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Has anyone read the book Infidel?

I've read a little about it, its this Somali's ladys' story from living in Somailia, Saudi Arabia and 1 other country.

She was a victim of genital mutilation common in west Africa, as well as forced into an unwanted marriage. After September 11th, she questioned her Islamic beliefs...

It seems like a powerful book.
Anyone read it?

Im going to start a book discussion in the "Books" subforum for Muslim girls & women biggrin

Let me know if you want to know when I start it.
I robbed the library and am going to have it up next week (inshallah)

I haven't read her book, personally, no. I would like to read it, though.

She was an active politician in the Netherlands for a while. I sympathise with her and her story, but her arguments were often flawed. What she experienced (female genital mutilation, forced marriage, etc) are of course haram. It could justify an "attack" on certain muslims, or the way they let culture dominate and take over their belief, but certainly does not warrant an attack on Islam.

While I feel for her and what she's been going through, I did not like her militant approach in Dutch politics towards muslims and Islam, and it seems to me that as a result of her approach the rift between muslims and non-muslims only became bigger, resulting in more problems. Because of that, my main issue with her is that she took her personal problems and created a full frontal attack on all of Islam and muslims in a non-constructive way. She offers no solution.
As such, I feel she shouldn't have been a politician. I encourage her to write about her experiences and bring these problems to light, but politics was the wrong place to do so.

However, I'm interested in her book. I'm rather familiar with the issues that she speaks of, we dealt with them in uni fairly regularly, and I'm interested in her arguments and how she came to question her beliefs.

From what I have seen of her, she tends to come off as an opportunist and a lier, and this is something presented in a dutch documentary about her. Here is the irony, her citizenship was revoked and she was deported because she lied on her application. It's one thing to lie in an application for naturalization, but it's another to do just that, and oppose pro-immigration legislation (which ironically got you to where you are).

Quite frankly, better an "infidel" than a "hypocrite".

I am not saying that she did not face a lot of hardship under the umbrella of an Islamic identity, but it seems to me that she confuses negative cultural practices alien to Islam with Islam (such as female genital mutilation [FMG]).

Part 1 of the documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z82C10myBmM

Last time I checked, she came to the US to work at a conservative think tank, possibly in DC. I don't remember exactly.

I'm reading it now, actually (along with several other books, so it's taking a while). It's a great story, but I disagree with her. She's a good storyteller, and if it's true, she suffered a lot of horrible things. But her understanding of Islam is not right, to me. Her experience, unfortunately, was with an Islam that was at best extreme, at worst cruel and oppressive. So, she assumes (wrongly) that their interpretation of Islam is the true interpretation, and therefore Islam bad, when in fact, my opinion is that the people she experienced did not understand Islam at all.

I don't like her attitude toward Islam at all, but at the same time, considering that her entire experience with Muslims had been so awful, I also feel bad for her. Except for her negative (and, I think, unfair) attitude toward Islam and Muslims, she seems like a person I would like.