Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

     Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a gutsy, smart and beautiful woman. Moral, sincere and extremely courageous, she wowed the world in 2007 with the publication of her life story in Infidel: My Life, a New York Times runaway bestseller. Infidel chronicles her extraordinary and terrifying personal experiences from the time she was a child growing up as a Muslim in clan-based, war-torn and impoverished Mogadishu. The victim of female genital mutilation, she survived family beatings, war and famine under several different African and Middle-Eastern dictators. Covered from head to toe, she lived as an ultra-religious young woman in Kenya. Ultimately, she fled to Holland as a refugee to avoid an arranged marriage. And these were her easy trials!
Her next book, Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations - which I did not read - continues the story of her challenging life as an ex-Muslim. Hirsi Ali herself - who now lives and works in the United States and is a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government - at one time called Nomad her most provocative book, probably because in it she ostensibly encourages moderate Muslims to convert to Christianity. A few years on, after observing the Arab Spring, she reportedly rescinded this view, and even revoked her stand that Islam is beyond redemption.
     Enter Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, her third and possibly most controversial published work. If her earlier stories angered the devout Muslim world -- and helped precipitate her needing 24/7 physical security -- this 270-page book is probably sending her enemies into paroxysms of rage. In terms of audacity, Heretic is off the charts. But in terms of scholarship, and even as a polemic, it fails the simplest tests. I am left feeling that Hirsi Ali should stick to writing her personal memoirs.
     My problems begin with the notion of reform, the theme of the book. To me it seems someone advocating reform should be able to find a few positive things to say as a starting point. From my reading, Hirsi Ali does not say one upbeat word about Islam, its history, its holy book or its most observant, non-violent - whom she calls Medina - adherents. In other words, not only is the book - appropriately - a full blown denunciation of extreme, radical Islam. It is a general put down of all run-of-the mill Islamic viewpoints and practices as well.
     Among the five major changes Hirsi Ali calls for are: "Ensure that Muhammad and the [Koran] are open to interpretation and criticism;" end the "supremacy" of Sharia law over secular law; "end the practice of 'commanding right and forbidding wrong;' and abandon the call for jihad." I am no expert on Islamic theology, but these ideas are clearly fundamental to the religion, and severely altering any one of them substantially would blow a massive hole in basic Islam.
    Hirsi Ali also takes on the doctrine that life on earth is temporary and therefore subordinate to the afterlife, and that only Allah is permanent. Another core teaching in the Koran, this is something that all devout Muslims believe. There is nothing inherently violent or dangerous in such a conviction, yet Hirsi Ali insists that it too be removed from the faith system.
   Thus, hers is not a call for reform. It is a call for the complete gutting of what makes Islam a religion in the first place. After all, if there is no Allah, if the Koran does not represent Allah’s word, or if Mohammed was not a true prophet, then what’s the point? The whole religion is a hoax with no legitimate claim to authority. One does not need to be a theologian to see, without making any value judgements, that Hirsi Ali is essentially calling for nothing less than the ruinous dismantling of the 1400 year-old religion.
     Whether she advocates genuine constructive reform of Islam or its wholesale reinvention after expunging its distinctive and definitive doctrines, it is clear that Hirsi Ali believes the religion is hopeless in its present form. She may be right, but if so, how does she explain the fact that the many -- the majority -- of Muslims in the world live in relatively secular, more or less pluralistic, societies, are not violent, and yet believe deeply in their faith, however they define it? Hirsi Ali herself makes this important observation, but seems unconcerned – if not unaware – that in doing so she is undermining her own thesis.
   Like Hirsi Ali and all reasonable people, I despise and fear Muslim terrorists, and places like Saudi Arabia scare me to death. I am not one of those apologists proclaiming Islam to be a religion of peace. I am, however, a thinking human being and as such, I wish “experts” would spend a bit more time exploring this peaceful/violent contradiction. As for Hirsi Ali, I find her lack of curiosity, strangely, curious.
     Another problem is that the author seems to be confusing the word "reform" with “dilute” or “weaken”. The Protestant Reformation, to which she refers continually, was hardly a liberal event (or series of events). On the contrary, the movement Martin Luther precipitated served to harden and strengthen Christians’ attachment to the Bible and to Christ, not loosen it. There can be no comparison with what she is calling for with respect to Islam. Protestant reformers of old were no more interested in making Christianity weaker or easier to follow than Henry VIII was interested in staying married to Anne Boleyn.
    And the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (part of the Treaty of Augsburg of 1555), to which Hirsi Ali also refers, did not, as she implies, lead to the separation of church and state. On the contrary, it reinforced the symbiotic relationship between church and state by explicitly conferring on governments the absolute right to dictate the religious beliefs and practices of those living within their individual jurisdictions without interference from other governments. National sovereignty, not religious liberty, was the great innovation embodied in cuius regio, eius religio.
     Finally, Hirsi Ali, who has rejected her faith completely, is not the sort of expert one would expect to be advising religious adherents on how to run their faith programs. Generally, fundamental religious changes arise, usually gradually, from the experiences, ideas and debates of those practicing within the movement. This has been the case over and over through the centuries with developments in both Christianity and Judaism, the two other major world religions besides Islam that base their beginnings in the Hebrew Bible. It would be unthinkable – not to mention unreasonable – for the Pope to turn to an "apostate" for advice on Roman Catholic doctrine, which is among the kindest names being used to describe Hirsi Ali by her enemies.
     That is not to say that she should not write her opinions on how to "reform" Islam. Free speech for everyone, I say. But let's not pretend her advice is being taken seriously by even the most peaceful mucky mucks of the Islamic world.
     What can I conclude? That Hirsi Ali's writing talents are amazing; her religious advice abilities, not so much.

As with most books on Lynne Like's, you can get this on Amazon.ca.