How do you define an Islamist? Is it a nasty theocratic ideology like Hindutva, whose followers are burning churches and raping nuns across India? Is Hirsi Ali an anti-Islamist in the same way that Mahatma Gandhi was anti-Hindutva?

Or is Hirsi Ali just someone who decided to change her religion?$

Also, did you get to ask her about what went through her mind when she admitted on Dutch TV that she told lies to be granted refugee status?

I just finished reading Infidel and it appears to me that Ms. Ali is repeating what her parents taught her, to reject the rules you don't like to follow. Her father devoted his entire life to overthrowing his government, and her mother rejected the traditional rules of marriage. Ayaan grew up with a mother who beat her constantly because of her own severe emotional issues, and her father abandoned the family. Her brother and sister continually tried to escape the family, and her sister was severely psychotic. I appreciate her sensitivity. She knows something was wrong with her upbringing, but she is undoubtedly focusing on the wrong element. It was not Islam that was her problem, but the disfunctional and emotionally unstable family she was raised in. Her grandmother was probably right in her assessment that Ayaan was not very intelligent. Her IQ is probably around 100 I would guess.

While this is a remarkable story of a woman that has experienced life changes greater than many of us could comprehend,I was horrified whilst reading this article to see that many Somali cultural practices and the terrorist acts of 9/11 have been labelled as Islamic. Be assured, female genital mutilation, forced marriage,the killing of innocent people are not practices that are perscribed or encouraged in islam, in fact quite the opposite. I think Ayaan should go and find where in the Qur'an those things are said because she clearly took the ridiculous and cruel practices a tribal uneducated culture imposed on her as being rooted in a peaceful religion where women are respected. In the Qur'an, there is a verse that states the killing of one innocent soul is a crime against all of humanity. In a muslim marriage the girl has three opportunities in the ceremony to say No. It is her that this opportunity belongs to, not her father or her family. Furthermore, female genital mutilation is an african practice and the proof is many islamic countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, do not practice this at all. And FGM is practiced in countries where the religion is not islam such as Senegal, Ethiopia and Tanzinia according to the WHO. Eygpt recently passed a law banning FGM, and many muslim scholars have denounced FGM as banned in Islam on grounds of physical and psychological damage to a woman's health.
I agree with the above reader, that while Ayaan is intutive as to the problems with her upbringing, she has simplified the complexities of the cultural and familial dynamics as well as mental illness, and incorrectly put it all down to religion. Furthermore she has not recognized that it is the malpractice of religion that brought these things about.

There is no forced marriage in Islam... in fact it is totally unIslamic to forcefully marry someone.. that is not even considered a marriage according to Islam. Sadly, it must have been her culture, like many other cultures, that take certain cultural traditions as religious. I hope some day Ayaan Hirsi Ali reads the history of Islam.. and also finds out about how Islam strove to take women out of dark ages.. I wish she would compare the women of pre-Islamic Era to those of after Islam.