Seems universal from where I stand. ( )

Va bene. il problema è molto serio. Ma poche idee e confuse non basteranno a risolverlo. Pura operazione editoriale ( )

Despite its author usually being portrayed as some provocative, neo-conservative agitator, I found The Caged Virgin to be well-balanced and thoroughly reasonable in its views. To be sure, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is assertive and unafraid in her condemnation and criticism, but when faced with the sickening plight of many Muslim women in both the West and in societies with Islamic majorities, who could blame her? This is an awkward topic for many people, dealing as it does with taboo subjects like religion, race, immigration and sexual morality. But Hirsi Ali is defiant; her arguments will discomfort many people, and rightly so.

Because of this awkwardness, many will close off their minds to Hirsi Ali's book. But it is badly needed for people of all creeds, and both genders, to read and engage with and confront this sort of thing. The author attacks the Western doctrine of multiculturalism for its complicity and double standards which, however unintentionally, contribute to the problem (e.g. The present-day attitude of Western cultural relativists, who flinch from criticising Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims, allow Western Muslims to hide from reviewing their own moral values." (pg. 176); "Because multiculturalists will not classify cultural phenomena as 'better' or 'worse' but only neutral or disparate, they actually encourage segregation and unintentionally perpetuate, for instance, the unsatisfactory position of Muslim women." (pg. 63)). However, the failings of multiculturalism, though important, are not the main thrust of Hirsi Ali's argument.

The main thrust of The Caged Virgin is to try to get Muslims (both male and female) to confront the limitations of their own religious practices. As the author explains on page 155, "I force Muslims to face a shortcoming in their faith and to discover the meaning and importance of secular morality, which will enable them to adapt their faith to the real world." She disparages the Muslim sense of victimhood, contending that Western Muslims are not cornered or embattled or beaten-down (pp156-7), and notes their double standards in this attitude to the West ("I am amazed that Muslims are not more offended by the invocation of Allah and 'God is great' for murder [by Islamic fundamentalists] than by [the Danish] cartoons. Why do Muslims not fly into flights of rage when people who go to help Iraqis are kidnapped, tortured, and beheaded in the name of Islam?" (pg. xv); "… at present, reading works by Western [liberal] thinkers is regarded as disrespectful to the Prophet and Allah's message. This is a serious misconception… After all, the fact that the Wright brothers were not Islamic has not stopped Muslims from travelling by air." (pp xii-xiii)). Hirsi Ali contends that only when courageous and free-thinking Muslims confront and reform their religion can Islam progress and mature and cease to cause so much harm both to individual people's lives and in the international political arena.

By far the most heart-breaking assertion in the book is given very early on, and reinforced and evidenced throughout: the sad truth that, often, Muslim women maintain their own repression (pp3-4). Reading the various horror stories provided by Hirsi Ali (including, most sickeningly, the graphic accounts of female genital mutilation and the health problems that result), one would assume that many Muslim women seek to be free of their cage. As the author shows, this is often not the case. One can understand why immigrant women, often illiterate, uneducated and brought up to be obedient and subservient, and in a new and frightening country where they don't speak the language, can meekly conform, but it is more troubling that, as Hirsi Ali contends, "even educated women often have difficulty relinquishing [these] ideas" (pg. 4). On page 31, she hints at a possible explanation:

"Every Muslim is expected to submit to the will of Allah, but the girls and women have to submit most of all. This upbringing can have so great an influence that women never succeed in escaping from the cage. Because they have internalized their subordination, they no longer experience it as an oppression by an external force but as a strong internal shield… They are like prisoners suffering from Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages fall in love with the hostage takers and establish a deep, intimate contact with them. But it is an unhealthy intimacy, comparable to slaves who are subordinate not only in body, but also psychologically…"

It is this denial of the outside world, of other ways of thinking – a sort of intellectual cowardice, if you will – which is most troubling as it perpetuates these ideals among the next generation. Unable or unwilling to discard the idea that a good Muslim girl is an obedient one, these decent and honest Muslims – both men and women – indirectly provide succour to the fundamentalists who give their religion a bad name, and allow for the continued sexual and psychological abuse of other women. Who in good conscience could wear a hijab, or a burqa, or consent to an arranged marriage, however freely they may choose to do so, knowing what these same things mean for countless disenfranchised women around the world? Surely someone else's brutal oppression trumps your own desire to display your piety? At the age of 22, Hirsi Ali was given in an arranged marriage to a distant cousin (pg. 1), yet bravely chose to value her independence above all, and fled. Regrettably, many other women in a similar position have submitted and will continue to submit to these "socially-sanctioned rapes" (pg. 24). As Hirsi Ali notes, cuttingly, on page 7: "Is it not hypocritical to trivialize or tolerate those practices, when you yourself are free?"

Dealing forthrightly and compellingly with these ideas, it is therefore a shame that The Caged Virgin, as a piece of writing, is rather average. It seems wrong to deal with such a book on these terms, so I will keep such criticisms brief, but I was disappointed that the book failed to live up to the praise given by Christopher Hitchens on the book's blurb, which described it as "written with quite astonishing humour and restraint". It is important writing, to be sure, and, as it is written by a Somali Muslim woman, largely immune from the cheap shots and misguided cries of bigotry and Islamophobia which an offended party might direct, for example, at someone like me, a young white male atheist. But I could find no evidence in The Caged Virgin of the humour that Hitchens claimed, and the book is also, unfortunately, rather fragmented (it is largely compiled from previously-published articles by Hirsi Ali). This means it is often repetitive, and lacking a single consistent narrative argument that would strengthen the force of the author's ideas. It is neither readable enough to satisfy as a polemic, nor thorough enough to serve as a more in-depth academic treatise. Nevertheless, despite its lack of fluency, it remains a powerful and thought-provoking book, with ideas that should challenge and stimulate readers from any background." ( )

Her writings are something people need to read more of. The questions she challenges both Muslims and the West with are things that we all should be thinking about. She speaks eloquently and passionately about a very controversial subject. I especially liked her challenge to Western journalists and leaders who are afraid of criticizing Islam. ( )

Hirsi-Ali goes into detail about her journey from Islam to apostasy in well-written, fluent prose. A quick and easy read, though painful in its heartrending story. ( )