Infidel: African Political Systems in the 70s

I'm doing a second reading of Infidel, Hirsi Ali's memoir.

Largely due to her father's involvement in the resistance against the Somali leader Siad Barré, Hirsi Ali was moved from country to country. She was born in Somalia, lived in Mecca and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and then briefly in Ethiopia before moving to Kenya.

Right before she discusses the move to Kenya, she offers this gem of a reflection on the political systems she had lived under:

That is how, by the time I turned ten, I had lived through three different political systems, all of them failures. The police state in Mogadishu rationed people into hunger and bombed them into obedience. Islamic law in Saudi Arabia treated half its citizens like animals, with no rights or recourse, disposing of women without regard. And the old Somali rule of the clan, which saved you when you needed refuge, so easily broke down into suspicion, conspiracy, and revenge. (p.60)

No wonder she can not subscribe to the PC relativist notion that all civilizations and political systems are equal.