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Heretic
Heretic
Why Islam Needs a
Reformation Now
HARPER
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heretic. Copyright © 2015 by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. All rights reserved. Printed
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• contents •
in t roduc t ion
ch a p t er 1
ch a p t er 2
ch a p t er 3
ch a p t er 4
ch a p t er 5
ch a p t er 6
ch a p t er 7
Jihad / 173
Why the Call for Holy War Is a
Charter for Terror
ch a p t er 8
c onclusion
introduction
and drive me off the stage with threats of violence and death?
It is not because I am ignorant or ill-informed. On the con-
trary, my views on Islam are based on my knowledge and
experience of being a Muslim, of living in Muslim societies—
including Mecca itself, the very center of Islamic belief—and
on my years of study of Islam as a practitioner, student, and
teacher. The real explanation is clear. It is because they cannot
actually refute what I am saying. And I am not alone. Shortly
after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Asra Nomani, a Muslim
reformer, spoke out against what she calls the “honor bri-
gade”—an organized international cabal hell-bent on silenc-
ing debate on Islam.5
The shameful thing is that this campaign is effective in
the West. Western liberals now seem to collude against crit-
ical thought and debate. I never cease to be amazed by the
fact that non-Muslims who consider themselves liberals—
including feminists and advocates of gay rights—are so read-
ily persuaded by these crass means to take the Islamists’ side
against Muslim and non-Muslim critics.
Five Amendments
ars such as Bernard Lewis—at least since the fall of the Otto-
man Empire and the subsequent abolition of the Caliphate. In
that sense, this is not an original work. What is original is that
I specify precisely what needs to be reformed. I have identi-
fied five precepts central to the faith that have made it resis-
tant to historical change and adaptation. Only when these five
things are recognized as inherently harmful and when they
are repudiated and nullified will a true Muslim Reformation
have been achieved. The five things to be reformed are:
1. Muhammad’s semi-d ivine and infallible status along
with the literalist reading of the Qur’an, particularly
those parts that were revealed in Medina;
2. The investment in life after death instead of life before
death;
3. Sharia, the body of legislation derived from the Qur’an,
the hadith, and the rest of Islamic jurisprudence;
4. The practice of empowering individuals to enforce
Islamic law by commanding right and forbidding
wrong;
5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war.
chapter 1
THE STORY OF A
HERETIC
My Journey Away from Islam
forgive me, have mercy upon me, guide me, give me health
and grant me sustenance and exalt me and set right my af-
fairs.” It became as familiar and soothing as a lullaby, as far
removed as could be imagined from the clashing sticks and
taunting words of the dugsi.
The supplications seemed to work. Thanks to the help of
a relative, my father was able to escape from jail and flee to
Ethiopia. The obvious thing would have been for my mother
to take us to Ethiopia, too. But my mother would not go to
Ethiopia. Because it was predominantly Christian, to her it
was nothing but a sea of infidels in an unclean land. She pre-
ferred to go to Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam, seat of its
holiest places, Mecca and Medina. So she got a false passport
and airline tickets, and then, one morning when I was eight
years old, my grandmother woke us before dawn, dressed us in
our good clothes, and by the time the day was over, we were
in Saudi Arabia.
We settled in Mecca, the spiritual heart of Islam, the place
to which nearly every Muslim dreams of making a pilgrim-
age once in his or her life. We could enact that pilgrimage
every week by taking the bus from our apartment to the
Grand Mosque. At eight years old, I had already performed
the Umra, the little version of the full pilgrimage to Mecca,
the Hajj, the fifth pillar of the Muslim faith, which washes
away the pilgrim’s sins. Now, moreover, we could study Is-
lam as it was taught in Saudi religious schools, rather than in
a Somali shed. My sister, Haweya, and I were enrolled in a
Qur’an school for girls; my brother, Mahad, went to a ma-
drassa for boys. Previously I had been taught that all Muslims
were united in brotherhood, but here I discovered that the
brotherhood of Muslims did not preclude racial and cultural
prejudice. What we had learned of the Qur’an in Somalia was
not good enough for the Saudis. We did not know enough;
we mumbled instead of reciting. We did not learn to write
any of the passages, we just learned to memorize each verse,
repeating it slowly again and again. The Saudi girls were
light-skinned and called us abid, or slaves—in fact, the Saudis
had legally abolished slavery just five years before I was born.
At home, my mother now made us pray five times each day,
performing the rituals of washing and robing each time.
It was here that I encountered for the first time the strict
application of sharia law. In the public squares, every Fri-
day, after the ritual prayers, men were beheaded or flogged,
women were stoned, and thieves had their hands cut off amid
great spurts of blood. The rhythm of chanted prayers was re-
placed by the reverberation of metal blades slicing through
flesh and hitting stone. My brother—who, unlike me, was
allowed to witness these punishments—used the nickname
“Chop-Chop Square” for the one closest to us. We never
questioned the ferocity of the punishments. To us, it was sim-
ply more hellfire.
But the Grand Mosque, with its high columns, elaborate
tiles, and polished floors, was more beguiling. Here, in the
cool shade, my mother could walk seven times around the
Kaaba, the holy building at the center of the mosque. This
tranquillity was interrupted only in the month of the Hajj,
the Islamic ritual pilgrimage, when we could not leave our
apartment for fear of being trampled by the masses of believers
streaming down the streets, and when even the simplest con-
versations had to be shouted over the din of constant prayer.
It was in Mecca that I first became conscious of the differ-
ences between my father’s vision of Islam and my mother’s. Af-
ter my father came from Ethiopia to join us, he insisted that we
pray not separated by sex in separate rooms of the a partment,
school and again before I left the school gates to return home.
As I walked along the streets, covered, I had to move very de-
liberately because it was easy to trip over the billowing fabric.
It was hot and cumbersome. In those moments, as my giant
black figure moved slowly down the street, my mother was
finally happy with me. But I was not doing it for her. I was
doing it for Allah.
Sister Aziza was not the only new kind of Muslim I en-
countered at that time. There were now preachers going from
door to door, like the self-appointed imam Boqol Sawm. His
name meant “He Who Fasts for a Hundred Days,” and in
person he more than lived up to his name. He was so thin that
he looked like skin stretched over bone. While Sister Aziza
wore the hijab, Boqol Sawm wore a Saudi robe, a bit short, so
that it showed his bony ankles. It seemed he did nothing ex-
cept walk around Old Racecourse Road, our neighborhood
in Nairobi, knocking on doors, sermonizing, and leaving cas-
sette tapes for the women who invited him in. There were no
Electrolux salesmen with their vacuums going door to door
in Old Racecourse Road, just Boqol Sawm and his sermons.
He would sometimes come inside, too, as long as there was a
curtain to separate him from the women, who listened to the
cassettes he left behind and traded them. They played the ser-
mons while they were washing and cooking. Gradually they
stopped wearing colorful clothes and shrouded themselves
in the jilbab, a long, loose-fitting coat, and wrapped scarves
around their heads and necks.
If Aziza’s methods of indoctrination were subtle, Boqol
Sawm favored the more familiar verbal bludgeoning I had first
encountered back in Somalia. He shouted his verses in Arabic
and Somali and highlighted what was forbidden and what
was permitted—in a manner so strident that he got himself
My Apostasy