The Caged Virgin

The Caged Virgin: A Muslim Woman's Cry for Reason, also published as The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, is a 2004 book by the former Dutch parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The Caged Virgin was first published in English in 2006. Publication history The book was first published in Dutch as ("The Virgin's Cage" or "The Cage of Virgins") in August 2004 as a collection of seven essays and one interview with Irshad Manji, totalling 79 pages. Like its predecessor De zoontjesfabriek (December 2002), a Dutch-language collection of seven essays and one interview for a total of 95 pages, it focused on criticism of the position and role of women in Islam. Around September 2004, Finnish publishing house Otava was one of the first to approach Hirsi Ali with plans to translate her writings. Hirsi Ali had been under the constant protection of an armed security detail ever since September 2002 after receiving death threats for months for her earliest writings (that would later be bundled in ), television appearances and renouncing Islam. Shortly after she published , the 11-minute shortfilm Submission, that she produced together with film director Theo van Gogh, was first screened on Dutch television on 29 August 2004. It presented four fictional episodes involving violence against women and Quranic verses that could be used to justify it. After Muslim extremist Mohammed Bouyeri shot and stabbed Van Gogh to death in Amsterdam on 4 November 2004, leaving a five-page note with a death threat to Hirsi Ali as well, she had to go in hiding for two months. Meanwhile, the shock of the attack raised international interest in her writings. In March 2005, Hirsi Ali faced a lawsuit over a claim made by four Dutch Muslim men that the contained "blasphemous and offensive" statements, but the suit was rejected. A compilation of and was translated to German and published in May 2005 under the title ("I accuse. Plea for the Liberation of Muslim Women"), which became a bestseller in Germany, defeating new pope Joseph Ratzinger's biography. In Italy, a similar compilation and the scenario of Submission were released by Einaudi on 10 April 2005 under the name ("Not Submissive. Against Segregation in Islamic Society"), which also became a bestseller. By June 2015, it was also translated into French (, also became a bestseller in France), Turkish and Finnish.