism that is threatening the West.

Like many commentators, she characterises the former Siad Barre regime in Somalia as "communist," whereby he was merely a cunning opportunist who played the Soviet Union off against the West in order to gain political leverage and funds to pursue his own agenda.

However, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, at least the country was secular. What has happened to Somalia since is certainly no improvement and has led to blood-drenched civil war on the back of fundamentalist demagogy as in Iraq.

Ali's book communicates vividly the searing impact of religious fervour on personal lives and, at the same time, it is a vivid portrait of a woman with enormous strength and determination.