Born in Somalia and raised a Muslim, but outraged by her religion's hostility towards women, Ayaan Hirsi Ali escaped an arranged marriage to a distant relative and fled to the Netherlands. In November, 2004, the violent murder on an Amsterdam street of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, with whom Hirsi Ali had written a film about Islam, changed her life. Threatened by the same group that killed Van Gogh, Hirsi Ali has refused to allow that to compromise her fierce criticism of the treatment of Muslim women.
In 'The Caged Virgin' Hirsi Ali issues a call to arms for the emancipation of women from a brutal religious and cultural oppression and from a brutal religious and cultural oppression and from an outdated cult of virginity. An international best-seller, revised and updated for Western readers, 'The Caged Virgin' is a compelling, courageous, and eye-opening work.
