Memoir:Somalia, Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia are the backdrop for the often disturbing story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's childhood as described in this autobiography, written with a ghostwriter. Disturbing because of her clear and sometimes almost dry descriptions of the way her mother beats her: "By the end of the day she had lost her temper completely: she was going to tie me down and teach me a lesson. Normally she would grab me and tell me to lie down on my belly on the floor and hold my ankles, so that she ties me up for my beating. My mother used to beat us [Ayaan and her sister] only on the arms and legs."
There is the tale of how she was made "pure" by having her genitals cut out as a little girl. Although both her parents are against this utterly barbaric practice of circumcision, fate would have it that neither her father, who was in jail, nor her mother, who was constantly on the road gathering food for her black market business, were present to prevent the little girl's grandmother, a woman raised with the primitive beliefs of her forefathers, having a blacksmith circumcise the little girls.
There are endless and sometimes confusing enumerations of the names of her protectors and members of her clan, and the people who smuggle her mother and her family to Saudi Arabia and later to Ethiopia. Living in Mecca with a mother who becomes an increasingly devout Muslim, Ayaan's awareness of what being a Muslim girl was all about begins to grow.
"Everything in Saudi Arabia was about sin. You weren't naughty; you were sinful. You weren't clean; you were pure. The word haram, forbidden, was something we heard every day. When we played with other girls in the court yard of the Quran School, if our white headscarves shook loose, that was haram too, even if there were no boys around."
In Nairobi, where she comes in contact with Christian children at school, her guilt has already been developed by solid Muslim indoctrination. Her mother, abandoned by their father for a third wife back in Somalia, treats her abominably but she continues to love and obey her like a slave. A non-Muslim boyfriend is sent away and Ayaan adopts the hijab and the faith, even going so far as to support the Muslim Brotherhood. During long religious discussions the first seeds of doubt are sewn when she learns about the true position of women in Islam; one of utter inequality.
SLOWLY WE BEGIN to understand that Ayaan's book is not only the moving story of her miserable childhood, her escape from a forced marriage and her flight to Holland, but a heartfelt plea for the freedom of women in Islam. "A Muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or have any of the other emotions and longings that I felt when I read books. A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you."
On arriving in Holland she discovers there is a whole culture of the self, a people who seek their own pleasure just because they feel like it, and Ayaan starts developing atheist beliefs. Working as an interpreter for her fellow asylum-seekers, while simultaneously studying political science, increases her experience and knowledge of what Muslim women have to go through, in Holland as much as in Somalia. The ritual beatings, approved by the prophet Muhammad in the Koran, the rapes, the honour killings - everything encourages her to fight for her own and other women's rights. Her sister, who does not seem to have any of Ayaan's strength and is a kind of mirror image of what might have become of her, gets pregnant, has a couple of abortions, joins Ayaan in Holland and finally loses her mind as a result of the unbearable suffering she has gone through. She returns to her mother and dies.
There is no more room for a belief in God and definitely none for organised religion in Ayaan's adult life in Holland. Her focus is on denouncing certain aspects of Islam "that slow down a society's development, by curbing critical thinking and holding women back".
Her father does not want to have any contact with his daughter any more. He does warn her about the dangers of propagating such blasphemous opinions.
AYAAN SHOWS GREAT courage and a certain naivety when she decides to pursue her fight. This very important book, every bit as important as her first one, The Caged Virgin, ends with her coming to terms with a life surrounded by bodyguards and with the terrible death of the journalist and filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, for whom she wrote a short script about battered Muslim women. As a consequence of her writings van Gogh was murdered. Holland, the country where she is an MP and which she believes to be a safe haven, revokes her citizenship - in part due to the row surrounding her falsification of details when asking for asylum - though it subsequently restores it, but Ayaan chooses to resign from parliament and moves to the US to join the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has her critics and has now become the subject of a heated international discussion involving authors and commentators Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, the latter calling her "a slightly simplistic Enlightenment fundamentalist", and French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, who defends her ideals.
We can only hope that she remains focused on what she is truly good at: fighting for justice for oppressed women.
Dutch-born Judith Mok who works internationally as a lyric soprano is also a poet and novelist. She lives in Dublin and writes in English. Her last book, Gael, was published by Telegram last year
Infidel: My Life By Ayaan Hirsi Ali Free Press, 353 pp. £12.99