Women Breaking Barriers….and what to watch tonight!

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Have you read Infidel yet?  If not, put down your computer, run to the nearest library and get a copy, STAT.  I’m serious.  It affected me the way no other non-fiction book has yet.  Except maybe this one.  I was blown away by Ayaan Ali’s dedication to finding the truth, even if it meant leaving everything that she held dear and walking away from her family and country.  She now works to free women who she sees as slaves in an unjust culture and religion.
Here’s the review I left on Goodreads:
Holy. Crap. This book was probably the most horrific and fascinating book I’ve ever read. It moved me to tears and had me standing up and cheering. I admire this woman to no end and hope that she lives a long, happy and free life.
In short, this book is Ayaan Ali’s path from an accepting Muslim childhood in Ethiopia, to a an adult life as a rebel atheist in Holland. Her whole young adulthood was spent trying to become a good Muslim but she simply couldn’t live with the dissonance between her beliefs of Allah as a peaceful God and the abuse and murder of women in her Muslim community. After being sent off to an arranged marriage with a man living in Canada, Ayaan gets on a train to Holland and never looks back. She becomes a member of Dutch parliament, makes a documentary about Muslim women, lives under armed guard, survives her co-creator of the documentary who is brutally murdered by an Islamic fundamentalist and eventually settles in the US.
As a devout Christian, it does make me sad that she has completely renounced a belief in any god, although I can’t say that I blame her. She was true to what her heart and spirit told her, which was that the injustices she was witnessing were NOT of God. She made her life something she could be proud of, even though her family disowned her for it and her life is still threatened regularly. And now she works to right the wrongs she witnessed both in Africa and in the Islamic communities of western Europe.
Three cheers for this heroic woman and her amazing book!

Some inspiring women you’ve GOT to learn about!