“In no other modern religion,” Ali writes, “is dissent still a crime, punishable by death.”
She believed that, according to Islam, the infidel should die, that the Koran is infallible, that those who violated sharia law — thieves, gays, adulterers — deserved to be stoned to death or beheaded, as they were each Friday in a public gathering place she and her brother called “Chop-Chop Square.”
Today, she is that rare thing: a public intellectual who, despite death threats and charges of bigotry, calls for an end to Islam — not just as the faithful know it, but as we in the West think we know it.
“The assumption is that, in Islam, there are a few rotten apples, not the entire basket,” Ali
tells The New York Post. “I’m saying it’s the entire basket.”
In her book,
Heretic, Ali argues for a complete reformation of Islam, akin to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Though her own education led her to reject Islam and declare herself an atheist, she believes that for the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims, there must be another way.
“If you are a child brought up to believe that Islam is a source of morality” — as she was, in Africa and Saudi Arabia — “the Muslim framework presents you with the Koran and the hijab. I don’t want to be cruel and say, ‘You grow up and you snap out of it.’ But maybe we who have snapped out of it have not done our best to appeal to those still in it,” she says.
In
Heretic, Ali says there are three kinds of Muslims. There are the violent, the reformers, and what she believes is the largest group — those who want to practice as they see fit and live peaceably but do not challenge the Koran, the Muslim world’s treatment of women and the LGBT community, or terrorist attacks committed in the name of Islam.
Yet she refuses to label this group as moderate. She believes they have done nothing to deserve it. “I’ve never believed in the word,” Ali says. “It’s totally useless. I think we’re in a time now where we demand answers from Muslims and say, ‘Whose side are you on?’ ”
Ali argues for five amendments to the faith. “Only when these five things are recognised as inherently harmful and when they are repudiated and nullified,” she writes, “will a true Muslim reformation have been achieved.”
Those five notions are:
• The infallibility of the Prophet Mohammed and the literal interpretation of the Koran
• The idea that life after death is more important than life on earth
• Sharia law
• Allowing any Muslim to enforce ideas of right and wrong on another
• Jihad, or holy war
Rejecting these ideas, some of which date to the seventh century, is a shocking proposition to the faithful.
“The biggest obstacle to change within the Muslim world,” Ali writes, “is precisely its suppression of the sort of critical thinking I am attempting here.”
Ali has first-hand experience. In November 2004, after collaborating with the Dutch artist Theo van Gogh on the documentary
Submission — which criticised the Muslim world’s abuse of women — van Gogh was shot to death by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim. The assassin attempted to decapitate him and stabbed him in the chest, leaving a note affixed by the knife. It was a death threat against Ali.
She was forced into seclusion and given a 24-hour security detail. Today, she lives with her husband and young son in the United States yet remains a target.
“In no other modern religion,” Ali writes, “is dissent still a crime, punishable by death.”
Ex-Muslim author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls for reform of Islam as we know it
