Saturday, November 21, 2015

Ayaan Hirsi Ali- On Leaving Islam

I just finished one of the best books I've read in a while- Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel. This passage about leaving Islam is just so beautifully written, so clear-sighted, eloquent, and brave. You might have heard about the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who was killed because he directed a short film written by her, about her experiences with Islam. Not only was he killed... and this is gruesome... his murderer stabbed a letter to his chest. It was addressed to her. Do you know what that means? It means she has something important to say!

.....

I had no one to talk to about this. One night in that Greek hotel I looked in the mirror and said out loud, “I don’t believe in God.” I said it slowly, enunciating it carefully, in Somali. And I felt relief.

It felt right. There was no pain, but a real clarity. The long process of seeing the flaws in my belief structure and carefully tiptoeing around the frayed edges as parts of it were torn out, piece by piece–that was all over. The angels, watching from my shoulders; the mental tension about having sex without marriage, and drinking alcohol, and not observing any religious obligations–they were gone. The ever-present prospect of hellfire lifted, and my horizon seemed broader. God, Satan, angels: these were all figments of human imagination. From now on I could step firmly on the ground that was under my feet and navigate based on my own reason and self-respect. My moral compass was within myself, not in the pages of a sacred book.

When we got back from Corfu, I began going to museums. I needed to see ruins and mummies and old dead people, to look at the reality of the bones and to absorb the realization that, when I die, I will become just a bunch of bones. I was on a psychological mission to accept living without a God, which means accepting that I give my life its own meaning. I was looking for a deeper sense of morality. In Islam you are Allah’s slave: you submit, and thus, ideally, you are devoid of personal will. You are not a free individual. You behave well because you fear Hell; you have no personal ethic. If God meant only that which is good, and Satan that which is evil, then both were in me. I wanted to develop the good side of me- discipline, generosity, love- and suppress the bad side: anger, envy, laziness, cruelty.

I didn’t want more imaginary guides telling me what to do, but I needed to believe I was still moral. Now I read the works of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment- Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Mill, Voltaire- and the modern ones, Russell and Popper, with my full attention, not just as a class assignment. All life is problem solving, Popper says. There are no absolutes; progress comes through critical thought. Popper admired Kant and Spinoza but criticized them when he felt their arguments were weak. I wanted to be like Popper: free of constraint, recognizing greatness but unafraid to detect its flaws.


Three hundred and fifty years ago, when Europe was still steeped in religious dogma and thinkers were persecuted- just as they are today in the Muslim world- Spinoza was clear-minded and fearless. He was the first modern European to state clearly that the world is not ordained by a separate God. Nature created itself, Spinoza said. Reason, not obedience, should guide our lives. Though it took centuries to crumble, the entire ossified cage of European hierarchy- from kings to serfs, and between mean and women, all of it shored up by the Catholic Church- was destroyed by this thought.

Now, surely, it was Islam’s turn to be tested.

Humans themselves are a source of good and evil, I thought. We must think for ourselves; we are responsible for our own morality. I arrived at the conclusion that I couldn’t be honest with others unless I was honest with myself. I wanted to comply with the goals of religion, which are to be a better and more generous person, without suppressing my will and forcing it to obey inhuman rules. I would no longer lie, to myself or others. I had had enough of lying. I was no longer afraid of the Hereafter.