Ayaan Hirsi Ali - no stranger to controversy

Despite her frequently stated atheism, Hirsi Ali also believes that the Christian churches have an important role to play in the battle against Islam. She regards both fundamentalist Christians and Christians who would “appease Islam” (by participating in interfaith dialogue) as “a liability to Western civilisation”, unlike Christians who stand firm against Islam while sharing the message of a tolerant and loving God.

Nomad must be the only book ever to carry an endorsement from Richard Dawkins on the cover and a call within its pages for the Vatican to more actively evangelise.

Hirsi Ali explains this strange juxtaposition by saying there are many Muslims who instinctively recoil from the violence of bin Laden, but are not yet ready to face the idea of a world without God.

Christians should show that their religion offers a preferable (if equally delusional) placebo.

Hirsi Ali makes clear that her call for assimilation into Western civilisation is not confined to Muslims. Australian readers will recognise many parallels with the rhetoric surrounding the federal intervention into indigenous communities and indeed, Hirsi Ali lists “Aboriginals” alongside Afghanis, Somalis, Arabs, and Native Americans as “non-Western groups [who] have to make the transition to
modernity”.

Her discussion of race in America is also likely to raise hackles: for example, her proclamation that “all black people” should read The Bell Curve, which argues that socioeconomic disparity in the US can be explained by genetic differences in intelligence.

Just as most Muslims will reject Hirsi Ali's portrayal of their religious community, many non-Muslims will take issue with her portrayal of the Enlightenment not to mention multiculturalism, feminism, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Hirsi Ali's journey is not through the clash of civilisations: she is experiencing the clash within civilisations, Islamic and Western.