Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now

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.

The State of Islam Today

Today, Hirsi Ali argues, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into:

• A minority of extremists
• A majority of observant but peaceable Muslims
• A few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own religion

However, she emphasizes that there is only one Islam, and 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.

A Call for a Muslim Reformation

For centuries, it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change. But Hirsi Ali believes 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, while seemingly a political failure, revealed a new readiness—especially among Muslim women—to think freely and to speak out.

Courageously challenging the jihadists, she identifies five key amendments to Islamic doctrine that Muslims must make to bring their religion out of the seventh century and into the twenty-first.

A Plea for Change

Hirsi Ali 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.

A Passionate Plea for Peaceful Change

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 and 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.