Analysis Of 'Enlightenment' By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

She speaks of the “Enlightenment” with the zeal of the convert. Her ideal is a society in which every person reflects seriously on her conduct and is free to make her own decisions. But this creates problems where people are free, but do not reflect seriously; in any case, since it is clear that limits on behaviour have to be placed somewhere, antecedent to many individual decisions, the “Enlightenment” ideal that she espouses is rather too simple as an answer to the problems of human existence.Still, if anyone has the right to speak from experience about the benefits brought by the “Enlightenment”, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has, because she has lived in both pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment societies. She does so with both modesty and great

Such rapid and intense social change produces anxieties in the societies and communities experiencing this change, anxieties which feminist scholars have shown to result in greater regulation of women. This was just as true of Europe during the period of capitalist modernization in the 18th and 19th centuries, and of colonized and decolonizing societies in the mid-20th century.

Issues related to women and gender in contemporary Muslim societies must be understood within the same framework. What passes for the victimization of women by 'Islam' is all-too-often part and parcel of a more global phenomenon. An increase in the moral and sexual regulation of women by communities and kin-networks as a response to political, social and cultural anxieties; such anxieties have intensified under economic and cultural globalization. The regulation of women and their sexuality is, after all, a common feature of all patriarchal societies, traditional or modern, and certainly not simply Muslim

through these women, she presents before us diverse pictures of women and examine various evil systems like veil system, barri system and polygamy in our society. It does not only exist in Islamic culture, but also in every culture. Her grandmother was a traditional woman. She followed each and every rule of her religion. She was married at a very early age. She was the second wife of her husband Artan. Here, we see the element of polygamy. Men can bear multiple wives. But women are not allowed to do so. Artan wanted a boy child because he had only one girl child from his first wife. That’s why he married Hirsi Ali’s grandmother