Joe Rogan Experience #1613 - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Joe Rogan 0:00 (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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 0:17 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 0:17 Thanks for being here.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 0:18 Yeah. Thank you so much.

Joe Rogan 0:19 So, you were saying, um, that you're having a hard time getting people to talk to you.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 0:27 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.

Joe Rogan 1:14 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:24 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-

Joe Rogan 1:39 Is that about breasts?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:40 Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:40 Bust as in breasts? Is that what it means?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:44 Sorry, what does it mean? I, I don't know. Uh-

Joe Rogan 1:46 Okay.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:47 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 2:41 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:03 She said a number of things. I think she challenged, um, people like she and myself being called people who menstruate.

Joe Rogan 3:12 Yes.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:13 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.

Joe Rogan 3:26 Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:26 Uh, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it because I only saw the spelling. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:30 I like when the put the X.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:32 Yes. Womxn.

Joe Rogan 3:33 Wom-X-Nn. (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:34 Yeah, womxn or whatever. Aren't we even allowed to have a name?

Joe Rogan 3:37 People who menstruate, I'm sure there used to be a word for these people, someone help me out.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:42 Yeah, womdn-

Joe Rogan 3:42 Wombyn, wompund-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:43 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:44 ... womud.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:44 Womud. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:45 Opinion, creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate. Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 3:50 Um.

Joe Rogan 3:50 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 4:25 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.

Joe Rogan 5:44 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 5:52 Well humor in-

Joe Rogan 5:53 Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 5:53 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 6:30 At the expense of biological women.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 6:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:31 Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 6:31 It can't be zero sum. It can't be that transgender people can only thrive and flourish only if they put down women.

Joe Rogan 6:41 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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 7:44 Uh, it's very strange that it's can, it can get someone in trouble. Half the human population are female.

Joe Rogan 7:51 Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 7:52 Women, girls. So, is, there is I think a way of, uh, lifting up people who are transgender to, um, come out as they are and be who they are and feel comfortable in their skins, and for the rest of us to accept that without diminishing women. Um, but the way to do it for us as women, is to insist, yes, we are women. I'm not going to be called, uh, all the names that they try to call me, uh, radical, terrible, uh, they have all sorts of labels that they've produced these days. But, uh, I'm not going to accept that. I'm not going to accept being diminished or diminishing my sort. But at the same time say, "You guys, you can move forward." Maybe in some ways, we could actually work together. Uh, but the way to do that is to have parameters around which you can work. There has to be common truth, there has to be objective truth. Uh, I am one of the people who, let them persuade me, but right now I think there are just two genders, male and female. And from a biological perspective, that's all we have. Should we talk about that? Yes. If there are people who feel that they're born in the wrong body and that they want to transition and they're grown-ups, please, by all means, go ahead and do that. But I think it is dangerous to adapt fact and reality to the emotions and, um, and ideologies of the day. It just won't work. It's going to cause even more chaos, even more, uh, confrontations and conflict. And, uh, the, the only way to get us out of this is to have honest, proper conversations informed by science, informed by objectivity. There is an objective truth. There is something that is real and factual.

Joe Rogan 10:18 There's a, a conformity that is, uh, being enforced with, uh, this kind of language, and that's part of what this, this, what we're dealing with in our current woke dilemma, is that people are being enforced to behave and, and communicate in a way that fits in with this ideology, despite whether or not it's, um, wh- whether or not it's backed by biological science. And that, you know, like if someone has had, uh, sex with a woman and, and fathered children, multiple children, and then decides that they are now a woman themselves-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 10:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 11:00 ... people will say, "Well, they've always been a woman." Well, that doesn't even make sense. Like, it, maybe they felt they should have been a woman, maybe they feel like they're in the wrong body, but you can't say they've always been a woman. But that is the conformity, that's the, this is the, the, the, when you're applying the rules of the ideology, that's what you're supposed to say, "She's always been a woman." And you're like, "Okay, well, we're in a weird place." So how did she get a woman pregnant? Like, what kind of magic are we talking about? Like, now we're not talking about science anymore, now we're not talking about biology.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 11:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:38 We're forcing b- we're forcing our ideolo- this ideology is forcing biological science to conform to it, rather than just looking at it in terms of this, uh, these objective realities.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 11:52 That's right. And so, it is up to the wider population to object to that. Um, you just mentioned somebody who fathered children. In order to have an objective analysis of that, w- we look at paternity issues. If you, if a woman claims that you fathered her child and you didn't-... there's a way of, through science, we have a way of finding out whether you're the father or not. And so, if, i- i- i- there is universal agreement on what that test yields, that's science. Before you got me into your studio, you had me get tested for COVID, as you did for others. We, that's objective truth. W- we have to get tested so that you and I both feel safe and we're here. So, we can't... when it comes to science, we can't pick and choose and say, you know, "When it comes to certain things that suit me, I agree to objective truth and science." But then when there are other things that don't suit me, w- when I want to pretend that there are 10 or 12 or 1,400 gender, uh, differences, w- in that case, science is racist, i- and science is wrong, and there is no science. It's all about subjectivity. And I think it's for the wider population to come out and say, "W- we can't pick and choose." I- i- i- a- a- and, and, and I would say, in many ways, that's the basis of science, is that it's not in anyone's favor. Uh, science doesn't understand ideology. Uh, this virus, uh, whatever it is, the Wuhan virus, I don't care what name you give it, but whether it infects you or it infects me, it doesn't care. And the scientists who are after trying to figure out what is it and then go from there once you understand, once you have a name for it, and you understand what the problem is, then you start trying to figure out then how to deal with it. That's what science offers us. A- and I think it is very, very important that we come out as a nation, as a people, uh, any- anyone who, who values objective truth and science to say, "That's something I'm not willing to let go." I am compassionate. I, I feel a lot of empathy for people who want to transition from one gender to the other, who think that they are born in the wrong body, a- and wants to do everything they can to get in a body that makes them comfortable and happy, but not at the cost of science.

Joe Rogan 14:45 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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 15:07 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.

Joe Rogan 18:12 But at the time, you didn't think so?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 18:14 At the time, I didn't think so. Of course, at the time, I completely believed in it.

Joe Rogan 18:19 Why did you, uh, why did you know that the witch doctors were just superstitious and that it was nonsense-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 18:29 So-

Joe Rogan 18:30 ... at such an early age?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 18:32 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."

Joe Rogan 21:15 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 21:34 That's correct. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:35 Can, can you explain how that, that was going down?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 21:38 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."

Joe Rogan 22:02 You hadn't seen him in 10 years?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 22:04 I hadn't seen him in 10 years.

Joe Rogan 22:06 Had you communicated with him at all?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 22:08 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.

Joe Rogan 23:58 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 24:01 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?

Joe Rogan 24:25 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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 24:49 Yes.

Joe Rogan 24:50 How frustrating was that?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 24:52 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."

Joe Rogan 26:04 Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 26:04 "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.

Joe Rogan 26:50 Were you unique amongst your friends and the people in your family in your beliefs that this was wrong?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 26:58 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.

Joe Rogan 28:36 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 28:49 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.

Joe Rogan 29:21 Like what trashy movies?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 29:22 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-

Joe Rogan 29:36 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 29:36 ... game called? That's, that's a-

Joe Rogan 29:38 Chicken.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 29:38 Chicken. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:38 Yes.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 29:38 The game of chicken. That's the stuff we used to watch. Um, but-

Joe Rogan 29:42 We, we think of trashy differently.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 29:45 (laughs) You think that was not-

Joe Rogan 29:47 No, it was terrible, for sure.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 29:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:48 But j- we, I don't think we would call it trashy. I think trashy, Jamie, you would think trashy would be, like, sexual? Like, what would trashy be? I guess, yeah. Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 29:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:58 Trashy would be like, uh, I guess, it's a weird phrase. Trashy's a weird phrase. Like, you say trashy to people, they know it's not good.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 30:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:07 But they're like, "What does that mean?"

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 30:08 Well, uh, it's a kind of-

Joe Rogan 30:10 They're stupid movies.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 30:10 It's stupid movies. You, you-

Joe Rogan 30:12 Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 30:12 ... you go to a lot of trouble to get out of the house.

Joe Rogan 30:16 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 30:17 And lay down this whole, you know, "This friend is gonna look, be on the lookout for you. This person is gonna tell a lie on your behalf. We're gonna tell my mom she went to the mosque. Everybody's gonna stick to that story." And then you go to the movies and you watch A Fish Called Wanda.

Joe Rogan 30:34 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 30:36 (laughs) You know, so you-

Joe Rogan 30:39 What did it seem like to you to watch a movie like that though? To see this completely different world in these films?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 30:45 We were m- I, I mean, my sister and I and all the young women, we were sitting in a cinema and we were mesmerized. Absolutely mesmerized. We just couldn't believe that, uh, these were actual human beings who lived like that. Um, again, talking of trashy, we read John Collins, we read Robert Ludlum, we read all of those spy stuff, so i- i- i- if you're in a bo- you're really in a book into any of these thrillers, you imagine yourself to be the hero of the book. And then, uh, after you've solved one of the most complex mysteries, confrontations between the Soviets and the Americans, you close the book and you look around you and everything says, "You need to do these dishes before your mom comes here and whacks you on the head." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:41 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 31:42 So there's this, there's the reality on the ground, which is not what I would call, um, uh, uh, I'm just trying to see how I ... 'Cause I don't want to, uh, to diminish that, but I also want to explain to an American audience, i- i- it's not easy, girls and guys. And for us, reading that type of literature, going to these movies, listening to Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and doing break dance, those were the escapes. Those were our drugs.

Joe Rogan 32:17 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 32:17 We didn't have ... Boys, because boys could get away and go find, hide somewhere. I'm sure they were exposed to some sort of drug. Uh, but as a girl in my teenage years, I don't remember anything that was mind altering except that stuff. And you know, uh, e- the neighbors, uh, a girlfriend, a best friend, uh, they would have TV and then later on the video, the VHS stuff came along, and you could come and watch movies in their house. And those were the escapes, the escapades. And as you do that, you're telling your mother, "You know what, mum? I'm heading to the mosque." But you're not heading to the mosque. You're watching this, this stuff. A- and why do I call trash, rubbish? I don't know what ...

Joe Rogan 33:11 Well, they're definitely rubbish.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 33:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:13 Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 33:14 But in what way have they helped me? Um, I don't know. (laughs) I've actually forgotten most of the stories. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:22 Was there any that particularly stood out? I mean, a- was, I mean, obviously the just, the cultural differences were probably very-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 33:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:29 ... mesmerizing, but were there ... Any of the movies, s- did they, they reach out to you and give you hope that there was something better somewhere else?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 33:42 Um, sometimes. Yeah. There were some really ... I- if movies were made for teenagers, I'm not sure they gave me that sense. But the, you know, people in the military, dying for something, that could leave you with a sense of, "Yeah, this, this, this stuff worth fighting for." Um, um, here I'm like 15 or 16 years old. I'm a teenager in Kenya. We have death all around us. We have civil wars all around us. We have refugees all around us. So w- to go to a screen would be to just escape that stuff. Um, I read Nancy Drew's-

Joe Rogan 34:30 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 34:30 ... and you know, be on a journey with her trying to figure out who the bad guys are, uh, it was fun, it was interesting, it plays on your intelligence because you're trying to help her solve the mystery. Uh, but then you are her, and so you imagine a world where women can go around solving mysteries.

Joe Rogan 34:52 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 34:53 Uh, i- i- there's stuff like that. But we always understood, like I said, as soon as that thing goes off, you go back straight to your reality.

Joe Rogan 35:05 And so your father returns. You're 22. How long had he returned for before he was trying to force you into an arranged marriage?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 35:15 So he left in '82 and come, came back in 1992. Uh, I would say a decade, 10 years.

Joe Rogan 35:21 Right.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 35:22 And when he comes back, he, i- his attitude is taking it up from where he left it off.

Joe Rogan 35:31 So immediately.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 35:32 Immediately. But my mom doesn't respond that way to him. She responds to him, "You left and I don't want you back." He is a man with a name, he has a reputation, he's obviously never been told, um, at least by a wife, uh, you know, "I don't want to see you again. I don't want to have you around me." And so the three of us, again, my brother's a year and a half older, is one year older than me, my sister's a year and a half younger than me. So us three siblings, we're going, "Okay, are you with dad or are you with mom?"

Joe Rogan 36:10 Oh, wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 36:10 "Or are you in between?" And I'm in between. I'm also the in-between child. Um, I can see things from mom's position, but you know what? I love dad. I want him to come back and pick things up from where he left off. And my sister's already gone into the humph of, "I don't wanna speak to him. He left us. Who the hell does he think he is?" And my brother just disappears. He goes with his Kenyan friends. How do I explain Kenyan friends? We are a Somali minority. We just hang out with other Somalis.... my brother would hang out with Kenyans and my mother had a derogatory name for Kenyans and so she would say he went to, quote-unquote, the de- the derogatory name that she had for Kenyans. So that went on for a while and at some point my mother made it very clear to my father, um, he just wasn't welcome. W- w- we did the routine things you're supposed to do when he woke up early in the morning, he got us, he told us, "It's time to pray." We got up, we prayed. I started cooking breakfast, he ate of that breakfast, but she put him i- in a teeny tiny closet a- and h- he wasn't allowed to come into the bedroom, so that was all very awkward and weird. And at that time there was a civil war in Somalia, so it wasn't just us, the family. There were lots of people staying in our house who could all feel the vibes of what's going on, there was a lot of whispering and at some point my father said, "I think I'm going to leave." To which my sister said, "Oh, what's new?" And he left, he found a, a place about like a 30 minutes drive with no traffic, maybe an hour and a half with traffic with his first wife, he remarried his first wife, who treated him differently. And so, that is the set up. Day in day out, you know, we go and visit him, he comes and visits us sometimes and then one day he comes and he says, "I've been to the mosque and with Allah's blessing I think I found you the right man." And that's, it's just like that. It's-

Joe Rogan 38:30 You don't meet this man?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 38:32 He says, "You'll meet him." E- e- exactly so like, "When am I going to meet this man?" And he says, "You will meet him. I will bring him over." And he brings him over and I meet him. And there's the get to know one another piece of, of the deal where my mother is sitting o- on the end, it's a, it's a room, I don't want to call it a sitting room, I think ideally it was intended to be a sitting room but at that point there are 10 or 12 refugees sleeping there so there are mattresses on the ground and there's a bed and she's sitting on the edge of that bed and there are two chairs pulled up and my father's sitting on one end, e- e- the man I'm supposed to be married to is sitting on the other end. Uh, we are supposed to start to get to know one another with my parents there and I ask him about, and my sister was there too, ask him about what novels he reads and what movies he watches and what games he likes to play. And all his answers, uh, uh and please forgive me, I'm 22 at the time, but in my head I'm using, yeah, that's, that's you know (laughs) , shit. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 39:50 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 39:50 I, I'm not going to go with this, I'm not going anywhere with this man.

Joe Rogan 39:54 He likes terrible movies and bad books?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 39:56 He didn't know of any movies. We thought, "How could you be in Canada all this time and not speak..." Like we lived in Kenya, I spoke better English than he did but he's a Canadian citizen.

Joe Rogan 40:09 Hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 40:09 And so, my sister and I are like, it's really mean and what we were doing was not nice, but w- I'm coming to the conclusion no, I don't want to marry you and, uh, my father is, I've just found you the perfect human being and so...

Joe Rogan 40:27 By what metric did he decide this man was a perfect human being? Because he was religious?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 40:32 Uh, he's a member of our extended family, he was going to, he had a job, he was going to materially support me and my father never ever had to worry about, uh, any kind of mistreatment, physical mistreatment, uh, because he's a member of the extended family. And the guy said to me, Osman is his name, he said to me, um, "E- e- y- you look wonderful, y- you know, you're properly covered up." I was wearing the head scarf and long sleeves. He said, "You know, your attire is modest a- and uh, you are going to have six boys for me, 'cause I only want to have sons."

Joe Rogan 41:15 Oof.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 41:17 This is 1992 and my brain is going (whistles) e-

Joe Rogan 41:21 I gotta get outta here.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 41:22 I need to get out of here. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 41:26 So how did you manage to get out?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 41:28 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.

Joe Rogan 44:30 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 44:30 That's July 24, 1992.

Joe Rogan 44:34 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 44:46 I didn't tell him I was escaping.

Joe Rogan 44:48 But he's still-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 44:48 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."

Joe Rogan 45:08 Mm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 45:09 And he helps me with the whole process.

Joe Rogan 45:11 So, he doesn't know what your plan is?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 45:13 No, he's 14.

Joe Rogan 45:14 Oh, okay.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 45:15 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.

Joe Rogan 46:37 How so? In what way?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 46:41 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.

Joe Rogan 48:10 So, was it a feeling of relief? Was it a feeling of just complete disbelief? Like...

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 48:16 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.

Joe Rogan 48:30 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 48:30 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-

Joe Rogan 48:48 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 48:48 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 49:47 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 50:03 Yes.

Joe Rogan 50:04 So how do you, how do you prevent that or what?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 50:07 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.

Joe Rogan 50:35 Right.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 50:36 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-

Joe Rogan 51:07 Yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 51:07 ... very difficult to explain.

Joe Rogan 51:09 I understand.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 51:10 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."

Joe Rogan 51:17 How-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 51:17 "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.

Joe Rogan 51:23 Four months?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 51:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:24 So during that four months, what had you been doing?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 51:26 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.

Joe Rogan 52:42 Mm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 52:44 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.

Joe Rogan 55:39 Imagine if that woman wasn't there when you went to talk to her. Imagine if there was no one there.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 55:45 Then I would have gone with him.

Joe Rogan 55:48 (exhales)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 55:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:50 So, he leaves?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 55:52 He leaves and he says, "I'm going to be back with lawyers."

Joe Rogan 55:56 Lawyers?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 55:56 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."

Joe Rogan 56:19 But you're still incredulous? You still think that it's possible that he's gonna drag you away?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 56:25 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.

Joe Rogan 56:58 Like, for example, what kind of things did you see that were so different?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 57:01 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.

Joe Rogan 58:21 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 58:21 And I would ask, "So, is this man your boss?" "No, he's not my boss. I'm his boss." That's what the Dutch (laughs) women say.

Joe Rogan 58:29 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 58:29 (laughs) And they explain these hierarchies. Um, I arrived in 1992 in July, it's the summer months, women are dressed i- in shorts, tank tops, t-shirts.

Joe Rogan 58:44 Was that crazy to you?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 58:45 It looked, it looked otherworldly to me.

Joe Rogan 58:49 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 58:50 (laughs) And s- and so are the men. A- and no one was harassing anyone and no one was... They just seemed to be oblivious to all of this. And the men would talk to me like a real person.

Joe Rogan 59:02 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 59:03 And that was, uh, to me, it was wow. It's not wow anymore, I know it now, but back then it was wow.

Joe Rogan 59:10 But it's important for people to, to listen to this, to try to understand whe- where you're coming from and why y- you find a lot of what we discussed earlier so offensive, because you've dealt with real suppression. And to just try to imagine what it was like to be you to see women in shorts, and women telling men what to do, the women who were the boss, women who could do whatever the fu- whatever they wanted to.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 59:41 Yeah, and they were on bicycles, they were roller-skating, they-

Joe Rogan 59:44 And this is crazy.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 59:44 Yeah. They had their hair out in the open, up, down, it didn't matter, they were just...

Joe Rogan 59:49 Did you keep a journal during this time?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 59:51 I wish I did. I didn't keep a journal, but I had-

Joe Rogan 59:54 S- it's, it would be like someone visiting another planet.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 59:57 Yeah. And I- I, like, uh, I- I don't know, again, how old you are, but we used to have-

Joe Rogan 1:00:02 Oh, we were talking about it, I'm two years older than you, remember?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:00:02 So, to call home... (laughs) Okay. Yeah, but for us, to call home was four gilders and 99 cents, that's five gilders. So, that's, uh, almost the equivalent back then was, uh, $5 to call home for one minute. So in, whatever you said in one minute cost $5. So, I would call my sister sometimes and, uh, sometimes I'd rant about, "Oh, my God, it's raining, it's raining." And she's like, cursing and saying, "I don't care to hear about the rain. Have you got anything else to say?" And it's like, "Okay, the women here, they're running around in, like, like, half naked."

Joe Rogan 1:00:45 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:00:45 And, uh, a- and, and the men too, and this... I- it's, it's different here, things are crazy here. A- and then your money would run out.

Joe Rogan 1:00:55 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:00:56 (laughs) And so you, you... Like, I wish I- I wish I kept a journal.

Joe Rogan 1:01:01 God, I wish you did too.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:01:02 ... yeah. But then there were the other Somalis, uh, who came from Somalia, and there were people who came from Iraq, they came from Afghanistan, they came from Iran, they came from every which way. And we would huddle together in the dining room and say the exact same things. And as women, men from those parts of the world would actually start harassing us and treating us badly. And I would constantly go to w- we call the tables, 'cause the people sit, uh, like, that's the white table. The white table means white people are sitting around a table. So I'd go to the whites table and tell them, "This is how the men are treating us. And your men are treating you differently. Like, can you talk to them?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:49 (laughs) Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:01:49 And th- th- there were things like that. And they would say, "But why do they do that? Where do you guys come from? Is that normal?" And in that, I don't know what you would call it, you could, you could even call it, like, a human lab because you have, you've thrown these people from all over the world at one another in a small place. And there are expectations and our expectations are not being met. There are things that surprise us. There are things that we go, "Oh, u- uh, I- I didn't think that things were done that way." And it- it's all, it's all there. And i- i- i- it's one of... I- I don't wanna say it was a good memory in the sense that it was pleasant, but in terms of teaching moments, uh, best time, best teaching moments in my life.

Joe Rogan 1:02:40 'Cause it's a complete paradigm shift.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:02:42 Complete paradigm shift. All these human... Uh, there was a man from Iran who kept looking at my skin and staring at it. And he would stare at someone else's skin and he'd say, "Does it really get that dark?"

Joe Rogan 1:02:57 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:02:57 And you think, "But you're from Iran." People in Iran at that point, what this man was telling me, some of them were shut out of everything, that they had no idea that there were actually black people alive.

Joe Rogan 1:03:13 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:03:13 This is in 19- uh, uh, 1993, 1992, 1993. So there were-

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:03:21 ... people arriving. I met people from-

Joe Rogan 1:03:23 They'd never experienced black people.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:03:24 ... never experienced. I walk out of, uh, y- you know where you have to go turn your laundry in and get the fresh laundry? And I would meet someone. I said, "Where do you come from?" And she says, "Azerbaijan." And I think, "Hmm, is that a place?" Like, that's how we were.

Joe Rogan 1:03:42 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:03:43 We didn't know... I knew reality where I came from. I knew a little bit about Europe. I knew a little bit about America. But there were so many places that we didn't know anything about. Uh, uh, some of my asylum... You know, and the, the camp, camp mates, they came from... So, I knew there was a country called Yugoslavia. But when you meet these people, they never said they came from Yugoslavia. They said, "I'm from Croatia or Bosnia or Serbia," or, and you say, "Are those countries?" They weren't at that time. They weren't countries.

Joe Rogan 1:04:23 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:04:23 But that's how these people saw, that's how they identified.

Joe Rogan 1:04:27 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:04:28 You, you shouldn't mistake a Serb for a Bosnian or the other way around, or you'll be in big trouble.

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:04:35 So it's stuff like that. And so in terms of... And I was there for 11 months and I wish I was an anthropologist. I wish I had a book with me. I wish we were just recording the whole deal. Uh, there were Somalis who were just having in- right in the middle of civil war, slashing each other's throats put in the same asylum seek- uh, center, in the same compound.

Joe Rogan 1:04:58 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:04:58 And the Dutch people who are in charge of the center, they would come out and they'd say, "Another fight broke out. What are they fighting about?" And, m- m- we would just go like, "Oh my gosh, don't you know?" How would they know?

Joe Rogan 1:05:15 Especially before the internet, how would they know?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:05:17 How would they know? It, bef- it was before the internet, and this, this is a country that's trying to be generous and welcoming. They want everybody to be well-fed and, uh, and, and get rid of their traumas and leave their traumas behind them.

Joe Rogan 1:05:30 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:05:31 But if you find yourself in these caravans or, um, trailer park cars, they're very small. Um, they're probably, I would say, the interior of this studio. Maybe some of them even a little smaller, but divided into a sitting area, bedroom, bedroom, bedroom, and into three bedrooms. And if you meet your arch enemy right there, you're placed in the same caravan, how do you respond?

Joe Rogan 1:06:03 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:06:04 So that's some of the things that... Some of the things that were going on were (laughs) were crazy. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:10 And what universal language were you sp- was it English you were speaking with the people from Croatia and Bosnia?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:06:17 English.

Joe Rogan 1:06:17 English.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:06:17 Yeah. Almost everyone spoke English, attempted at speaking English, and I did a lot of translation, translating from Somali to English, English to Somali. I volunteered to do that. Again, a huge source of, of education for me.

Joe Rogan 1:06:35 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:06:35 Because then I learned how... i- i- th- those, those people that we just call white, how they were thinking, what was going through. This is when, you know, they say, "You've gotta fill this form again. You've gotta fill that form again. You've gotta fill another form." And so the Somalis were saying, "There must be a conspiracy. Why do they want all these forms filled out?" Because where we come from, when a government asks you to give personal information to the government, that means you're going to disappear, you'll be disappeared or you're betraying a family member also. So, when they ask for information, we are all going, "Ouch."And so you have to get over that. They have to come in and explain, "Nope, it's only for your he- We're the only ones who are seeing, no one else. N- no part of the government will see this." And very often, people are struggling to just take them at their word.

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 So when your... uh, th- when this husband person, this person who's supposed to be your husband, when he comes back with lawyers, how, w- how does that confrontation go down? What kind of lawyers? Is he bringing lawyers-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:07:44 Uh, he didn't bring-

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 ... from Holland? Or, wh- where are the lawyers from?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:07:48 He threatened to go and get lawyers. And, uh, here I'm guessing because he didn't tell me. And my guess is he probably went to get lawyers and the lawyers said, "What's the case?" Because-

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 So he tried to get lawyers in Holland?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:08:03 In Holland, yeah. And my guess is, and now I'm confident that my guess is right, th- there is no lawyer probably who would take that ca- It's, it's not like America. You don't litigate for the sake of litigating.

Joe Rogan 1:08:18 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:08:19 If you lose a case, you pay for the entire liti- all the costs that the litigation cost. And so, if he were... Uh, a lawyer would say there must ha- it must be some kind of law that I can use to defend you. And if you don't have a case, you don't have a case. But if you take this to court, then you're wasting everyone's time and you are going to pay for that.

Joe Rogan 1:08:45 So-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:08:45 And so I'm sure he backed away, but what he then did was come back with more relatives from... that he and I both share.

Joe Rogan 1:08:54 How many times did he come back?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:08:55 That was... So he came back the second time, and the second time there was this big... in one of the caravans, this big gathering, and he said he came back with the king of our clan. Was a descendant of someone who was a king, and that he is going to be the mediator because that's what my father advises. And so I had to go and sit in that caravan with all of these members of my clan, elderly, wise, just the people whom you have at hand who are the highest levels of the clan power hierarchy.

Joe Rogan 1:09:30 And how many months had you been in the country when this happened?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:09:32 Four.

Joe Rogan 1:09:33 It was still four, so he came back relatively quickly.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:09:35 He came back like quickly, a week or two later.

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 Okay.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:09:38 Maybe even within the week. He came back very quickly.

Joe Rogan 1:09:40 Had you developed any confidence that you were going to be able to stay by then?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:09:45 Yeah. This woman I'm telling you about, Silvia, she had the police ready and I wasn't going to do anything. I wasn't going to go into the den, I wasn't going to go into that space without having the backing of the police and the confidence-

Joe Rogan 1:10:01 So were the police in the caravan as well or they're outside waiting?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:10:03 They were not in the caravan, but she said, "You are out there and nobody's going to come." They know, th- first of all, we're on a compound, the compound is... has barbed wire around it.

Joe Rogan 1:10:13 Secure.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:10:13 There is security, and then there is the police waiting for whatever is going to unfold.

Joe Rogan 1:10:18 So they can't drag you out of there.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:10:20 They can drag me out.

Joe Rogan 1:10:21 So you're com-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:10:21 They could cause me physical harm, but they didn't, thank God. And he, he said he wasn't like that, and I, I knew that he wasn't like that. He just wanted to have the last word on honor, and he had, um... He, he, he really wanted to be seen as, "I'm this honorable guy, I've done everything I can. And look, I'm the one who's been lied to, and cheated, and mistreated," and all of that. They all came round and each one of them gave me the longest lecture you can possibly think of. You know, telling me story after story of how this could end. "Now you're in arms of your family and you're about to walk out that door and you're saying, 'I don't want to have anything to do with the family.' You're all on your own. This could end really badly for you." So I would get that, and one... every single person participating in that gathering would tell me a story, each one more horrifying than the previous one, and all I had to do was just sit and be quiet. Just don't say a word, just sit right through it.

Joe Rogan 1:11:29 When they were talking about horrible stories, like what kind of horrible stories?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:11:32 Well, horrible stories is you're sitting and this is like, "Okay, here we are today. Your father has found this amazing man for you." So there'd be a lot of flattery to him, a lot of flattery to my father, and then a fantasy of what this union could be and could become like, and now it's not because of you. "You, Ayan, it's up to you." And, "You walk out that door and the consequences are..." And they would like sort of spell it out. "There'll be no one for you. You could end up being a prostitute. You will be sold into slavery. There's no one who cares about you. You make your choice. You walk out that door, that's... all that bad stuff happens to you. You stay here, you go to your husband, you say forgive me, he forgives you, and you're within the family fold." And then the next person would do that, and the next one, I had 12 of them. And I just listened to that. Again, it's, it's... and it follows that same procedure. Flattery to him, flattery to my father. "Look what you're throwing away. Have you lost your mind?" So all... after all that, what? Emotional blackmail, uh, you know, rational, "You're not gonna be one of us. You will not be a Magon anymore." Blah, blah, blah. All of it. At the end of it, I'm just sitting, just quietly, th- that's what you're supposed to do, I was raised to do that, don't speak back, don't talk back, don't interrupt.... just shut up, be quiet and listen. And then it goes to the judge. So the guy that he, the guy who was married to the guy, he picked as the ultimate judge is sitting in the room and he's the one who's going to make the call after I've made my case. And there's no one on my case.

Joe Rogan 1:13:31 (exhales) Did you make a case personally for yourself?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:13:35 I just said, "I don't want to be with him. I've made up my mind."

Joe Rogan 1:13:40 And what does the judge say?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:13:42 He, he asked me again and again and I said, "I didn't, I, I made up my mind." And very, in the most the meekest voice, most apologetic voice. And then he called it off and he said, "We are going to take this up with your father." And I was a- allowed to leave, and that's the last I saw of them.

Joe Rogan 1:14:04 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:14:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:14:06 Did you keep worrying that they were gonna return?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:14:09 Nope.

Joe Rogan 1:14:10 You thought that was it?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:14:11 No. I think the one thing I worried about was, well, now I've put myself out there. Everything they said about me being alone and kicked out, that was true. There's no way back after that. There's no, I haven't, I didn't give myself away or knocking on the door and saying, "Can you take me back to my father or my mother or..." After taking them through something like that.

Joe Rogan 1:14:32 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:14:46 I feel like I had to work my ass off to learn Dutch language. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14:53 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:14:53 Yeah. And get a job that had nothing to do with the things that they were frightening me about.

Joe Rogan 1:14:58 Hmm. Right, yeah.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:14:59 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)

Joe Rogan 1:15:27 (laughs) Terrified into learning Dutch and joining a university?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:15:29 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.

Joe Rogan 1:16:00 Hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:16:01 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.

Joe Rogan 1:16:15 So, how quickly did you learn the language?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:16:19 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.

Joe Rogan 1:16:34 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:16:35 Yeah. So you can do... If you want it, you can do it.

Joe Rogan 1:16:38 If you're worried about being sold away to slavery-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:16:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:16:41 ... and prostitution, yeah. (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:16:43 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:44 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:16:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:16:44 That's incredible.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:16:45 And I was embraced.

Joe Rogan 1:16:46 That's an incredible story.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:16:46 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.

Joe Rogan 1:17:14 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:17:14 And those people really embraced me and I'm really grateful to them.

Joe Rogan 1:17:19 And so, you enrolled in this university. What did you study?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:17:23 (laughs) I, I studied political science. My professor used to say, "Never call political science, political science because it's not a science."

Joe Rogan 1:17:30 Hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:17:30 So it's the school of government. It's politics.

Joe Rogan 1:17:34 So politics in Holland?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:17:35 In Holland.

Joe Rogan 1:17:36 And how... It's much different than politics in America, right? Didn't they have like...

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:17:40 The theory part, so what you learn in university is different (laughs) because it's well organized and well ordered, and it always has a happy ending. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:17:52 (laughs)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:17:52 But when you get into politics, the day-to-day stuff, that's a different story altogether.

Joe Rogan 1:17:59 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:17:59 Uh, and political science helped me understand, oh yeah, so we have these different institutions, you know, uh, House of Commons. Uh, let me just put it that way because it's the English speaking world. But the Lower House, the Upper House and, uh, you have the electorates, you have all the different institutions, you have the different layers of, you know, from the city, to the province, to, w- we didn't have a federal, but the nation. Uh, you, you understand that stuff, where it came from, the history, appreciate all of that. But when you're practicing politics day to day, it's completely different.

Joe Rogan 1:18:37 Hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:18:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:38 Did you consider staying in Holland?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:18:41 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:18:42 What made you leave?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:18:44 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.

Joe Rogan 1:19:26 You get sworn in to what?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:19:28 Parliament.

Joe Rogan 1:19:29 Parliament.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:19:30 Yeah. It's what we call congress in America. The law house.

Joe Rogan 1:19:33 Mm-hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:19:34 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.

Joe Rogan 1:19:57 Is this because of your analysis of what happened September 11th 2001? Like, what is, what is the threat coming from?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:20:05 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.

Joe Rogan 1:20:50 So this is 2003, which is crazy. You're talking about 10 years after you arrived in Holland, roughly.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:20:56 Yeah. It started in 2002.

Joe Rogan 1:21:00 Hmm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:21:01 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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:21:31 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.

Joe Rogan 1:21:56 It fell because of you? What do you mean?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:21:59 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.

Joe Rogan 1:22:10 W- why'd they do that?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:22:11 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."

Joe Rogan 1:23:40 Mm.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:23:41 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.

Joe Rogan 1:24:07 Wow.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:24:08 And, and then I came here.

Joe Rogan 1:24:10 Wow. So, when you came to America, were there still threats on your life?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:24:17 Yeah. Those threats are not going away.

Joe Rogan 1:24:21 Is this a regular thing for you, uh, on a daily basis?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:24:26 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.

Joe Rogan 1:25:00 And all this is just from leaving the religion and saying that you're an atheist now?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:25:07 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.

Joe Rogan 1:26:02 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:26:23 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.

Joe Rogan 1:29:01 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?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:29:21 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-

Joe Rogan 1:29:44 Heretic.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:29:45 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 1:31:27 You said Medina twice. You said Medina the first time as well.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:31:31 Okay. I'm sorry.

Joe Rogan 1:31:32 D- the fir- the peaceful Mohammed is not Medina, it is-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:31:35 I- the peaceful Muhammed is Mecca.

Joe Rogan 1:31:36 Mecca.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:31:38 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."

Joe Rogan 1:33:27 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-

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:34:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:34:13 ... as Islamophobic. And that I've, I've seen this labeled, this l- this label put on you, that you are Islamophobic.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali 1:34:23 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