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Joe Rogan Experience #1613 - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a human rights activist and author of the new book "Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights."

Joe RoganhostAyaan Hirsi Aliguest
Jun 27, 20243h 17mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:24

    Media blackout and the shift from TV to podcasts

    1. JR

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays) Uh, so first of all, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it.

    2. AA

      Thank you.

    3. JR

      Thanks for being here.

    4. AA

      Yeah. Thank you so much.

    5. JR

      So, you were saying, um, that you're having a hard time getting people to talk to you.

    6. AA

      Uh, not exactly. I'm saying that, uh, when I had m- other books published, uh, my publisher would say, "Here's a list of, uh, places you are going to to promote the book." And it was quite striking that this year, it wasn't. Um, uh, I, I published my last book in 2015, it's called Heretic, e- and I was sent to, uh, you know, MSNBC, all of the mainstream media agencies, CNN, it was, it, it was all over the place. Th- they said, "We want you to go there." Uh, and, and I went there. And this year, uh, uh, I just have to do podcasts, it looks like.

    7. JR

      So, what has been the response from these, uh, mainstream sources? Whether it's M- MSNBC or CNN or any of these places, they just aren't interested?

  2. 1:24 – 2:41

    Cancel culture example: J.K. Rowling support and 'unsafe' rhetoric

    1. AA

      I don't know exactly what the communication is between them and HarperCollins, and HarperCollins is my publisher, uh, but we, I had one invitation from a magazine called Bust, B-U-S-T, it's for girls and women-

    2. JR

      Is that about breasts?

    3. AA

      Uh-

    4. JR

      Bust as in breasts? Is that what it means?

    5. AA

      Sorry, what does it mean? I, I don't know. Uh-

    6. JR

      Okay.

    7. AA

      ... I've been told it's a magazine for very young people and it's widely distributed so i- it's something that's popular and if you come out with a book about women, well, Bust would be a, a, a, a good place to go to. A- and then I was told, uh, so they had a journalist, uh, lined up and a photographer, it was going to be a big deal. And then we got, um, a story saying, "Sorry, it's not going to happen after all." Because Ayaan supported J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, um, when, in my view, J.K. Rowling came out in support of women. Um, but, uh, I'm told that I make the people who read that particular magazine unsafe, or there's a potential that I could make them unsafe.

  3. 2:41 – 14:45

    Gender language, trans rights, and defending objective truth

    1. JR

      Yeah, that's the phrase that gets used, "make them unsafe" or "make them feel unsafe" or "put them in danger." And I, first of all J.K. Rowling's statements, um, they were not nearly as controversial as people made them out to be, for whatever reason. Do you remember exactly what she said?

    2. AA

      She said a number of things. I think she challenged, um, people like she and myself being called people who menstruate.

    3. JR

      Yes.

    4. AA

      A- a- and sh- and she did do it, you know, with that British sense of humor, "So what are we called these days?" A- a- and she had w- woman spelled in different ways.

    5. JR

      Yeah.

    6. AA

      Uh, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it because I only saw the spelling. (laughs)

    7. JR

      I like when the put the X.

    8. AA

      Yes. Womxn.

    9. JR

      Wom-X-Nn. (laughs)

    10. AA

      Yeah, womxn or whatever. Aren't we even allowed to have a name?

    11. JR

      People who menstruate, I'm sure there used to be a word for these people, someone help me out.

    12. AA

      Yeah, womdn-

    13. JR

      Wombyn, wompund-

    14. AA

      (laughs)

    15. JR

      ... womud.

    16. AA

      Womud. (laughs)

    17. JR

      Opinion, creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate. Yeah.

    18. AA

      Um.

    19. JR

      That is the, yeah. Well, her along with Martina Navratilova, which is an- another person who got attacked by the woke mob, where you just go, "Wow, how far has this gone?" Where, a, a, a, a prominent lesbian woman who was one of the first out athletes ever, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, who says, "It's not fair for biological males to compete against women in, in these sports." And she gets labeled like the most vicious bigot alt-right person you could imagine. You know, like how far has this stuff gone?

    20. AA

      It's gone too far, and for women like me, it's gone way too far. I mean, uh, where I come from, most women are actually fighting for the most basic rights, rights to be safe, uh, not to be killed. Where I, where I come from, people, women, are subjected to femicide, they don't like you, they kill you. Uh, you violate their honor, they kill you, they take away your genitals. So there's a very basic, uh, set of rights that we don't even have that we are fighting for and so to get to a place where, in the advanced world, we are told, "You can't even be called by your own name." You know, we've got to figure, people who menstruate, when I heard that, I, I just, at first I thought it was a joke and I thought I could laugh it off. A- and then I came around and I thought, "This is not a laughing matter." Uh, we are going to have to stand up for at least what we've achieved in the West and hope to drag people in the developing world to come to where we are. But our name as woman, plural, women, is not going to be taken away. And I, I, I admire J.K. Rowling for taking that fight on.

    21. JR

      Well, I mean, she just made a joke, I mean, that's all it was, it was just a, like you said, in British humor, you know?

    22. AA

      Well humor in-

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. AA

      ... is gone now in, in these discussions. I want to make it very clear that I think that people who identify as trans, transgender, whatever they want to call themselves-I'm a proponent of them getting, you know, their dignity, their freedom, live as they please. And if there's anything I can do, anything you can do, surely we must do that. But it must not be, um, zero sum.

    25. JR

      At the expense of biological women.

    26. AA

      Yeah.

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. AA

      It can't be zero sum. It can't be that transgender people can only thrive and flourish only if they put down women.

    29. JR

      I don't even think they think of it that way. I think they just think that you're going to alienate the people that aren't biologically women, or ali- alienate the people, in this case, the J.K. Rowling saying things, people who are biologically women but who identify as male. It, it's, it's just gotten so complicated and I don't think that they think they're doing a bad thing. I think they think they're standing up for trans people. But by saying, you know, women who menstruate, for the vast majority of human beings, you're talking about women. Or excuse me, by saying people who menstruate, you're talking about women. And to deny that and say, "No, we're just gonna call it people who menstruate," for the very small amount of people who aren't biologically women, or don't think of themselves as biologically women, they think of themselves as trans, it's just, it's so strange that this is, this, this can get someone in trouble.

    30. AA

      Uh, it's very strange that it's can, it can get someone in trouble. Half the human population are female.

  4. 14:45 – 18:19

    Ayaan’s early life: Somalia, migration, and learning to question superstition

    1. JR

      Is this particularly offensive to you? Because I mean, it must be because of your background, and I... you briefly talked about that. But for people who don't know you, I, I would like you to explain your upbringing, where you came from, and how you had to literally risk your life to escape that.

    2. AA

      So, I was born in Somalia in 1969. And growing up in the 70s, my family went to Saudi Arabia, we went to Ethiopia, we went to Kenya. That's where I learned English. And then finally, in 1992, I ended up in the Netherlands. Uh, but if you ask me, in the context of science, to tell you about those years between, uh, you know, when I could walk and talk and understand what was going around me, until about 1992 when I left, uh, I come from territories where superstition is, it's the thing to do, you know. Um, my father left us in 1982. Uh, he left us in Kenya. He went back to Ethiopia to fight, uh, for what he felt was, um, his calling. Uh, democracy and a just system for the Somali people. But in Kenya, my mother, who was with my grandmother, her mother's mother, th- they felt abandoned in a strange country, and they didn't understand what was going on, and they had the three of us. The three of us, that is my older brother and my younger sister. And as children go, we were terrible. And I remember my mother going off to see witch doctors and ask them, "How, how, how do I, how do I deal with my daily life?" And those witch doctors would want one thing, which was whatever money she could give them, and if she couldn't give money, then it would be her goat or it would be something that they treasured. And in Kenya, I'm 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old, and all the time when she goes to these people, all I want to say to her is, "This is superstition. You're wasting your money. You're wasting your time. Leave them alone." My mother couldn't read or write, so I didn't know a way of expressing that. And then soon after, in 1985, I was 15 years old when members of the Muslim Brotherhood came along, and they finally convinced my mother and grandmother and all the women in our neighborhoods, "Do not reach out to the, to the superstitious. Don't go to the witch doctors. Come to God, the one and only. Read the Quran." They can't read the Quran, so they have to trust in what he tells them, the Hadith, Mohammed's way of doing things. And in a way, I felt... I felt grateful to the people who had shepherded the women of... the grown-up women of my life away from these superstitious people to the one and true and only God. It just happened to be another superstition, better organized, more slick.

    3. JR

      But at the time, you didn't think so?

    4. AA

      At the time, I didn't think so. Of course, at the time, I completely believed in it.

  5. 18:19 – 21:15

    Science vs. witch doctors: malaria, mosquitoes, and cause-and-effect thinking

    1. JR

      Why did you, uh, why did you know that the witch doctors were just superstitious and that it was nonsense-

    2. AA

      So-

    3. JR

      ... at such an early age?

    4. AA

      I'm in fourth grade. I had the fortune to actually go to school and be taught such things as science, so the science class, biology, cause and effect, the way things happen. One of the things that ravaged us was malaria. I got malaria. Everybody I know got malaria. Most people, uh, had families where people died. Uh, people got sick, really very sick, and then died. And the witch doctors were supposed to make these people well, and they were, uh, at any rate, supposed to stop them from dying. So going to the biology class, when we were told, uh, the, the, literally to look at an insect called a mosquito and dissect it and look at its behavior and how it seeks still water, lays its eggs, and what happens when that mosquito comes and, uh, injects its ... m- what do you call it? It's n- that little, um, piece of itself into you, draws your blood, and leaves something in you, which is the parasite. Once you understand that, and this is, I'm in fourth grade, fifth grade, once they teach that and they show how it works, you go home and you say, "Don't give any more money to the witch doctor. Actually, what we should do is go around to all the little puddles and pools of water around us. Let's drain those, dry those, keep our windows shut." Um, we had this big can of pesticide called Doom! (laughs) And I would say, "Let's spray those after we have done all of that, and we won't have malaria," because that's how it had... So, I found myself even at that age confronting grownups who were established, who were well-respected, and who were taking money from my poor mother because they would cure malaria. And I come in, e- I mean, with the most superficial level of education you can think, but objective e- education to say, "I actually get what's happening." And that, uh, I, I can't explain to an American audience the confrontation, the, just the boundaries that you're crossing a- a- and, and the people you're making angry, the toes you're stepping on w- when you, you know, you breeze into the house and say, "And now I know how it works."

  6. 21:15 – 41:26

    Forced marriage pressure: father’s return and the arranged match

    1. JR

      Mm-hmm. So, you, as a, as a, a young woman, were going to be forced into an arranged marriage, and this is what made you flee and, and head to Europe and, and, uh, wind up in Holland, correct?

    2. AA

      That's correct. Yeah.

    3. JR

      Can, can you explain how that, that was going down?

    4. AA

      So, this is 1992, and by then I'm 22 years old. So, we've been in Kenya from 1980 to, in my case, 1992. My father left us in 1982. And I was about 12 years old. And all this time, he was gone. He was gone for 10 years. And he comes back and he says, "It's time for you to get married."

    5. JR

      You hadn't seen him in 10 years?

    6. AA

      I hadn't seen him in 10 years.

    7. JR

      Had you communicated with him at all?

    8. AA

      He, he used to write letters and after a while the letters stopped. Uh, but the point in terms of, uh, these, uh, him taking the duty upon himself, it's his duty. So, the way it works in Somali culture, in, uh, many parts of the world, that culture is the father's responsible for who y- he's your guardian. He's your male guardian. He's responsible for who he's going to pass you onto. Um, that's finding you the right husband. But because he was gone from '82 to 1992, A, I was able to get on with age and get stronger and wiser, but also see some of my classmates and my friends who were forced into these arranged marriages, and my takeaway from looking at their lives was, "I don't want my life to unfold that way." Because it was really a replication of my own mother's life. And my mother's life was miserable. Um, every country we went to, my mom didn't speak the language. She didn't want to learn the language. But she felt betrayed. She felt out of depth. She was angry, she was full of resentment, and she took it all out on us. So, watching what was happening to these young women, I thought, "Surely life must offer more than that." And I, to this day, say I am grateful that my father left us when he did and came back when he did, because had he been with us earlier, he might have taken this initiative to force me into marriage at the age of 15, 16, 17. And at that age, I'm not sure I would've accomplished what I did at 22.

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AA

      And when he was gone, I missed him and I was miserable. I wanted him to come back and be with us. But then again, everything is about hindsight. In hindsight, I think, "What if he had married me off at 15 or 16 or 17 or 18?" Uh, you know, what kind of future would I have had?

    11. JR

      The environment that you lived in, you felt like women were second-class citizens, and you felt like they were the property of men, and they were at the beck and call of men, and they were, they weren't allowed to speak up, they weren't allowed to do many things that men were allowed to do, and they had to know their place.

    12. AA

      Yes.

    13. JR

      How frustrating was that?

    14. AA

      It was hugely frustrating. Um, also, uh, I'm not trying to defend where I come from (laughs) , but, uh, Joe, when I listen to you talk like that, what I want to say is, I know you've got an American, Western, um, attitude, so you're observing them through that prism, through the lens of, "Oh, these women are oppressed. Uh, they aren't allowed to do anything." A- a- and it's, it's objectively true. I, I wholeheartedly agree with you, and there are so many women in that, in those positions who agree with you. But, being on the inside, being raised within that culture, when you complain about the absolute obedience that you have to show to your father and other male relatives, um, uh, when you talk, when you object to the fact that you're not supposed to have a will of your own, or desires of your own, or things you want to do, the put-down was always that, "You are the rebel."

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. AA

      "You are sinning." Uh, "You are, uh, uh, you're breaking the rules and the laws and the norms and the customs, so you are wrong," and there would be conversations between my mother and her relatives on, "How can we bring her back into the straight path," if you will. Uh, the religious edicts, the tribal and clan edicts, and that's where things, when things get out of hand, because from one day, y- you are the insider. They try to mold you into the insider's beliefs and norms. You fail to do that, and if you're not careful, you will be made the outsider.

    17. JR

      Were you unique amongst your friends and the people in your family in your beliefs that this was wrong?

    18. AA

      No. I was not alone. Uh, there were girls and women around me whom I li- I, I really consider them to be so much smarter, stronger, uh, more informed, in many ways wiser, who I would look up to. They might be two or three years older than me, and I would say, "Well, I'm really having a hard time right now with my mother, and sticking to the rules. How do you do it? How have you done it?" And the answers I would get most often would be, "You're young. You will learn. There's no way out of here. So, what you need to do is show willpower, show strength, show commitment. Everybody goes through this. For some, it will be harder than others." But, the cons- the thing I was told constantly is, "It's as hard as you make it." In other words, "The sooner you submit, the sooner all these hardships go away, and then you're just one of us and you're doing what you are supposed to do, what you were created to do by God. You are taking your place." The more you say, "I'm not going to do this. I'm going to read this novel. It's not my turn to do the dishes, it's someone else's turn," you start fantasizing about where you think you could be, then you are stepping on so many toes at that point. And you know there's nobody who's gonna be on your side, so you can make the pain as long as you want it to be.

    19. JR

      What did you know about the rest of the world outside of the community that you lived in? Like, what did you know about the way women were treated in Europe or in the United States or, or anywhere else in the world?

    20. AA

      I knew what I got out of literature, out of reading books. Um, I knew what I got out of movies, out of music. Um, uh, I want you to, I don't know how old you are, but the 1980s, uh, uh, kids, um, in Nairobi, and kids my age, um, I'm in my teens, we're listening to Michael Jackson, we're doing breakdance, um, we're watching very trashy, what, what I've now come to call trashy movies.

    21. JR

      Like what trashy movies?

    22. AA

      Uh, gosh, uh, many trashy movies. Uh, you, uh, there were these movies at some points where the two guys would come at the cars, o- one from the other side, and then they would miss, um, what was that, uh-

    23. JR

      (laughs)

    24. AA

      ... game called? That's, that's a-

    25. JR

      Chicken.

    26. AA

      Chicken. Yeah.

    27. JR

      Yes.

    28. AA

      The game of chicken. That's the stuff we used to watch. Um, but-

    29. JR

      We, we think of trashy differently.

    30. AA

      (laughs) You think that was not-

  7. 41:26 – 46:37

    Escape route to Europe: documents, Germany transit, and the train to Amsterdam

    1. JR

      So how did you manage to get out?

    2. AA

      So he's a Canadian citizen with a job and he had to go back. He came for two things. He came to look for members of his family who were fleeing out of Somalia, again, 1991, 1992, beginning of the civil war in Somalia, people are fleeing and people all over the world, Somalis all over the world are coming to Kenya and other places to look for their family members. So that was his main objective. Second objective was to find a wife, which he then at that moment has and he goes back and my father says to him, "Don't worry about her immigration papers, I will take care of those." And my father reaches out to an- another extended member of our family living in Germany and he says that's, i- i- Mursal is going to help us with the paperwork and a few days later, well, that's February when he leaves, so it's now in July of 1992, the travel document issued by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees is ready and it has a visa on it and I'm to travel on that travel document that's in my name, so I can travel from Nairobi, Kenya, I go to Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and spend a weekend with-... my father's third wife and my half-sister for a couple of days. Then I fly from Addis Ababa to Dusseldorf, from Dis- or sorry, to, uh, Frankfurt, from Frankfurt to Dusseldorf. And I'm in Dusseldorf with, uh, my relatives. The uncle whom I was supposed to be with, who's supposed to take care of my papers, sent one of the people who work for him, who's another distant cousin. And he says, "I'm here to take care of you." Mm, of course, I'm thankful. And he takes me to a family, a Somali family of our clan, who live in Bonn. So, I spend one night in Dusseldorf, and then go to Bonn. And in the period that I'm in Bonn with that family, I get to know the 14-year-old son. It's July, so schools are closed, and I start to ask him about how I can go to the UK. I speak English. I grew up, m- from the age 10, I was in Kenya. Uh, m- I can speak English. I think I can find my way in England. He looks at my travel document and he says, "It doesn't give you access to the UK, but it gives you access to four other countries besides Germany. And that's the Netherlands, it's Belgium, it's Luxembourg, and I suppose it's France. And you choose." And he starts to to- talk to me about, we're talking about flights and, "How, how do you get there?" And he says, "You can take the train." And I persuade him to help me take the train the next day from Bonn to Amsterdam.

    3. JR

      Wow.

    4. AA

      That's July 24, 1992.

    5. JR

      You know no one in Amsterdam. Y- you don't speak Dutch. You take this train. And does he keep his mouth shut or does he tell anybody that you escaped on the train?

    6. AA

      I didn't tell him I was escaping.

    7. JR

      But he's still-

    8. AA

      I said I was going to visit an, another extended family, a woman who, when she fled Somali had stayed in our house, who was in the Netherlands. Her name is Fadumo. I had her telephone number. And I told him, "I'm just going to go visit those relatives of ours before I go off to Canada."

    9. JR

      Mm.

    10. AA

      And he helps me with the whole process.

    11. JR

      So, he doesn't know what your plan is?

    12. AA

      No, he's 14.

    13. JR

      Oh, okay.

    14. AA

      I don't tell him anything. I just want, I just want to know, how do you go from here to there? And the UK plan was frustrated, so now it, it becomes the Netherlands. And I call that woman, Fadumo, who's somewhere in the interior of the country in an asylum seeker center, because she had asked for asylum. And when I, I'm in the train she says, "What you do..." This is what you do. Don't come to me first. Go to that other cousin of ours who lives in a place called Volendam, Volendam. And so, when at 11:30 PM the train arrives, uh, she had instructed me how to get off the train, cross the street, go to where the buses are, take the bus to Volendam, and then, uh, call this cousin. And the cousin sent her husband, who by the way is white, uh, m- that cousin of mine married a white man, and had been shunned herself by the family. And so, this guy picks me up from Volendam, which is, it felt like an age. I mean, it, it felt like an eternity to go from Amsterdam to Volendam, but I think it was all of an hour and a half. And he picks me up and he takes me to her. And from there, she starts explaining to me how things work.

  8. 46:37 – 49:47

    First encounter with rule of law: asylum process and ‘tea or coffee’ shock

    1. JR

      How so? In what way?

    2. AA

      Well, if you ask for asylum... So far, as I said, "I just wanna get a job. I don't want to ask for asylum." And then she says, "You can't. Uh, you have a visa on your passport. And when that visa expires, you have to get out of the country. So, you ha- you have a very short window of time to make up your mind what you want to do." And she urged me to ask for asylum. And she said, "If you ask for asylum, then you get into the process. They forget about that document and it's all about what's happening to you." And when I do that, I go to Zwolle, the place she said would be the best place for me to ask for asylum. She says it's the best place, because that's where Fadumo, the other woman whom I'm on my way to, asked hers. Uh, and that's where, for the first time in my life, someone comes in uniform, what looks to me like police uniform or military uniform. And I think, "It's over." I think he's telling me, "You're going to get out of the country, you'll be shot. Something bad is going to happen to you." And he comes over and he says, "Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?" And I can't believe my senses, that there is a place in the world where people in uniform ask you if you want tea or coffee. Because where I came from, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, that's not what police do.

    3. JR

      So, was it a feeling of relief? Was it a feeling of just complete disbelief? Like...

    4. AA

      It was disbelief combined with awe. "Is it, is this all for real? Am I dreaming it?" And the guy actually arrives with the beverage.

    5. JR

      (laughs)

    6. AA

      I, I mean it (laughs) . Yeah. A- and so, it's things like that, small things like that, that I try and tell my European friends and my American friends is, you know, when you guys, you just say, "Rule of law, rule of law." It's not like some kind of poem by your grandfather. Th- there is-

    7. JR

      (laughs)

    8. AA

      ... it's real.And the person in uniform, who later on I discovered wasn't even a policeman, but he was in uniform, he was one of the security people at the center, he directs me to the reception area and he says, "Talk to these people." And I do and they say, "You, uh, there's something called a Strippankarte, it's like a bus card that they put in your hands and they say, "You have to take this bus and it'll take you to the next place. Little haste and they'll take care of your paperwork." And I do that, and then they send me somewhere else. And after criss-crossing the country in buses that the Dutch paid for, with the help of people in uniform who guide you from A to B, um, they grant me asylum. I become a refugee. And so I don't need that piece of paper that I came in with, which I had shred.

  9. 49:47 – 1:14:32

    Found and confronted: the ‘husband’ arrives, police intervention, and clan mediation

    1. JR

      Are you in any way concerned that someone from your th- this, whether it's your father's side or this man who you're supposed to be married to, that they're gonna come and get you?

    2. AA

      Yes.

    3. JR

      So how do you, how do you prevent that or what?

    4. AA

      There's no preventing it. The only, the way I think of it is I, when I go to the authorities and say, "We're going to put down your name and your date of birth," I say to them, instead of telling them my name is Ayan Hirsi Magan, I tell them my name is Ayan Hirsi Ali. I give to my date br- date of birth November 13, but instead of '69, I tell them '67. So with Ali and '67, I hope not to be found.

    5. JR

      Right.

    6. AA

      Which was naïve and stupid, um, because I, I, in the end, they do find me because in, the way it works with Somalis is no one is looking for your name or your date of birth. They are looking for this girl who looks like that, talks like that, and so on. And so it goes through the clan, uh, i- i- i- it's, it's the clan way of finding things. Again-

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. AA

      ... very difficult to explain.

    9. JR

      I understand.

    10. AA

      So-and-so knows so-and-so, and so-and-so knows so-and-so. And so they say, "Oh, yes. I think I've seen this girl somewhere. I think she was with Fadumo."

    11. JR

      How-

    12. AA

      "No, then she left Fadumo, then she went to Marin. Oh, yeah, I think that's where she is." So somehow they found me after four months.

    13. JR

      Four months?

    14. AA

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      So during that four months, what had you been doing?

    16. AA

      I was, uh, after the initial paperwork, I was sent to a place called Lundren, um, in the middle of the country, and there I was, for 11 months, but they asked you to, you know, you, you have th- th- ... They gave me a refugee status which is the best you can have in the world, meaning you are now part of this society. You can go to language class, you can work, you can do whatever you want. And th- and that's exactly what I start doing, I start learning the language and, but they don't have any housing for me yet. It's also the k- uh, uh, uh, place where the government arranges the housing for you. So you are, I was on a waiting list for an apartment. And I was there for four months when this guy arrives through that system of looking. He comes to my caravan. We lived in what is, Americans would call a trailer park, but we called it, we were told to call it caravans. It's homes with wheels underneath. And it's in the middle of the afternoon and I hear this knock. I open the door and there's the man I was married off to with three other men.

    17. JR

      Mm.

    18. AA

      And my system freezes and all I can do is say, "Come in." And they come in, and then take them to the little living space where the seating space is and have them sit down. And then I say, "Would you like tea or coffee?" And they go, "Tea." And I pick up the thermos can. Every caravan has one or two therm- thermos cans assigned to them, and I walk out and I walk all the way back to where the people who work at the asylum seeker center, the social workers, and I talk to one of the service providers, Sylvia, and I explain to her and I say, "I'm busted. I told you guys I ran away from civi- the civil war in Somalia. I didn't. I ran away from a forced marriage and the guy I was married to is in my caravan and he's with three other guys and basically I've come to say goodbye." And she says, "But you don't want to go with him." And I said, "No, I don't want to go with him. That's why I came here. It's why I was hiding all this time." And she says, "But you don't have to." And I tell her, "But, you know, y- y- your government is going to figure out I lied on my asylum. They're gonna figure out the whole story. They'll kick me out anyway." She says, "You don't have to." And I say, (sighs) "What do you mean?" And she says, "I can call the police now and if you don't, if you're 100% sure you don't want to go with him, you don't have to, you just talk to the policeman and you'll go with the policeman." And I say to her, "Yeah, call the policeman. Call the police." And when they arrive, they, they sit me down and they go through it. "Are you sure this is what you want to do?" And I keep nodding. "I am sure this is what I want to do." And they go back and talk to him and he gets very mad and that's one of the confrontations that I wish was somewhere on the record because he's coming from-... his culture and his truth, and the way he looks at the world, and he's telling them, "Who the hell do you think you are? Y- y- you can't, you can't interfere in this. This woman was given to me by her father." And they don't recognize that. And there's this confrontation which Sylvia keeps me out of and she says, "Whatever you, if you want to go with him, you can. But if you don't want to, we're not going to make it happen." And that's another, I mean, I- I- I would give that woman and that policeman anything. Anything.

    19. JR

      Imagine if that woman wasn't there when you went to talk to her. Imagine if there was no one there.

    20. AA

      Then I would have gone with him.

    21. JR

      (exhales)

    22. AA

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      So, he leaves?

    24. AA

      He leaves and he says, "I'm going to be back with lawyers."

    25. JR

      Lawyers?

    26. AA

      Yeah. And he comes back with lawyers. And Sylvia explains to me, "There is, he can't, he won't be able to find a lawyer who is going to help him take a- a- a human being over the age of 18 years with the argument, 'Her father gave her to me.' It just doesn't work like that."

    27. JR

      But you're still incredulous? You still think that it's possible that he's gonna drag you away?

    28. AA

      I am incredulous, but she's trying to literally get it in, to my skull it doesn't work like that. And it did help that I was there for four months, that I had in fact seen things working differently. S- so it wasn't... I think if it had happened on the day of my arrival, it would probably have been over. But having been there all these months and s- seeing so many things that were so different from what I was used to, I thought that was credible.

    29. JR

      Like, for example, what kind of things did you see that were so different?

    30. AA

      Well, all these women were working. And e- in... Y- you have to imagine an asylum seeker center back then was this big compound, like a military compound. It does have barbed wire around it, but where we were, all the homes are these trailers. And then at the entrance of the compound you have a little building where security people in uniform are sitting and then there are all these little houses. So, the people who take shifts in running the day-to-day, uh, of, of the center. And then there is, um, the- the- there's, uh- uh, there are the people who deal with healthcare, there are people who deal with a- or anything, food, anything that you, that, y- you know, putting 300, 400, 500 people in a compound, uh, all the logistics of that, the people who run that stuff are all in little houses there. And I mean little houses, sort of makeshifts, two, three-room houses where there are offices. So, I've seen it, I- I saw that those places were occupied by women who were very often telling the men what to do.

  10. 1:14:32 – 1:18:38

    Rebuilding from scratch: mastering Dutch, work, and university trajectory

    1. JR

      Wow. So, th- is this a fearful moment for you? Or did you, do you have, uh, anticipation about the future? Do you feel, do you feel positive about it? Like, how did you feel?

    2. AA

      I feel like I had to work my ass off to learn Dutch language. (laughs)

    3. JR

      (laughs)

    4. AA

      Yeah. And get a job that had nothing to do with the things that they were frightening me about.

    5. JR

      Hmm. Right, yeah.

    6. AA

      Yeah. Being sold into this and sold into that and i- m- you know, get on with it. And in two and a half years from that moment, so 1994, I was enrolled into a vocation school. 1995, September, I was enrolled into the University of Leiden. And that's, it was, uh, that I was literally terrified into it. (laughs)

    7. JR

      (laughs) Terrified into learning Dutch and joining a university?

    8. AA

      And going to university and making some... You said, I said, I was gonna make something of myself. Well, then you better do it. And the alternatives, you know, the cleaning jobs, the translation jobs, the, uh, stacking of... I, I worked in, uh, I, I don't know if we still have those. I think maybe now machines do that sort of thing. But the packing industry, uh, where all these, uh, items come at you in a factory and you just put them in a box very quickly as fast as you can.

    9. JR

      Hmm.

    10. AA

      And they pay you a minimum wage. And obviously, I didn't like that. And so, if you combine all of that, I thought, uh, uh, I, I've actually no choice but to get on with it.

    11. JR

      So, how quickly did you learn the language?

    12. AA

      In, uh, August of 1992, I didn't speak any Dutch. Zero. And in April, May, June, July of 1994, I was translating in Dutch.

    13. JR

      Wow.

    14. AA

      Yeah. So you can do... If you want it, you can do it.

    15. JR

      If you're worried about being sold away to slavery-

    16. AA

      (laughs)

    17. JR

      ... and prostitution, yeah. (laughs)

    18. AA

      Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

    19. JR

      Wow.

    20. AA

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      That's incredible.

    22. AA

      And I was embraced.

    23. JR

      That's an incredible story.

    24. AA

      So i- it's an incredible story in the se-... If you, I, I just wanna caution people, it wasn't just me doing this for me. There were also the friends I made, like Sylvia, the woman I told you about. All of those people who then were a witness to this story, uh, who were cheering for me, um, a- and helping. And I went out of a network and I went straight into a different network.

    25. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AA

      And those people really embraced me and I'm really grateful to them.

    27. JR

      And so, you enrolled in this university. What did you study?

    28. AA

      (laughs) I, I studied political science. My professor used to say, "Never call political science, political science because it's not a science."

    29. JR

      Hmm.

    30. AA

      So it's the school of government. It's politics.

  11. 1:18:38 – 1:21:31

    Post‑9/11 political rise in the Netherlands and escalating security threats

    1. JR

      Did you consider staying in Holland?

    2. AA

      Yes.

    3. JR

      What made you leave?

    4. AA

      The... By the time... So there's one gap, uh, we left out when we were talking about my life story, which was what happened after 9/11/2001, when I started to engage in the debate, uh, on what is it that caused it and, and then, and then that's how I end up in politics. And I get sworn in in 2003 with, and I'm heavily guarded by bodyguards, uh, who are heavily armed. And from...... the second half of maybe 2003, they're moving me from place to place.

    5. JR

      You get sworn in to what?

    6. AA

      Parliament.

    7. JR

      Parliament.

    8. AA

      Yeah. It's what we call congress in America. The law house.

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AA

      So, by the time that happens, I'm already surrounded by people carrying weapons. They're guards. They belong ... Th- they are from the government and, and they're protecting me. And this goes on for a while, but I get to a place where the threat is considered to be so intense that I had to be moved from address to address, from address to address.

    11. JR

      Is this because of your analysis of what happened September 11th 2001? Like, what is, what is the threat coming from?

    12. AA

      It's the analysis of what happened where I said, "Yes, those men acted because of their convictions, not because of any particular policy." Uh, I had unfortunately made it public that I wasn't a Muslim anymore. And f- the one ... The think-tank that I was working for, they had put me on integration. I had said, "If we want the integration to speed up, we have to emancipate Muslim women." And the three things taken together, had my family was already hostile to me, then you had the wider community and now Muslims of all nationalities and ethnicities and colors. I'd, I, I ... Yeah. I pissed off everyone, pretty much.

    13. JR

      So this is 2003, which is crazy. You're talking about 10 years after you arrived in Holland, roughly.

    14. AA

      Yeah. It started in 2002.

    15. JR

      Hmm.

    16. AA

      2002, I had to leave the Netherlands to come and hide in Santa Monica. And that, that was in October, and when I went back in November, that's when I accepted, uh, the idea of getting into parliament and started contending for parliament. Got into parliament, I still have all these men around me and the security parameters which I'm never allowed to talk about. Anybody who's been in it will never talk about it because you just don't.

  12. 1:21:31 – 1:25:00

    Citizenship controversy and departure to the U.S.: cabinet collapse and ongoing threats

    1. AA

      But it is, it's stifling. And it was then that I had decided, I'm going to do one term. And if the cabinet were to sit through its term, it would be four years. So it would be, it would begin in 2004 and end in 2007. But instead, the cabinet fell again, because of me, in 2006, and I left and I went to Washington DC.

    2. JR

      It fell because of you? What do you mean?

    3. AA

      Fell because of me, because the Minister for Immigration and Integration decided to take away my citizenship. If you're not a citizen, you can't be a member of parliament.

    4. JR

      W- why'd they do that?

    5. AA

      She did that because she said, "When you first asked for asylum, you lied about your name and your date of birth." And that was true, but I had told m- m- the seniors of my party that I had lied about that way back in 2002. So it was a well-known open information. It wasn't a secret. But there was a, a, a, a left-wing, uh, documentary company making ... That said they were going to make a profile of me. And they took ... Literally, I'm not kidding, they took a book, uh, full of essays and interviews that I had given, and based on that, they decided to trace my life back to Kenya, and then brought the information that was in the book, published by the Dutch publisher, where I say, my name is actually not Ayaan Hirsi Ali, it's Hirsi Magan. I wasn't born in '67, I was born in '69. And they make this this big news item, and the context was that particular Minister of Immigration and Integration was playing the I am tough card. Uh, "If you lie about your asylum, if you lie about your personality, we're gonna take you out." And people were already saying, even before she did it, "Well, Ayaan lied about her life. Why is she still in parliament?" So she came round and said, "Well, I'll take away her citizenship."

    6. JR

      Mm.

    7. AA

      And that was ridiculous, or at least, the rest of the party, the rest of politics thought that was ridiculous. So they started to demand, after she took away my citizenship, that she resign, and she refused to resign, and the small coalition party, D66, said, "As long as she's in the cabinet, we're not going to be in the coalition. So either she's out, or we are out." And she said, "I'm not going out." And they went out and the cabinet collapsed.

    8. JR

      Wow.

    9. AA

      And, and then I came here.

    10. JR

      Wow. So, when you came to America, were there still threats on your life?

    11. AA

      Yeah. Those threats are not going away.

    12. JR

      Is this a regular thing for you, uh, on a daily basis?

    13. AA

      I don't, I don't let it interfere with my daily life anymore. It's been too long. Uh, but it's just, you know, being on the most wanted of the Al-Qaeda list, things like that, aware of it, and so I do live with security. There are ... There are people around me who have guns and who protect me, but I don't ... On a personal level, I don't let that get under my skin the way ... It doesn't bother me the way it used to bother me.

  13. 1:25:00 – 1:39:23

    Islamism, ‘religion of peace,’ and Europe’s confrontation—France as case study

    1. JR

      And all this is just from leaving the religion and saying that you're an atheist now?

    2. AA

      A- and saying that s- the 9/11 perpetrators were driven by religion, and all the other p- perpetrators since then who invoked Islam. Look, if you go out there and you kill someone-... and you leave the reason why you do it for all of us to see, who are we to say, "Well, you got all confused. You actually meant something else." M- maybe it's your income status or it's, uh, y- you feel disenfranchised or you feel ... This is, this is what we've been doing for radical Islamist terror attacks is a lot of people are saying, "That's what they say. This guy who is shouting, 'Allah hu akbar,' this guy who is saying, 'I'm doing it because of my religion,' he's totally confused. That's not why he's doing it. He's doing it because people are poor." It's like, i- i- i- it just, it doesn't make sense.

    3. JR

      Why do you think that is? Like, uh, particularly in the United States, why do you think there's a reluctance to accept that there is an ideological aspect for a lot of these actions, that they're being driven by what they believe is the, the will of their religion?

    4. AA

      The reluctance, I am told, has to do with, um, we don't want the general American public, uh, becoming hostile to Muslims, immigrants, uh, foreigners. I'm told, "We don't want the general American public stigmatizing people who are innocent. They happen to be Muslim, uh, but they have no intentions of perpetrating terrorist attacks, and we don't want those people to get hurt. So we don't want to, um ... W- we don't want to say that this person was driven by what he says he is driven by." I get arguments like that. Uh, I've also, obviously, having been a politician, also had reasons of, well, if you say to them, "Yes, this individual is driven by Islam," i- i- then he gets to own what Islam is. And Islam is a contested concept. And because it's so cont- contested, we Americans and Westerners, we should give it to the peace-loving, good Muslims. They should own that concept. The radicals, the terrorists, they should not own. W- we should declare and say, "They are unbelievers." I mean, you can take that reasoning up to a point. Um, but in this case, uh, I'm still of the opinion that you can't do that, because Islam is a set of ... It's a thesis. It's, it's a set of beliefs. It has, uh, i- i- i- it's, it's, it's, uh, it has an internal logic to it. And if you say it just means what I want it to mean and it's a good thing and I'm only gonna give it to the good Muslims, uh, y- you're approaching it as a thing, and it's n- it's not. It's a, it's an idea. It's an ideology. And what the people we think of as bad are saying is, "I'm really living up to the requirements of my religion." If you don't understand that logic, you will never be able to fight, uh, Islamist terrorism, political Islam. You won't be able to fight it because then you don't understand it. You can't fight an ide- ideology by pretending it doesn't exist or it's a good thing.

    5. JR

      What do you say to the people that talk about all of the Muslims that have no desire to commit terrorist acts, live their life peacefully, and just abide by the tenets of the religion, and they call ... Th- they believe that Islam is a religion of peace?

    6. AA

      Yeah. I see that. Uh, I agree with them. That's the case. M- I would say most people who identify as Muslim just want to lead, m- m- peaceful lives, go about their own business, and they don't want to harm anyone. Uh, that's absolutely true. And so, n- not this book but the previous book, uh-

    7. JR

      Heretic.

    8. AA

      ... Heretic, uh, m- my analysis is there is one Islam, but there are three sets of Muslims. There's one Islam and that's the Islam that's in the Quran, the Islam that was founded by the Prophet Muhammad. But then the Prophet Muhammad had two careers, one in Mecca and one in Medina. When he first established the religion in Mecca, he went around the city asking people to give up their gods and come to his one god, and he did it by asking. He did it by persuading, talking to people, and preaching charity and goodness. And then, 10 years later, he moves to Medina and he establis- he establishes a militia, and then things change. He starts to give people a choice. "You either come to my one god and you give up your gods, or you die by the sword." And any time from Medina, the religion becomes incredibly successful, and he goes beyond Arabia into the rest of the world. And so, if you're a Muslim in the 21st century and there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, if you're a Muslim and you say, "I'm a peace-loving Muslim, I don't want to impose my religion on anyone else," you're invoking Muhammad in Medina. If you say, "Well, I think jihad means that we must take our religion seriously and convert other people, and if they refuse to convert, then we'll use violence," then you're invoking Muhammad in Medina.

    9. JR

      You said Medina twice. You said Medina the first time as well.

    10. AA

      Okay. I'm sorry.

    11. JR

      D- the fir- the peaceful Mohammed is not Medina, it is-

    12. AA

      I- the peaceful Muhammed is Mecca.

    13. JR

      Mecca.

    14. AA

      So, Mecca is where he first came out. And so, if he says... if, if a Muslim today says, "Unto you your religion, unto me mine, I'm tolerant," all of that, you are invoking Mecca. If you're invoking jihad, you know, the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, uh, and some who are sometimes violent but not all the time, the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations and movements, they're invoking Muhammed in Medina. Because in Medina, Muhammed made it very clear, you spread the religion by word of mouth, by example, but also by the sword, by violence. That's Medina Islam. So, I think it would be more accurate to say there's just one Islam at this point that's unreformed and there's a third group that I describe in Heretic, which is, uh, th- the people like Maajid Nawaz, who are actually trying to bring about a different Islam, to shed Medina, bring some stuff out of Mecca, adapt it to our times. They want to modify stuff. They want to reform. So, th- there is that group too who are actively trying to change things for the better, but they're a minority. I think the majority are Mecca Muslims, the people who are just Muslim, they go about their daily business, they don't wanna harm anyone. But then they have to deal with these jihadists who challenge them and who say to them, "You can't possibly be a true Muslim if you only adhere to Mecca, because the prophet said what happened in Medina abrogates or voids what happened in Mecca."

    15. JR

      What is stopping, particularly, uh, people from the left, including intellectuals, from recognizing the differences, that there are differences in people that follow the, the peaceful version of the religion and then people that follow the m- the more radical version of the religion that wants to convert people? Like, what, what, what is stopping them from recognizing that this is an issue? Because it's, it's almost like an agreed upon reluctance to discuss it, to acknowledge it, and to automatically classify any discussion of it-

    16. AA

      Mm-hmm.

    17. JR

      ... as Islamophobic. And that I've, I've seen this labeled, this l- this label put on you, that you are Islamophobic.

    18. AA

      Yeah. Uh, so the term Islamophobia is obviously very much a Western term. It's an opportunity, opportunistic term. Um, the West has gone woke and they, uh, um, uh, uh, they feel, um, uh, an intense regret for some of the things that were done by their ancestors. And so, you have names like homophobia, uh, sexism, and so on. And Islamophobia is, I would say, a term that is put right in there to exploit that situation. It's, it's, uh... in my... the way I see it is it's an, it's an artificial term. But let's set that aside, and let's see why it is that Western leaders go along with the assertion that Islam is a religion of peace, there's nothing to see here, it's just a small group of people who, uh, have lost their way, and they would have been violent anyway, um, but in, in general, Islam is a religion of peace. Number one, a lot of leaders, uh, uh, contemporary Western leaders, they don't know much about religion, even their own, and they don't want to. I mean, you could find out. You could be ignorant of something, pick up a few books and just find out. I think, number two, there is a sense that because the West is really powerful where it matters, economically powerful, more powerful than any Islamic country, militarily more powerful, diplomatically more powerful, uh, there is almost that parent-child relationship where it is, "We'll just, um, let them come along. They'll grow up. They'll come to our way of seeing things. Uh, if they want to believe that Islam is a religion of peace, let's, let's say it along... let's come... let's do it along with them." With some people, I think that is the case. And then along came ISIS, and they saw that you couldn't do that, and you, you are now dealing with people who truly believe. And I think it was a matter of time before people in Washington and Berlin and London and so on thought, "Wait a second. It's not only that they believe it, it is in the Quran, it's in the Hadith, it's in the history of Islam. We better do something about that." That's when you start to see a shift in how, uh, the confrontation or the, the clash of values is approached. The latest example, if you will let me, is the president of France. In France, for the last 20, 30, 40 years, they were saying, "There's nothing to see here. Islam has evolved. It's just like Christianity. It's either a religion of peace or it's irrelevant altogether. All religions are going to go away."... uh, uh, eh, eh, we are, we are, we're now living in the post-religion age. In 2021, there is a law right now that has gone through the Law House of France and it is being debated in the Senate, where they're talking about, in, if that law gets passed, then Muslims who are accused of trying to separate their communities from the rest of France along religious lines are going to be stopped by that law. There'll be no more homeschooling. They will be told, uh, y- y- the values of the republic prevail. Anywhere there is a clash between Islamic values and values of the republic, the values of the republic prevail. And he is saying, if that law passes, that's all going to be enforced. Think about that.

Episode duration: 3:17:07

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