Muslims must get their "act together" and reform Islam to avoid a bloody future, Somali author Ayaan Hirsi Ali says. Ali, 37, who has renounced her Islamic faith and considers herself an atheist, was speaking in Sydney as part of the Writers Festival.
She says Muslims must examine their religion and "review the example of the prophet Muhammad. Muslims are not used to criticising Islam, they are not used to criticising the prophet Muhammad", she told a sell-out audience at the Sydney Theatre. "That's what this century has opened up with September 11 - it was an attack on the West but it was also an attack on Islam itself," she said. "Because if we who were born into Islam do not get our act together and reform our faith, our future might be that we tend to clash even more. It will only get more bloody.
"If Islam is reformed I think the people who will gain the most are women. As a woman after I left the circumstances where the rule was Islam, I gained my personal freedom. Reforming Islam, changing it from what it is now, will benefit women and as women benefit from it they will become educated, become owners of their own bodies and their own destinies."
But, she said mothers must also take responsibility for the way they raise boys, to teach them to have respect for women. "As woman we make men, we bear the boys. It's really important how you bring them up. If we encourage the mentality that they are wild dogs and that we are raw meat, that's how they will behave." 
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