Nomad
From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations
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3.9 • 45 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Internationally bestselling author Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells the stirring story of her search for a new life in America, recounting dramatic stories of her family and the challenges they faced adapting to Western society as Muslim immigrants.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali captured the world’s attention with Infidel, her compelling coming-of-age memoir, which spent thirty-one weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, in Nomad, Hirsi Ali tells of coming to America to build a new life, an ocean away from the death threats made to her by European Islamists, the strife she witnessed, and the inner conflict she suffered. It is the story of her physical journey to freedom and, more crucially, her emotional journey to freedom—her transition from a tribal mind-set that restricts women’s every thought and action to a life as a free and equal citizen in an open society. Through stories of the challenges she has faced, she shows the difficulty of reconciling the contradictions of Islam with Western values.
In these pages Hirsi Ali recounts the many turns her life took after she broke with her family, and how she struggled to throw off restrictive superstitions and misconceptions that initially hobbled her ability to assimilate into Western society. She writes movingly of her reconciliation, on his deathbed, with her devout father, who had disowned her when she renounced Islam after 9/11, as well as with her mother and cousins in Somalia and in Europe.
Nomad is a portrait of a family torn apart by the clash of civilizations. But it is also a touching, uplifting, and often funny account of one woman’s discovery of today’s America. While Hirsi Ali loves much of what she encounters, she fears we are repeating the European mistake of underestimating radical Islam. She conveys an urgent message and mission—to inform the West of the extent of the threat from Islam, both from outside and from within our open societies. A celebration of free speech and democracy, Nomad is an important contribution to the history of ideas, but above all a rousing call to action.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After a harrowing childhood lived according to a particularly strict interpretation of Muslim law, Somali-born Ali (Infidel) escaped to Europe rather than move to Canada to marry a man she'd never met. Arriving in Holland, she soon became an international cause c l bre for her willingness to publicly denounce the uglier sides of Islamic culture, particularly as in certain regions it oppresses women and girls. Many personal stories are repeated from her earlier accounts, but here Ali adds the story of her immigration to the U.S., and as always, her writing can be moving, as she bares heartrending moments such as her father's death. But with this third memoir, she has become tiresomely repetitive, and her wholesale condemnation of an entire religion and the multiple cultures it has engendered is so sweeping and comprehensive, and her faith in Western values (particularly her romantic view of Christianity) is so wide-eyed, that the book ultimately reads like a callow exercise in expressing the author's own sense of aggrievement.
Customer Reviews
Not as good as her Infidel
If you read Infidel, you'll find Nomad to be often reparative, at times in a format of a lecture or rambling. If not, I highly recommend Infidel. I liked to be informed on various statistics, and I liked her proposal as to what could or should be done.
Generally, I admire Ayaan's outspokenness and an ability to absorb and analyze her surroundings, especially given her tribal and subservient background. Thumbs up to her.
Nomad
Excellent, informative, enlightening, engaging, educational! Hirsi has done it again - she has inspired not only women of Islam, but women all over the world to take stock of their freedom, or lack thereof when bound with religion. Hirsi leads by example proving to women of Islam that marriage, children, education, careers and many other inherent rights can and should occur when and if they choose.