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An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
Free Press
May 2006
208 pages
ISBN: 0743288335
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
Muslims who explore sources of morality other than Islam are
threatened with death, and Muslim women who escape the
virgins' cage are branded whores. So asserts Ayaan Hirsi
Ali's profound meditation on Islam and the role of women,
the rights of the individual, the roots of fanaticism, and
Western policies toward Islamic countries and immigrant
communities. Hard-hitting, outspoken, and controversial, The
Caged Virgin is a call to arms for the emancipation of women
from a brutal religious and cultural oppression and from an
outdated cult of virginity. It is a defiant call for clear
thinking and for an Islamic Enlightenment. But it is also
the courageous story of how Hirsi Ali herself fought back
against everyone who tried to force her to submit to a
traditional Muslim woman's life and how she became a voice
of reform. Born in Somalia and raised Muslim, but outraged by her
religion's hostility toward women, Hirsi Ali escaped an
arranged marriage to a distant relative and fled to the
Netherlands. There, she learned Dutch, worked as an
interpreter in abortion clinics and shelters for battered
women, earned a college degree, and started a career in
politics as a Dutch parliamentarian. In November 2004, the
violent murder on an Amsterdam street of Dutch filmmaker
Theo van Gogh, with whom Hirsi Ali had written a film about
women and Islam called Submission, changed her life.
Threatened by the same group that slew van Gogh, Hirsi Ali
now has round-the-clock protection, but has not allowed
these circumstances to compromise her fierce criticism of
the treatment of Muslim women, of Islamic governments'
attempts to silence any questioning of their traditions, and
of Western governments' blind tolerance of practices such as
genital mutilation and forced marriages of female minors
occurring in their countries. Hirsi Ali relates her experiences as a Muslim woman so that
oppressed Muslim women can take heart and seek their own
liberation. Drawing on her love of reason and the
Enlightenment philosophers on whose principles democracy was
founded, she presents her firsthand knowledge of the Islamic
worldview and advises Westerners how best to address the
great divide that currently exists between the West and
Islamic nations and between Muslim immigrants and their
adopted countries. An international bestseller -- with updated information for
American readers and two new essays added for this edition
-- The Caged Virgin is a compelling, courageous, eye-opening
work.
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