Stealing six weeks from time, a foetus breaks into life  – it commits its first sin, being born. It tears a hole through its mother and is caught breaking in with a hole of its own – it commits its second sin, being born with a vagina. Naked and full of sin, she is shoved into a cultural closet where religion is fashion. Her body is hidden in the Hijab and her vagina is sewn shut. Yet, as her autobiography confesses, Ayaan Hirsi Ali continues to sin.

Perhaps Canadian readers may not respond religiously to Infidel’s calling. A clergy of Canadian, anti-Islamic, feminist writers, like Irshad Manji and Marina Nemat, have sermonized us enough on their heroism against horror. We can do without an international saint from the feminist church.

But Ali need not pitch Infidel, branded as My Freedom in the Netherlands, differently to us. Knopf Canada has signed her for her next book. Her unashamed prose lures the devil within us all, perhaps because she preaches a practice of sin. Being bad is good.

Infidel maps Ali’s journey through Islam on the vehicle of sin: she parks at the lips of an atheist lover and speeds  home for her prayers. Her journeys are obstructed by Saudi Arabian and Somali Islamists. Yet she breaches these borders, enters the Netherlands and escapes an arranged marriage to a Canada-based suitor. Pouring dishonour upon her family, she sets flames to her past and rises to be awarded a seat in the Dutch parliament. The reward for the film Submission, though, is not as prestigious: this Rushdie-style sin murdered Theo Van Gogh and, to date, Ali survives encircled by security.

For Ali, author of The Caged Virgin, sin is orgasmic : this Infidel will sin much more and Canada will not stop her.

Author: Ali Abbas