Infidel (review)

The opening of this book is stunning. The five-year-old Ayaan is being drilled by her grandmother to chant their clan lineage, to the thirteenth generation. This must be done at every new encounter to determine whether her genealogy intersects, at any generational point, with any new person she meets. It is who she, and they, are. Out of this first scene an understanding of her culture unfolds. Clan connections mean support and protection, a vital resource. They also define, dictate to, restrict, and ultimately may threaten to violate her. And they draw nearly absolute boundaries between herself and any other clan, lines maintained through suspicion, disdain, and hostility. As with all memoirs, Hirsi's viewpoint is twofold: how things looked then, how they look now. She is restrained in presenting her original experiences without undue intervention from her later critique of them. Yet the picture she builds is of how clan culture, and its religious conduct, extend to a total politics, first in Africa and then, transplanted, into Europe. The book thus provides an invaluable case study of the difficulties, challenges, and dangers that are globally faced as traditional cultural groups face modernization.