“My husband was here for 9⧸11,” the INSIDE story of an AL QAEDA family in Canada
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
178.22852
Summary
Yasmin Mohamed is an author, a writer, and an activist. Her book, From Al Qaeda to Atheism, is a story about her personal journey. She runs a website, Confessions of an Ex-Muslim, and is involved in an advocacy project called Free Hearts, Free Minds.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm with the True North Initiative, and today we're doing something
00:00:11.640
a little bit different. I'm going to start doing longer sit-down interviews with some of the most
00:00:16.440
interesting and impressive people that will come and sit down with me. Today I'm really excited
00:00:22.040
about the guests that we have. Her name is Yasmin Mohamed. Yasmin is a super impressive woman. She
00:00:27.860
has a really interesting life story. She's an author, a writer, and an activist. Her book is
00:00:33.960
called From Al-Qaeda to Atheism. It's a story about her personal journey, which we're going to be
00:00:38.720
talking about. She runs a website, Confessions of an Ex-Muslim, and she's currently involved in an
00:00:44.800
advocacy project called Free Hearts, Free Minds, and we're going to talk about that project as well.
00:00:50.520
So first, welcome. Thank you so much, Yasmin, for coming. Thank you so much for having me, Candice.
00:00:55.240
Yeah, so I've heard about you. I've read about you. I've seen you on Twitter. You have a really
00:00:59.040
active presence there, and it's great to see that. So why don't you just introduce yourself and tell
00:01:04.840
us a little bit about who you are and sort of where you came from. Okay. Well, I was born and raised in
00:01:10.960
Vancouver, Canada, and my parents came here from San Francisco. Originally, my mom is from Egypt, and my
00:01:18.480
my dad is actually from Palestine. But they decided to, after university, they decided to go to America,
00:01:26.120
you know, the whole American dream. And they were there in the 60s, so peace, love, and hippie time.
00:01:33.000
And they had my sister, and then realized that they wanted something more, like a quieter life,
00:01:38.420
a more family life. And so they moved to Vancouver, and that's where they had my brother,
00:01:44.240
and then they had me, and then their relationship eventually fell apart. So neither of my parents
00:01:49.520
grew up religious at all. But once their marriage fell apart, and my mom was alone with three kids,
00:01:58.380
she went looking around for community, for comfort. And unfortunately, she went to the local mosque,
00:02:06.440
and that's where she found her her community and safety and security. And she also found a man who
00:02:15.340
already had three children of his own, but offered to marry my mom as his second wife and take care of
00:02:20.580
her. And I guess she was at the point in her life where she didn't really know what to do. And she was
00:02:29.080
very young, because that's the thing is you get married and have children very young. And so she did,
00:02:35.560
that she married him. And that was when I was between like five and six years old.
00:02:39.980
And so just to stop you right there, what kind of mosque was it? Was it sort of like,
00:02:44.120
was there a choice of several different mosques? Was it a Salafi mosque? Or what,
00:02:50.460
It's just a normal mosque. Yeah, it's the only mosque that was there, actually. So
00:02:54.660
it's surprising because at the time, back in those days, it was not nearly as
00:03:01.220
fundamentalist as it became later when the Saudi Arabian money came flowing in.
00:03:07.360
Yeah, it was just a regular, the local mosque. And yet your mother was sort of pushed towards a more
00:03:13.440
extremist or radical version. Yeah, super. She started covering her hair. She started,
00:03:20.360
you know, all of a sudden we had to, we had to pray five times a day. We had to start memorizing this
00:03:26.800
Quran. We were no longer allowed to have non-Muslim friends. I was no longer allowed to go swimming
00:03:32.260
because I was showing too much skin. This is a five-year-old. No longer allowed to ride a bicycle
00:03:37.980
anymore. Like there was just all of these rules came out of nowhere. And so I hated it. I hated
00:03:44.460
this religion. I hated this man for bringing it into our home. I didn't understand. I hated that thing
00:03:49.760
my mom had on her head now. I thought it was ugly, it was gray, and I just didn't understand why she was
00:03:54.080
doing it. And the polygamy thing, I mean, is that, is that common? It's just, it's so unfathomable for
00:04:00.100
me in Vancouver, in this progressive left-wing kind of city, that these kind of practices actually exist.
00:04:08.140
Yeah, it's, it's actually quite common. All you have to, like, you're just married to one legally,
00:04:13.700
and then the other ones are just, you know, I guess, it's, it's similar to somebody being married
00:04:22.520
and having his girlfriend on the side or something like that. So it's like formalized within the
00:04:27.260
religion. So they were Islamically married, but they didn't have any kind of civil, my mom didn't
00:04:32.240
have any legal rights or anything like that. And that also allows for, you know, for her to
00:04:42.740
get social assistance as a single mom, too. And she wasn't alone in that. Like, that's a very common
00:04:49.840
thing that happens with a man who'll have his four wives. One of them will, you know, collect based on
00:04:56.620
being his wife, and then the other three will collect as single moms. So it's pretty easy. It's
00:05:02.280
actually very, it's common because of how easy it is. So in the Muslim world, if you were to have
00:05:07.840
multiple wives, you have to support each one of them. So it's a lot more difficult. But here you can,
00:05:13.000
and in the UK, and you know, in Europe, there is such a, there's a lot of social assistance. So it
00:05:21.320
makes it easier. Polygamy is a lot easier, actually. Wow. I mean, it's just so hard to, again, wrap your
00:05:26.980
mind around that, that the Canadian government in some way is actually supporting this medieval,
00:05:34.280
archaic institution that sort of represses women. Did you all live in the same house?
00:05:38.700
We did all live in the same house. The Canadian government, as I think that, I know for sure,
00:05:46.320
people in the social assistance world and that ministry, they are aware that this is happening.
00:05:52.480
I've seen some articles where they talked about how many millions of dollars are being basically
00:05:58.220
stolen, because this is, you know, they're, these are through lies. But they don't want to,
00:06:05.460
they just don't want to touch these issues. When, when there is a Muslim involved, it causes people,
00:06:12.600
it causes authorities to not want to get involved in the issue. They're too afraid of being called
00:06:19.000
racist. And then, like you mentioned, it ends up, they are actually enabling the misogyny. So,
00:06:25.940
you know, one case is like FGM, for example, in the UK, it's been against the law there for 30 years.
00:06:33.620
There is apparently one case every single hour of a girl who is suffering with complications due to FGM
00:06:41.880
going into an emergency room in the UK, yet nobody has ever been prosecuted.
00:06:47.920
Wow. I mean, it's such a difficult issue, again, because in Canada, you know, households have autonomy
00:06:53.600
and you kind of think that the children are in the hands of the parents. There's definitely some
00:06:58.800
cultural relativism going on. Like if that was a Christian household and, you know, girls are being
00:07:03.780
abused, I'm certain that authorities would go in there and act. But when it comes to an immigrant
00:07:09.440
family, that there's sort of like a gray area where the police don't feel, I mean, this is sort of my
00:07:15.420
guess that authorities don't feel right interjecting. Was that your experience?
00:07:20.140
100% agree. And in fact, I have a personal story where that exactly happened to me. When I was 13
00:07:26.520
years old, I went to one of my teachers and I told him about the abuse, the physical abuse that was
00:07:33.300
going on at home. So you were being abused physically?
00:07:35.880
Yeah, yeah, by this man that she had married. And it went, you know, he took it to the police and they
00:07:42.060
took it to child services. And it went all the way to court. And in the end, the judge said,
00:07:48.520
actually, this is their culture. And this is how they choose to raise their children. So who are
00:07:55.040
we to judge? I mean, you're a judge. That's your job. But but as a child, I felt exactly that way. I
00:08:01.860
felt like if I was sitting here with blonde hair and blue eyes, you would protect me, you would take
00:08:06.400
me out of this home. I just finished telling you how they would string me up in the garage and whip
00:08:12.080
the bottoms of my feet. And you're telling me that that's just their right. It's just their
00:08:18.460
cultural freedom. So yeah, in there, such a disservice, like, this is the thing that so many
00:08:24.440
people miss is that in the effort of trying to protect the rights of a group, you end up sacrificing
00:08:30.080
the individual rights or the minorities within the minorities. So we're saying that, you know,
00:08:34.840
people can continue to do their practices because it's their culture. But what about the victims
00:08:38.880
within that culture? What about the young women who are being, you know, forced to undergo
00:08:43.640
barbaric mutilation of their genitals or being forced to live under a burka? Like, what about her
00:08:49.260
rights? And that's, again, why I think your story is just so compelling. So so what what happened
00:08:54.840
sort of next? What's what's the next thing? You're living in this abusive household, and you were the
00:09:00.200
victim of abuse. Canadian authorities basically told you you were on your own. Were you live?
00:09:04.600
Were you forced to wear a hijab at this point? Yes, I was. It was put on me at nine years old.
00:09:10.840
I went to Islamic schools, and I essentially stopped fighting because I'm a child. And this is
00:09:18.140
my world. And there was nothing I could do about it. So internally, I was unhappy. But I had to just
00:09:23.760
survive. And so I just did as I was told. I was terrified of burning in hell for eternity. And
00:09:32.440
all of the stories that we get told of everything that happens when you misstep. And if you don't
00:09:37.820
follow. My mom just jumped in headfirst. She was like, you know, super born again Muslim, like she
00:09:49.080
That's an interesting transition. You know, a person who leaves Egypt to go to San Francisco.
00:09:55.020
Yeah, you imagine a progressive liberal, almost a hippie. And yet, you know, you've had this
00:10:00.540
sort of complete 180. Yeah, yeah. And so she was became the head of the Islamic studies department
00:10:08.080
at the Islamic school that I was going to. She started attending. She was taking classes through
00:10:13.480
Al-Azhar University, which is basically a Salafi Islamic university in Egypt. And, and that
00:10:21.720
was our life. And then when I was after I had graduated from high school, it was
00:10:26.340
What were your friends like? Did you have were your friends also sort of devout Islamists? Or
00:10:33.220
I was not allowed to have non Muslim friends. But when I so I was when I was in the Islamic
00:10:43.880
school. Of course, the girls that I hung out with were the girls that were like me, you
00:10:48.780
know, that didn't that were not happy that were didn't like this stuff being forced on
00:10:53.080
us. We were not the good girls. We were the troublemakers. So those were the friends that
00:10:57.980
I had there. And actually, you know, misery loves company, though, that was actually pretty
00:11:02.160
good. Because, I mean, that's how I survived those years. Other friends that felt the same
00:11:08.700
way that I did. And we had to, of course, secretly talk about these things. We couldn't ever even
00:11:13.540
share with our siblings, you know, because then they tell on you. But, but yeah, we, we,
00:11:20.160
we supported each other. And then the school only went so far back in those days. So it only
00:11:25.540
I could only go there for elementary school. And then for high school, I had to go to a public
00:11:29.980
school. And that's when I was told, you're not allowed to have non-Muslim friends. And
00:11:34.880
that was the year I told my teacher about the abuse. And so I got pulled out of school.
00:11:40.360
And I, for grade nine, I just didn't go to school at all. Because my mom just didn't
00:11:45.820
want me interacting with not, this is what happens when you interact with non-Muslims,
00:11:49.400
you end up telling on your family, and you end up betraying your, your, your family.
00:11:54.360
So, I mean, so when your mom and your family moved to Canada, was there any kind of a emphasis
00:11:59.980
or any, anything about learning Canadian values? Because, you know, when you talk about not
00:12:04.640
being able to associate with non-Muslims, I mean, that's, that's very rigid. And it just
00:12:09.860
doesn't really seem to fit in with the Canadian society of being, you know, pluralistic and
00:12:15.500
diverse and open to everyone. And I'm just curious, like, was there ever any pressure in
00:12:21.140
your family to try to integrate? Or was there ever any, like, explicit, like, you know, these
00:12:27.660
are Canadian values, you're in Canada, these are the sort of norms that you should follow?
00:12:30.980
No, not at all. In fact, the differences are, are, are celebrated. When I wore hijab,
00:12:36.060
I got, you know, I, you get treated differently, you get treated like, like royalty, essentially.
00:12:45.660
You know, I remember when my mom, growing up, it was really embarrassing, because she would
00:12:49.240
always claim racism over anything. Like, you know, she wants to return something, she doesn't
00:12:52.980
have the receipt. And so they were like, sorry, ma'am, we can't, this is racist, you know,
00:12:57.180
and then she'd get what she wants. And so she used that card all the time. So in fact, it's,
00:13:05.100
it was the opposite, it was almost like a privilege, you know. And it wasn't until I took off my hijab
00:13:10.940
that I actually realized, like, oh, so not everybody just smiles at me. So, so big and
00:13:18.080
randomly, you know what I mean? Like, I started getting treated like just a normal part, a normal
00:13:23.180
person in society. And I, and I hadn't noticed that when I had the hijab on that I was actually
00:13:32.080
I think so much of the concerns that people on the left have is that there is this sort of
00:13:36.280
anti-Muslim bigotry that exists in our society. So it's interesting to hear you say that it's,
00:13:43.000
Yeah. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I don't know if she coined the term, but she's the first person
00:13:46.540
I heard use the term Islamophilia. She's like, Islamophobia is not a thing. Islamophilia is
00:13:53.140
a thing. And I think that's very true, especially in the States, how they have hijabis plastered all
00:13:58.800
over, you know, any flat surface. Yeah. All the advertisements for, you know, even hair commercials,
00:14:09.880
They don't quite understand what's going on. Okay. So let's, let's just continue on with
00:14:16.980
your personal story there. So you finished high school in Canada and then you went to
00:14:23.380
Yeah. So we went to Egypt. I thought we were going for a family holiday, but it was to get
00:14:28.640
me married off. Um, and my mom was, you know, I kept on resisting. I didn't want to get married
00:14:35.520
off. And so, um, eventually what ended up happening was she just left me in Egypt. So
00:14:42.120
I woke up one morning and my family were all gone. Um, and she just left me there because
00:14:47.100
she didn't want to deal with me anymore. I was just causing rebellious. Like I did, I
00:14:54.080
don't know. I was rebellious because I had male friends. I didn't have a boyfriend, but
00:14:59.300
I had male friends. I never drank alcohol and ever smoked. I never even kissed a boy. Like
00:15:04.820
I didn't do anything, but from her perspective, I was just too much to handle. So she left me
00:15:10.820
in Egypt and then they just kept on trying to, to get me married off. And eventually I was able to
00:15:17.060
get out of Egypt without being married off. Um, what was it like to be in Egypt after being born
00:15:23.020
and raised in Canada, uh, sort of going back to the place where your heritage and where your mother
00:15:28.420
came from? Well, it was a bit of a shock because I was expecting it to be like this wonderful utopia
00:15:33.920
because all I ever heard growing up was how horrible this country is and how horrible Canadians
00:15:38.240
are and how horrible the non-Muslims are and in Egypt, this and Egypt is so much better. Um,
00:15:44.480
so I was really surprised to find an overpopulated, dirty, you know, uh, ripe with criminal activity,
00:15:54.080
corrupt country. It was not at all what I was expecting. Um, but I was there for two years,
00:16:02.240
so I had to just make it work. And, um, you know, there are a lot of parts of the society that I did
00:16:10.340
enjoy. Like when I mentioned the man that my mom married, one of the first things he did was grab
00:16:15.700
our records. So all of my mom's Hank Williams and Dolly Parton, and he, he broke them all and music is
00:16:22.600
haram music is forbidden. Right. But in Egypt, there is belly dancing and music blaring all the time.
00:16:29.240
So it was actually in a way a lot freer for me to be living there than it was in Canada.
00:16:35.080
Oh, that's really interesting. So do you think that people who leave Islamic countries and come
00:16:39.880
to North America in some ways are bringing a more, an even more fundamentalist version of it or?
00:16:44.780
Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. And that's something that, um, a friend of mine, Faisal Muhtar,
00:16:49.800
who's from Iraq, he mentions this all the time. He was born and raised in Iraq. He didn't come here
00:16:53.640
until he was like 20 something. And he is, he's like, he's shocked when he hears my life story and
00:17:00.660
the life story of so many other Americans that like me grew up in extremely fundamentalist homes,
00:17:06.780
went to these fundamentalist Islamic schools. And he's like, in Iraq, we don't even do that.
00:17:10.420
So, yeah, I think it has a lot to do with them leaving their cultures behind and looking for, um,
00:17:20.640
just looking for community here and then finding that their common element between them is their
00:17:26.280
religion. Because, you know, there weren't other Egyptians, there weren't other Iraqis,
00:17:31.400
there weren't other Moroccans or whatever, but there were, they were all Muslim. Okay.
00:17:35.100
So they had that one thing in common. And so that's the thing that bonded them. So that's the
00:17:38.880
thing that they all stuck to. So at your mosque and at your school in Vancouver, there were people
00:17:44.340
from sort of all over countries. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. So, so you were in Egypt,
00:17:48.720
then you came back to Canada. I came back to Canada and my, I sort of came back to Canada
00:17:53.600
on false pretense. It's like I had, it was, it was my way of just getting back home. I just wanted to
00:17:59.580
get out of that country. So I had told my mom, they were trying to get me married to my cousin there.
00:18:03.800
And I said, yeah, yeah, the second cousin. And I said, um, yes, I'll marry him. No problem. I just
00:18:11.720
want to go to Canada for just like a last visit. Was it older or similar age? He was similar age. I
00:18:18.260
think he was like, well, I think he was maybe like five or six years older. It wasn't that big of a
00:18:21.680
deal. Um, but the man that I did end up marrying, um, was 14 years older than me, but they didn't tell
00:18:28.540
me that I found out actually through reading his Wikipedia page years later. Yeah. So, um,
00:18:35.700
let's talk about that. So you came back to Vancouver and you were set up in an arranged
00:18:40.420
marriage or was it on your own? No, no, I did not meet him. It was, it was, it was totally arranged.
00:18:45.940
And I had a very strange relationship with my mom at the time. So, um, she basically,
00:18:52.980
I was threatened, like, you're not my daughter. I'm going to kick you out of the house. I want
00:18:57.560
nothing to do with you. And I honestly wanted her to finally approve of me. I wanted her to finally,
00:19:05.140
I wanted us to stop fighting and I wanted us to have a decent relationship. And so I kind of just
00:19:11.440
succumbed. I said, you know what, what if I do it her way? All we've ever done is fight. What if I
00:19:16.080
just follow it? What if I do walk on the, the, the, the thin proper path that I'm supposed to walk
00:19:25.540
along? You know, I'm just going to follow what my mom says and let's see if it actually does lead me
00:19:29.500
to happiness because I'm not happy right now. And so I did everything she said. It's a very mature,
00:19:35.140
uh, realization. I think that that's something that a lot of people miss, you know, if you try to do
00:19:39.800
what your parents do, maybe there's some virtue in that. So it's, it's interesting that you had
00:19:44.160
that maturity at that point, but it didn't necessarily work out for me. And it wasn't
00:19:49.180
really maturity. It was more, um, desperation. Like I just, I was, I was flailing and fighting
00:19:56.120
and I wasn't getting anywhere. So I just thought, fine, I give up. I'll just try this. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:07.100
Yeah. So I ended up marrying this man who almost, you know, immediately, like maybe a week into our
00:20:18.800
relationship was the first time he beat me. Um, we were living on the 17th floor and he came home and
00:20:28.460
I wasn't wearing a hijab and the windows were, the curtains were open and he started yelling at me
00:20:37.360
and punching me and calling me a whore. And I didn't understand even what was going on
00:20:44.380
until he's like, don't you see the curtains? You want everybody to see you? And I said, everybody who
00:20:51.720
Oh, seagulls, people in helicopters. Like I just, I could not believe this was happening. Um,
00:20:57.980
but as much as I thought my life was tough before, I had no idea that it could fall so much worse.
00:21:08.560
You know, I thought, I thought if I married him and if I followed my mom's advice and everything,
00:21:13.360
things might get better. I wasn't expecting them to get so much worse.
00:21:18.460
Okay. So, so let's keep going. And what, uh, what, so you had a child together.
00:21:24.600
Yeah. So I was put in naqab. He had brought, um,
00:21:29.360
Which is a full, full black, full face covering. Even my eyes weren't showing. So it has like multi
00:21:35.460
layers and there's a layer that goes over my eyes. I had these black gloves, black socks delivered
00:21:43.300
I was going to say, can you even buy that at a store in Vancouver?
00:21:45.380
No, no, everything. Now, now it's all sold online. Um, but in back in the day, you had
00:21:50.920
to get all this stuff from Saudi Arabia. And I was essentially like a ghost, but covered
00:21:57.780
in black instead of white and not even the little eye holes. And that's how I would walk
00:22:03.780
if I ever did leave the house. Essentially, I only left home for my prenatal visits. When
00:22:10.180
I got pregnant with my daughter, I'd go to the doctor once a month. That's my only time
00:22:14.100
I'd say to get fresh air, but there was no fresh air coming through this cloth.
00:22:18.580
Right. Even, even in the summer, even when it was caught out.
00:22:21.420
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You'd have to always wear it.
00:22:23.380
I've heard some women who wear them say that it feels liberating. It just from your, I mean,
00:22:27.760
I've never worn one, so I don't know if that has any truth to it, but how did you individually,
00:22:32.200
personally feel being put in one of those? Candace, it is a portable sensory deprivation chamber.
00:22:41.560
You can't, you can't see properly. You can't hear properly. You can't smell properly. You can't
00:22:46.760
even feel things because you've got the gloves on. You're completely separate from you. You really do
00:22:53.000
feel like a ghost because you can see everybody and see everything, but they can't see you.
00:22:57.240
And it's dehumanizing. There's nothing empowering about being erased. I, I, I didn't even realize how
00:23:09.760
much my soul was just rotting inside of that cloth until I got away from him and I started to, you know,
00:23:19.920
find myself again and, and, and reemerge as Yasmin. But I was, I mean, that cloth really
00:23:27.700
succeeds in completely erasing the human being. I wasn't, I wasn't Yasmin. I was just a black thing.
00:23:39.140
So, I mean, it's, it's such a difficult situation for Canadians. Like when I see a woman wearing one
00:23:45.280
of those in my apartment building in Toronto, there used to be a woman who wore one of those and I never
00:23:49.540
really knew how to interact with her. I, I, I almost wanted to like approach her as a friend
00:23:54.800
and be like, you know, you don't have to do this here in Canada, but I didn't know if she was like
00:23:58.780
in there angry and hated me or, you know, I had no idea what was going on. You could see her facial
00:24:03.620
expressions. There was no connection whatsoever. And I just really felt a bit of sadness that,
00:24:08.440
that this was happening in my apartment. Like we lived in the same building, but we had such
00:24:12.560
different lives. Did, did anyone ever approach you or talk to you or were you just completely isolated
00:24:18.260
when you were when it is? I was completely isolated and I wouldn't leave the house unless
00:24:22.280
he was with me too. So that's also another deterrent from anybody speaking to me. Um, but,
00:24:29.180
but I can imagine like you wouldn't, you wouldn't know what it, it's like, it's like trying to,
00:24:35.740
to speak to, you know, a piece of upholstery that's covered in a cloth. Like you, you don't know
00:24:41.760
what's under there. Um, so you wouldn't know how to interact. Yeah. You can't gauge the reaction.
00:24:46.280
Yeah. You can't see the face, see the eyes to see, you know, is this something that she wants?
00:24:50.240
Does she want to talk to me? Does she want to be left alone? Like,
00:24:52.580
is she smiling? Is she friendly? Yeah. Yeah. No. So, I mean, the thing about the naqab I have to
00:24:59.920
explain is it is not, it is not actually part of the Islamic religion. I think that a lot of,
00:25:07.560
I mean, Muslims do wear it. Yes. But, you know, in Hajj, for example, the pilgrimage to Mecca,
00:25:14.360
women can't wear naqab there. During prayers, women can't wear naqab. So two of the five pillars
00:25:21.180
of Islam basically ban the burqa. Um, it is worn by people who are, um, politically like far, far,
00:25:33.120
you know, extremists. Um, and so they're either, they're either, so they're supportive of the Islamist
00:25:44.400
or jihadi agenda, which obviously my ex was being a member of Al-Qaeda. Um,
00:25:51.180
and that's the, the type of people that, that wear it. It is a political clothing in the same way,
00:25:58.720
um, you know, uh, the, the tattooing a swastika on yourself would be. It's a, it's a message for
00:26:08.920
people to know this is where I stand politically. I'm part of the, I'm part of this group. Kind of
00:26:13.700
extremist type of Islam. Okay. So, so you just mentioned that your, your husband was part of Al-Qaeda.
00:26:19.000
Let's get to that part of the story. How did you, at what point did you learn that about him or how
00:26:23.520
did that progress? So, as I mentioned, I never left the house unless he was with me, but one day my mom
00:26:30.940
just started to bleed from her nose and her mouth and I freaked out and I called 911 and an ambulance
00:26:37.380
came and I actually paused because I wasn't sure if I should get in the ambulance with her, if I'd get
00:26:41.740
in trouble because I know I'm not allowed to leave the house without him. But I did because
00:26:47.840
I thought, well, hopefully he'll understand that this was an emergency. And I had my daughter at
00:26:52.940
the time, she was a baby, took her with me and we went, we rode in the ambulance and I got to the
00:26:57.740
hospital, covered all in black. And I was in the waiting room with my daughter for, it didn't feel
00:27:03.940
like too long, like just a couple of minutes. And I was approached by a man and a woman who told me
00:27:09.940
they were from CSIS. And at the time I had no idea who CSIS were. I thought it was like a part of the
00:27:15.700
hospital or something. I thought they were there to talk to me about my mom. And then they explained
00:27:19.920
to me, no, we're like the Canadian CIA essentially. And I was like, oh, I didn't even know we had one.
00:27:24.340
Um, and then they're the ones that told me, they're the ones that told me he is, um, a terrorist that
00:27:33.900
had entered Canada with a fake Saudi Arabian passport from Afghanistan. And this is pre 9-11,
00:27:42.280
but even then those are some pretty red flags. And he, did you know that he was from Afghanistan
00:27:48.420
or what did you know about him? I knew he was from Egypt. Yeah. Um, but he did mention,
00:27:53.980
he would mention all the time that he wants to go live in Afghanistan, specifically in Peshawar.
00:27:59.640
And he would always talk about wanting to go there and wanting to live there and,
00:28:03.120
you know, raising our family there. And, uh, I always just ignored it. Like, I'm like, yeah,
00:28:10.380
there's no way I'm leaving to Afghanistan. Right. But he always wanted to get his Canadian citizenship
00:28:15.740
first. And then talked about that's where the best place to live was. So, so CSIS tells you that he
00:28:23.320
came to Canada illegally? Yes. And what else did they tell you? And then they told me that he was
00:28:29.900
detained because he had a fake passport. And then, um, basically, I don't know, somehow he was,
00:28:39.860
he got out of prison. I know now how he got out, but at the time I didn't know that it was actually
00:28:45.560
bin Laden who had bailed him out. He'd sent Osama bin Laden, sent somebody from California,
00:28:53.380
another person, part of the cell to come up and post bail for him. So that I actually learned from
00:29:00.380
a high ranking official. Yeah. He was the leader of the Canadian cell basically. Yeah. He was here
00:29:08.540
for 9-11. Wow. So, so what, what was it specifically like, so CSIS tells you that this
00:29:15.860
is who the guy is. So they're obviously tracking him, even though he came with a fake passport,
00:29:20.020
he managed to get past that. What was it that he was specifically doing in Canada? And what was he
00:29:26.300
doing with you? I think that, uh, I think that he was here for 9-11 and I think that the Canadian
00:29:34.260
government knew that something was up and they decided to just track him because I was not in
00:29:41.760
that hospital for very long before they approached me. So I feel like they were watching the house
00:29:46.980
and they were watching him and they knew when I left the house. Waiting for an opportunity to get
00:29:51.880
you alone to find out like whether you knew about it, whether you had information. Yeah. And you didn't
00:29:57.120
know anything about it. I didn't know anything about anything. Did you know what Al-Qaeda was at that
00:30:01.220
No. Because I probably would have had no idea what Al-Qaeda was before 9-11. No idea. I didn't
00:30:06.380
know who Bin Laden was. They asked me and they showed me his picture. And I only reason why I
00:30:11.940
recognized him was I said, Oh, there was a magazine with this person in it. And I saw him freaked out.
00:30:19.720
He's like, what is this doing in the house? And I was like, I don't know. It was like a time magazine
00:30:23.380
or something. It had a, it was something written about, um, Bin Laden. And he was like, get rid of it,
00:30:28.780
get rid of it. And so it was just such a weird thing for him to get upset over this person being
00:30:36.540
in the magazine. And then that's why I recognized it when they showed me, like, do you know who this
00:30:41.000
person is? And they had a lot of pictures and a lot of questions. And I, I think I was totally useless
00:30:48.360
in responding to anything. I don't know if I was able to give them any good information.
00:30:53.000
Um, but we did stay in contact for, you know, we continued to stay in contact all the way until
00:31:03.280
Okay. So, so, so this was after 9-11 or before?
00:31:08.460
Even, even his arrest and everything like that?
00:31:12.640
Okay. So for some reason he went back to Egypt and he was detained there?
00:31:15.900
Well, he was, once I got away from him, like I wanted, once I knew who he was, I wanted to get
00:31:23.620
myself and my daughter away from him. Mostly my daughter. Like I didn't have, I had, I just got
00:31:30.700
like this surge of courage when I had to protect my daughter. So I'm like, I needed to get her out
00:31:36.100
of here. Especially since he talked about taking her to Egypt and getting her cleaned, getting her cut.
00:31:44.420
And so, um, and they can't do that to girls until they're like six, seven years old. And so I knew I
00:31:50.600
had a few years where I could, I had to get her out quick. Um, so when I got away from him and filed
00:32:01.880
for divorce and he was, uh, served with the papers, I think that's when he realized like, okay, I just need
00:32:10.700
to get out of Canada because my, my ticket to Canadian, you know, we were married. That's how
00:32:17.860
he was going to get his citizenship. And I just ruined that by, by wanting to divorce him.
00:32:23.620
It's, it's, it's just shocking to me that he came to the country illegally. He had a fake passport and
00:32:28.020
yet he was still able to stay. I mean, that just seems like bad national security policy.
00:32:34.220
Yeah. And collect, um, social assistance as well. Yeah. Which I didn't know that. Yeah. I thought
00:32:41.980
there was, I think that with immigrants, there's like limitations or something, but maybe not with
00:32:48.420
Certainly not with refugees. Okay. So, so you kind of had the courage to leave your husband and is that,
00:32:55.520
is that when you sort of had an awakening about the religion or how did that happen?
00:32:59.060
No, not yet. That can, I had, I just wanted to get away from him and wanted to keep my daughter
00:33:04.520
in a safe environment. And, um, when I found out he was in prison in Egypt, I felt safe enough to leave
00:33:12.840
my mom's house at the time and go out and start going to school. And, um, which was something my mom
00:33:21.520
did not want me to do. She did not want me to go to university. She most definitely did not want me
00:33:27.060
living alone because I wanted to move out of her house with my daughter. But, uh, you know,
00:33:32.960
Muslim girls live either in their family's house or in their husband's house. They do not live alone
00:33:40.920
It's really old fashioned. I think that used to sort of be a general thing, you know, maybe in like the
00:33:48.420
That's the way it is now. So it was just unfathomable that I would want to live on my own. So
00:33:53.480
my mom left to go to Florida to visit my sister and I took my daughter, packed our bags and we
00:34:00.980
basically just left the house because I knew my mom would never agree. And then I started,
00:34:08.180
I got student loans and I started going to university. And then I, I got into this love
00:34:11.960
affair with Canada all over again. So I always loved Canada growing up as, as I was always told
00:34:18.360
the non-believers are this and that, but like the shopkeepers were always really nice to me.
00:34:24.020
Like my teachers were always nice to me. All the non-believers that are supposed to be evil
00:34:28.540
were always really kind to me. So I did not, I wasn't buying that. But when I went through that
00:34:35.820
whole thing, when I was 13 with the judge, then I started to really, um, just, I just didn't trust
00:34:43.560
anybody. And, but when I was able to get student loans and start going to university, then I started
00:34:50.020
to be so appreciative that I was in Canada because I'd lived in Egypt. I knew that there was, if I had
00:34:56.340
been married there, there, there would have been zero support for me to divorce my husband and to
00:35:02.900
continue a life on my own. Um, so I was, but women can go to university in Egypt still, right?
00:35:09.860
Well, you can, but you would have to, you're, you wouldn't be living on your own with your daughter
00:35:16.000
and just having divorced your husband. Like that's, that's still not acceptable in most Islamic
00:35:22.460
societies. Okay. Yeah. Single mom. No. Okay. So, but you, so you took off the niqab, but you're still
00:35:28.720
wearing a hijab? That's correct. Yeah. So it was kind of this slow unveiling. Um, and when I was in
00:35:34.940
university, I took a course called history of religions and that was my first time looking
00:35:41.960
at Islam from an objective point of view, like just, just from an academic perspective,
00:35:47.620
as opposed to this is the truth and you're not allowed to question it.
00:35:53.740
So it was just like an overview of like all the world faiths. Exactly. Learn about like sort
00:35:58.980
of the, the foundations of the Abrahamic religions or something like that. That's right. That's right.
00:36:03.220
Right. And it, that's when I started to realize that everything that I had been told about this
00:36:08.640
religion being, especially with the Quran, right, about it being so divine and there's no book like
00:36:14.120
it. And it's the literal word of Allah. And it's, it's this and that you have to wash yourself,
00:36:19.560
you know, before you touch it. And it, it's not allowed to ever touch the floor. And there's all
00:36:24.020
of this stuff about this book. And through that course, I realized that it's, this is just
00:36:30.500
plagiarized. Like this is, this is nothing, there's nothing divine about this. It's interesting
00:36:36.100
how all the religions sort of, well, you know, like Christianity takes from Judaism and they all,
00:36:40.940
they all sort of have similar themes. So you can see it with halal food. It's very much like kosher
00:36:45.040
food and some of the traditions definitely. Yeah. Yeah. But, but you don't get told that as a Muslim,
00:36:50.640
you, you get told that all the other stuff are lies and, and, and this is the truth. So it was,
00:36:59.220
it was, it was, that was like the first thread unraveling for me. And it took a few years still
00:37:07.040
after that. I mean, initially I was really, it was kind of this mix of being really, really scared
00:37:12.380
because I didn't know anything else. This was the, this was all I knew, but then also really excited
00:37:18.180
at the possibility that maybe I didn't have to follow this religion. Maybe I wouldn't burn in
00:37:23.880
hell if I didn't do these things. And, uh, so yeah, one of the first things I did was take off the
00:37:31.660
hijab. Um, but just feel like empowering or was it strange? What was it? It was, it was really great.
00:37:38.780
Um, but I was only on, I was only able to do it part-time in the beginning because, uh, I didn't
00:37:44.240
want it to be super weird just showing up to class one day, um, without a hijab on. And I just didn't
00:37:50.940
want so much attention on me. So I just kept it on during the day. And of course I kept it on in
00:37:54.980
front of my mom and I took it off by night when I'd go clubbing and drinking with my friends.
00:38:00.540
So I kind of lived that double life for a little while. And then I just got tired of it. I just wanted
00:38:05.220
to be me. I wanted to, to take it off full time. And just, this is who I wanted to be. And so, um,
00:38:15.780
when my mom asked me to drive her to the doctor one day, I thought, you know what, this is the day
00:38:22.160
she's going to see me without a hijab on. I took it with me and I had it in the backseat just in
00:38:27.420
case I lost my nerve, but I said, okay, this is it. Like I'm, I gotta just live my true self.
00:38:33.980
And she almost didn't get in the car, but then she wanted to get in and shut the door so that
00:38:40.280
she could yell at me without people on the streets hearing her. Um, but she just completely flew off
00:38:48.440
the handle. And basically she said, if you're taking off the hijab, then your next step is leaving
00:38:55.720
the religion. And so I'm, it's my duty as a Muslim to kill you before that happens, because I'm not going
00:39:02.580
to be punished for eternity for raising a non-believing daughter. Did you, was she serious?
00:39:10.260
She was absolutely serious. Yeah. Oh yeah. My mom is a very religious person and she doesn't,
00:39:16.560
it's not, she doesn't think things through in so, like, like the way you would just,
00:39:23.200
the way she thinks things through is by looking at the, the religion. What does the religion say
00:39:31.620
I should do? And that's what she does. Does that make sense? So it wouldn't, it wouldn't even
00:39:36.840
cross her mind to think like, oh, this is my daughter or, um, like to, to look at it from
00:39:45.940
that perspective. What about Canadian laws? I mean, there are unfortunately, very sadly,
00:39:50.620
there are cases of honor killings that happen in Canada. There's a high profile Shafia case
00:39:55.680
out in Kingston. Um, so like when she's saying this kind of thing, I mean, would she have actually
00:40:02.180
done it in Canada? Was she taking you to Egypt or what, I mean, what was the threat that you
00:40:06.420
felt like you faced? Well, when I was growing up, I was always told, we'll just tell everybody
00:40:13.400
that you moved to Egypt. Meanwhile, you'll just be buried in the backyard. So this is a,
00:40:17.800
this is the kind of thing that, that girls get threatened with, you know, honor killings,
00:40:22.260
honor violence is, you know, it's pretty prevalent. So, but this was the, when she, when I was growing
00:40:29.900
up and she'd make those threats, they would work. I'd be scared stiff, but this time her,
00:40:37.080
her, her soul was on the line. This time she was not going to allow me to ruin her chances of going
00:40:50.460
to heaven. And that's how I knew that she was really serious because she worked really, really
00:40:57.880
hard to be a good Muslim and to do everything right. And so I wasn't going to come along and
00:41:03.580
mess that up for her. Okay. That's kind of where she was coming from. Just like her sincere religious
00:41:08.260
duty that she had to raise Muslim children. And if they didn't, again, I kind of go back to like,
00:41:13.960
why did she move to Canada? Why, why, why would she choose to be part of a secular Western society
00:41:18.420
if she had these very firm, strong beliefs? I mean, it just, you know, everyone has their own
00:41:24.560
life, their own choices, but it just seems like it doesn't quite fit that she would want to be here.
00:41:29.480
I asked her that question a million times myself. She would always say, I never wanted
00:41:34.280
to come here. It was your father that brought me here. I don't know why she stayed. I really don't
00:41:39.600
know. I think maybe it was just life here is just easier. You know, she was able to go on social
00:41:44.940
assistance. And, you know, she at the Islamic school where she was the head of the Islamic studies
00:41:52.600
department, she was a big deal because she spoke Arabic. Most of the other people didn't. And Muslims
00:41:58.700
generally, you know, treat Arabic speaking Muslims differently. They see them as like the ones that
00:42:06.360
can really read the Quran and really understand it. Like a higher status. It's interesting because,
00:42:11.840
you know, Canadians, maybe naively, we think that people are so grateful to be in Canada and that
00:42:16.640
they're just going to love it here. They're going to leave, you know, the unfortunate parts of their
00:42:20.920
culture behind and just embrace Canadian life. And I think that our entire society is built around that
00:42:26.040
kind of idea that people are just going to be super grateful to be in Canada. And I think a lot of
00:42:31.080
newcomers are. Yeah, I think that's true. And accurate. But it's sort of like, not always true
00:42:36.040
though. Yeah. Hashtag not all. Yeah. It pains me as a Canadian to hear that someone would come and
00:42:40.740
be resentful. Yeah. Of the society. So when did you start with the website? When did you sort of come
00:42:47.120
out as an atheist and start really being an activist for women's rights in Islam?
00:42:53.780
That happened in 2014. So the infamous episode with Sam Harris and Ben Affleck on Bill Maher,
00:43:01.960
where Sam Harris was just talking about the concentric circles of the different kinds of Muslims. He was
00:43:09.100
talking about how there was jihadis and there's conservative Muslims and moderate Muslims and, you know,
00:43:14.320
stuff like that. And nothing that he said was in any way not factual or in any way offensive. And
00:43:22.540
Ben Affleck just jumped down his throat. And that's when I realized, like, growing up, I had always been
00:43:29.660
told that Islam was totally different. It was exceptional. It was the only truth. Nothing else,
00:43:37.660
you know, none of the other religions are as valuable or as important. They're all lies,
00:43:42.160
basically. This is the only truth. And when I took that Islamic studies course, that's when I realized,
00:43:47.660
no, all of these religions are all coming from the same place. It's just people trying to make
00:43:52.600
sense of their surroundings. And, you know, some of it has good parts. Some of it has not so good
00:43:57.460
parts. But I mean, it was, Islam was written 1400 years ago. So yes, it's full of misogyny. And it's full
00:44:04.220
of, you know, they're endorsing slavery and things that were normal in that society.
00:44:09.240
It's full of values from that time. Exactly. But that's not the kinds of things we should be
00:44:13.540
pulling into 2018. But what I realized after that, that Bill Maher episode was that everybody
00:44:21.940
treats Islam the way I used to treat it. Everybody thinks Islam is this special, you know, sacred cow
00:44:28.900
that we can't talk about, and that we have to treat with kid gloves. And that's kind of what made me
00:44:34.240
feel like, you know, Ben Affleck, who made a movie criticizing Christianity, all of a sudden has
00:44:41.360
a problem with criticizing Islam. And it was just so, so incredibly hypocritical. And, and also the fact
00:44:50.940
that Sam Harris was being attacked because of the fact that he's a white man, you know, how dare a white
00:44:56.500
man make any salient points, you know. And so I felt like I had to speak up because I'm a woman,
00:45:04.820
I have brown skin, I come from this, you know, this background, and I can speak about it from the
00:45:11.260
inside. Well, you've lived it, you've had these experiences, and you've seen it firsthand. So
00:45:14.160
someone could write Sam Harris off and say, oh, you know, he's just, you know, a Westerner that
00:45:19.940
doesn't understand. But, you know, you can't say that. Before the shooting happened, we were talking
00:45:25.940
about, before the cameras were rolling, I should say, how, you know, identity politics has really
00:45:31.040
taken over our lives in an unfortunate way. But, you know, this is an aspect of sort of that identity
00:45:36.780
politics, because people on the left and people who do hold Islam up oddly in a different light and
00:45:43.700
don't want it to be criticized, they would have a hard time criticizing you. Do you face criticism from
00:45:48.860
those people? Or are they sort of afraid to? Oh, no, I face criticism. Okay, yeah, yeah. But it's a lot
00:45:55.860
less criticism now that I have taken on the name Yasmin Muhammad. So in the beginning, I was anonymous.
00:46:06.000
Okay. And there was this assumption that I was just somebody who was just a racist Islamophobe
00:46:16.560
looking to cause, yeah, yeah. But ever since I came out with my identity, people are a lot more
00:46:28.560
hesitant to throw those slurs at me. But I mean, they happen. I've been called a Nazi sympathizer.
00:46:37.680
And, you know, there's a there's a famous video that I use in my talks with this Pakistani girl that was
00:46:44.240
standing in front of parliament, where she was protesting M103. And I think it was Ezra, actually,
00:46:50.000
that was interviewing her. M103 is the Islamophobia motion that the Canadian government
00:46:55.440
introduced that condemned Islamophobia. That's right. Yeah. And the reason why she was speaking
00:47:02.100
out against it is because she's from Pakistan. And she knows of people that have been tied to the back
00:47:07.060
of trucks and, you know, hauled just like ripped to pieces because of blasphemy. And she's saying,
00:47:14.180
we don't want those draconian laws here in Canada, like you guys are going backwards.
00:47:18.260
Right. We're in Canada to escape that kind of stuff.
00:47:21.220
We're here to get away from that and to have this liberal progressive society that's
00:47:26.820
Exactly. Yeah, I definitely spoke to a lot of Muslims who were on the forefront of that battle.
00:47:32.500
And they get called white supremacists and Nazis and things that don't make any sense.
00:47:37.460
Yeah, there is sort of like a laziness amongst critics of critics of Islam, critics of critics,
00:47:44.660
where they just assume that you have the worst intentions. And I try to avoid that myself when
00:47:50.740
I'm talking about the left who, you know, really goes out of their way, like Ben Affleck in that
00:47:56.980
interview. Right. I think that he was actually coming from a good place. I mean, your point about
00:48:01.380
his movie about dogma, it's obviously hypocritical, but he obviously worries about backlash against
00:48:07.620
Muslims. And after 9-11, it did happen. And it's sort of natural that I see it on social media all the
00:48:13.140
time. So, you know, I'll be critical of radical Islam or people who are really taking the religion
00:48:19.540
very literally and want to have the political aspects of it. But I don't think that your
00:48:24.580
average, everyday Muslim who maybe doesn't even go to mosque, who just came from that background,
00:48:29.620
is really to blame. And you do see some harsh things written about all Muslims online. And so,
00:48:34.900
I kind of understand, you know, their desire to stand up for the minority. But in doing that,
00:48:41.380
they sort of blind themselves. Like, they've created a different standard. They're, you know,
00:48:46.660
guilty of cultural relativism and all that kind of stuff, where they kind of say,
00:48:51.460
because we're worried about backlash against Islam, let's just not criticize it, which is
00:48:55.380
even more problematic. Do you think that there's anything to that? Do you think that it's fair
00:49:01.060
what they're doing? Or have they just completely missed the boat? I do think that they've completely
00:49:04.900
missed the boat. I mean, I do understand, like you said, I do understand that their heart is in the
00:49:08.260
right place. But when I speak out, when I criticize Islam, what I'm trying, my objective in doing that
00:49:15.700
is I'm trying to say there are victims here. Look at how women are treated. Look how LGBT are treated.
00:49:22.180
Look how minorities in Muslim countries are treated. So when I'm speaking out against the,
00:49:28.260
you know, Sharia law, for example, that's what I'm speaking out against. I'm speaking out
00:49:33.140
against the oppression. I'm speaking out against women that when they remove a scarf off of their
00:49:38.180
head, they get imprisoned. Like, these are things that we need to be talking about.
00:49:44.100
We're seeing that in Iran right now. Social media is really enabling us to see that unfolding.
00:49:48.580
But, you know, women literally getting arrested and thrown in prison for 20 years for the crime
00:49:54.500
Mm-hmm. But I mean, I think it's, it's the same way of like me saying, we shouldn't talk about all of
00:50:02.500
the girls that are raped on college campuses, because then it's going to make people be mean to college
00:50:09.460
boys. Do you know what I mean? Like, what's the greater evil here that we, this is a problem that
00:50:14.900
needs to be dealt with. And the amount of people that are going to start treating all college boys
00:50:23.540
badly. Like, I don't think most rational people are going to react like that. They're going to
00:50:27.780
understand, okay, this is a problem. And this is what we need to deal with. And yes, of course,
00:50:32.900
they are college boys that are doing this, but not all of them. We're talking about the rapists here.
00:50:37.940
We're not talking about all college boys. Do you know what I mean?
00:50:40.820
Yeah, it's interesting, because I think a lot of the accusations, like I write about terrorism,
00:50:44.660
and I write about Islamist terrorism, and people will criticize me saying, you know, don't cast
00:50:50.500
such a broad stroke. Don't, don't paint all Muslims with one brush. And I'm like, I'm not. I'm very
00:50:55.220
careful to make sure that I'm only talking about the people who have this radical ideology. And it's
00:51:00.420
the critics of me that are conflating the two. And I even see it happening with Justin Trudeau,
00:51:05.860
the Prime Minister of Canada, where he'll have a question in the House of Commons about terrorism.
00:51:11.860
He'll be asked about his policy of letting ISIS members back into Canada. And he'll respond by
00:51:16.900
calling the opposition Islamophobic. It's, it's startling. It's like, these are legitimate national
00:51:21.620
security questions. And they're the ones conflating it. So, so let's, let's move on a little and talk
00:51:26.820
about policy. So, you know, you've lived this incredible life, and you've seen all these major sort of
00:51:32.820
social problems that come along with Canada's approach to multiculturalism and, you know, the,
00:51:39.300
the virus of cultural relativism, where we're sort of afraid to criticize other cultures. What, what,
00:51:45.380
what can be done? What can stop, stop the next generation of young women growing up in Canada from
00:51:50.100
having the kinds of experiences that you've had? Well, I think that we need to be
00:51:56.020
unapologetically steadfast in our values. So yes, it's important to be tolerant. But there,
00:52:04.340
there's a line, you're tolerant to a point, like as Ayaan Hirsi Ali says, you know, tolerance of
00:52:10.980
intolerance is cowardice. So yes, tolerate different ideas and different beliefs and different ways of
00:52:19.060
living and different sexual orientations and everything else. But you don't tolerate mutilating
00:52:26.820
a girl's genitals. You don't tolerate girls being abused or boys being abused in their homes because
00:52:35.380
that's the way their culture chooses to discipline children. Do you know what I mean? Like that's where
00:52:41.300
we need to just stand up and say, no, that's against our Canadian values. And that is not allowed.
00:52:47.620
Like we will be tolerant up until these stop signs. And I think we're just not clear on what those stop
00:52:54.340
signs are. We're very, it's almost like we, we feel, we feel like there shouldn't be any stop signs
00:53:02.420
because that makes us bad people. But no, that's the whole reason why we're a country. That's the
00:53:08.340
whole reason why Canada is the great country that it is today is because of these values. So if we're just
00:53:13.780
going to be sheepish about defending our values, then, then what do we have?
00:53:22.020
Right. I think that there's a real problem that Canada is confronting. And it's not just Canada.
00:53:26.580
It's happening all over Europe. We're seeing it. We were talking earlier about the book,
00:53:30.580
The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray. This sort of, I mean, we sort of live in a post-Christian
00:53:36.500
society where we don't have the same Christian foundation that we used to. Our society has been built
00:53:42.100
on it, but we've really abandoned. A lot of the tenants in most people don't really particularly
00:53:47.140
know the history. They don't know the tradition, even the history of Canada, right? The fact that
00:53:51.060
we fought in these great wars and fought for freedom. They don't know these things. And then
00:53:54.820
when it comes to talking about Canadian values, we feel ashamed or we shun the people who want to talk
00:54:00.500
about it. In the leadership race for the Conservative Party, you had Kelly Leach bring up the idea that
00:54:05.300
newcomers to Canada had to take a test on Canadian values. And, you know, the media just completely lost their
00:54:11.700
minds and they couldn't handle this suggestion, the idea that we even have Canadian values. She was
00:54:16.260
sort of mocked for suggesting that there are Canadian values. That's so, so dangerous.
00:54:21.620
When the other side has very strong values and they are incredibly steadfast in protecting those values
00:54:30.820
and, and our reaction is to be, you know, ashamed of protecting our own values. I mean, that's,
00:54:39.860
that's a really bad recipe. Yeah, it's a recipe for disaster. And you kind of imagine like what's
00:54:45.940
Canada going to look like in a hundred years if we have a policy where we don't articulate or defend
00:54:51.380
our own values. And then when people come in from other cultures, they're encouraged and they're,
00:54:57.300
and they're promoted and they're allowed to do whatever they want. You know, I look back at
00:55:02.340
pictures of Egypt and Iran in the 1950s, 1960s, you know, the women were free. They look like you,
00:55:10.420
the way you look, that we look right now. And the transformation that occurred in that society,
00:55:16.260
you know, it happened relatively quickly and no one, no one saw it coming. So, you know,
00:55:20.820
how can Canadians be more vigilant, but at the same time, without, you know, crossing over a line of,
00:55:27.220
I know you don't think it's a concern, this sort of anti-Muslim bigotry.
00:55:30.740
No, I'm sure it is a concern. No, it's most definitely a concern, but I don't think that
00:55:34.900
it's a concern enough for us to not speak up against the greater concern. That's where I'm,
00:55:42.180
that's where I'm headed with that. Okay. So I do understand that there will be the odd,
00:55:47.540
that there will be issues. I mean, most of the issues that have come up in media have turned out to be
00:55:52.340
hoaxes, but I do understand that there will be some anti-Muslim bigotry, but I honestly do feel
00:55:58.020
like the greater evil here are honor killings, are FGM, are child marriages, are, these are the
00:56:05.700
things that we, we have to talk about these things. We have to protect, we're talking about protecting
00:56:11.300
Muslims, but, but we're worried about only protecting some Muslims. Right. And it's like protecting the
00:56:17.060
feelings of some Muslims against the actual physical, you know, protection of girls and women.
00:56:22.660
And I obviously completely agree that, you know, when it comes to these women, they're the real
00:56:27.220
victims, the minorities within the minorities, be it women or members of the LGBTQ, you know,
00:56:34.420
gay men and women or Christians and Jews that live in these, in the Middle East, you know,
00:56:39.460
their numbers don't even really exist anymore. Yeah. I don't think that there are any Jews left in
00:56:43.300
Egypt and there used to be. I think there are six Jewish women left in Egypt. Well, there you go.
00:56:47.780
Yeah. After 4,000 years of being in that country. Yeah. So, you know, obviously there's a lot to be
00:56:54.020
vigilant against. Tell us a bit about the activism that you do, the work that you do with the Free
00:56:59.940
Hearts, Free Minds project. So Free Hearts, Free Minds was developed out of necessity. So once I became
00:57:07.060
open, I started getting inundated with messages from people all over the world, telling me their
00:57:12.980
stories, asking me for help, asking me for advice. And I just was not equipped to deal with it all.
00:57:22.340
It started to really take its toll on me emotionally, physically, it was affecting my life.
00:57:28.660
How did you just, sorry, I'll just stop a little bit there. How did you kind of,
00:57:33.460
you know, you had to, you had this blog where you were anonymous, and you kind of just blew up.
00:57:37.620
Like, what, what was it that kind of propelled you into the public spotlight to get to that point where
00:57:42.660
people were reaching out to you like that? Well, I think that when I was anonymous, I was getting
00:57:47.060
messages from people that were in the Muslim world. And that made me ashamed of myself that I was living
00:57:53.460
in a free country, and I was anonymous. So I felt like, how, how can I be getting messages from people
00:58:01.940
like in Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and, you know, and here I am in Canada, afraid to show my face,
00:58:10.900
you know, and some of these people were being really brave. And yeah, it just made me feel really
00:58:18.900
like, oh, how I have to, I felt compelled to go forward. I was very nervous, because, you know,
00:58:26.420
my daughter's father is an Al-Qaeda agent, and I didn't know what kinds of connections he still
00:58:32.260
had out there, or what kinds of favors he could ask people to do for him. I was pretty confident that
00:58:38.020
he wouldn't be able to come back into Canada. But we know they have a network in Canada. Exactly.
00:58:44.340
Yeah, so I eventually just was compelled to come forward. And when I started getting
00:58:57.540
inundated with messages, as you can imagine, because I could relate so much to what they were
00:59:03.540
going through, because I went through the exact same thing. It was really hard to
00:59:09.940
just focus on my real life, where, while I'm worried about this girl in Saudi Arabia,
00:59:16.820
whose father just found out she was an atheist, and is going to send her to Somalia to be killed by
00:59:22.660
Boko Haram. Do you know what I mean? Like, it was just, I couldn't get on with my day. And
00:59:27.780
so I started Free Hearts, Free Minds, where I partnered up with a life coach who is also an ex-Muslim.
00:59:40.660
He's also an atheist, and he's gay. So he was thrown out of his family for being gay. And then he became
00:59:50.340
ex-Muslim after that. And so he's been through a lot, you know. And he is one of the kindest,
00:59:58.580
most compassionate, most empathetic people. And that's what his work is now, is to support people
01:00:04.740
that are, you know, transitioning out of Islam, going through this. And when I was going through those
01:00:12.260
very, very dark, lonely times, therapy was what helped me get through it. And these are in the
01:00:21.380
days before social media. So I think social media really helps now, because people can interact with
01:00:27.140
each other. Other ex-Muslims can find each other. But back in those days, I thought I was the only
01:00:32.420
non-believing person that grew up in a Muslim family. Okay, so just kind of being connected to
01:00:38.020
other people gave you more hope. And so that's what the project sort of aims to do.
01:00:42.260
Yeah. So, so yeah. So what the project does is it, is it people from those countries contact me,
01:00:48.420
and then through donations, I'm able to get them life coach support through Jimmy. So it's people's
01:00:58.020
good will and willing to donate is what pays for their, their life coach services.
01:01:03.700
Oh, that's great. Yeah. So I think we should sort of wrap it up,
01:01:07.140
because we've been talking for a while. But, you know, so much great work that you're doing will
01:01:11.460
include the links to your organization so people can read more, pick up your book and, you know,
01:01:16.980
hear the story again. I just, just sort of ended off on the, on the question, you know, to, to, to
01:01:23.140
Canadians out there who, you know, support women's rights, would consider themselves feminists or
01:01:27.620
progressives. What is the message you have for them? And then also to women who are living in this
01:01:33.460
regressive state in this society, what, what, what is the message that you would have for them?
01:01:38.420
Um, for the women that are here that are feminists, um, I would encourage them to just
01:01:47.460
stand up for all women, you know, not just the women that are here in their societies, but all women
01:01:54.980
all over the world. I feel like in Canada and America and in the West in general, in some ways,
01:02:01.300
we are, we have a long way to go, but we're doing okay. You know, I feel like our house is sort of
01:02:08.180
getting in order. Meanwhile, our neighbor is living in a cardboard box. So what we need to do is, um,
01:02:15.540
start to focus on the most dire situations that women are in these days. So that's what I'm hoping
01:02:23.780
will, I could, that's what I'd like to say to, to the feminists here. And in the Muslim world,
01:02:30.420
there are a lot of feminists there too, but they're not necessarily fighting for equality. They're just
01:02:35.860
fighting for basic human rights first. Like we haven't even gotten to that point yet. Um, so there
01:02:42.420
are a lot of incredibly brave, you mentioned the women in Iran that are being arrested for removing
01:02:47.620
their hijabs, you know, or dancing or just being out in public and yeah. Yeah. There's women in Saudi
01:02:54.180
Arabia, same thing. Like they're just the fact that they can drive now is such a big deal, which is
01:03:00.100
really heartbreaking that it's such a big deal, such a basic thing, such a basic thing, I guess.
01:03:04.820
And they still, they still have to have a man's permission to get a driver's license. They still have
01:03:09.060
to have a man's permission to leave the home. Like the barriers have not been lifted. Not at all.
01:03:13.540
But just a teeny little bit of less restriction and the celebration is just over the moon. Um,
01:03:20.260
so I'm, to those women, I say just, you know, continue fighting and hopefully all women, you know,
01:03:26.420
this whole, hopefully we will band together and we will support each other more. Great. Well, Yasmin,
01:03:32.420
thank you so much for your time. It's just been incredible to hear your story. You know,
01:03:35.300
you're a true feminist and a true, you know, human rights, uh, fighter and champion. So
01:03:40.660
thank you so much. And hopefully our paths will cross again. I hope so too. Thank you so much, Candace.