Continuing her journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a
post at Harvard, the brilliant, charismatic and controversial New York
Times and Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author of Infidel and
Nomad makes a powerful plea for a Muslim Reformation as the only way
to end the horrors of terrorism, sectarian warfare and the repression of
women and minorities.
Today, she argues, the world's 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into a
minority of extremists, a majority of observant but peaceable Muslims
and a few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own
religion. But there is only one Islam and, as Hirsi Ali shows, there is
no denying that some of its key teachings--not least the duty to wage
holy war--are incompatible with the values of a free society.
For centuries it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change. But Hirsi
Ali has come to believe that a Muslim Reformation--a revision of Islamic
doctrine aimed at reconciling the religion with modernity--is now at
hand, and may even have begun. The Arab Spring may now seem like a
political failure. But its challenge to traditional authority revealed a
new readiness--not least by Muslim women--to think freely and to speak
out.
Courageously challenging the jihadists, she identifies five key
amendments to Islamic doctrine that Muslims have to make to bring their
religion out of the seventh century and into the twenty-first. And she
calls on the Western world to end its appeasement of the Islamists.
"Islam is not a religion of peace," she writes. It is the Muslim
reformers who need our backing, not the opponents of free speech.
Interweaving her own experiences, historical analogies and powerful
examples from contemporary Muslim societies and cultures, Heretic is
not a call to arms, but a passionate plea for peaceful change and a new
era of global toleration. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders,
with jihadists killing thousands from Nigeria to Syria to Pakistan, this
book offers an answer to what is fast becoming the world's number one
problem.
