#50 — The Borders of Tolerance
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Summary
In this episode, I speak with Ayan Herseyani-Ali about her life, her career, and the challenges she has faced as a woman fighting for human rights and the rights of women under Islam. Ayan is a writer, activist, filmmaker, and academic who has written several books, including The Caged Virgin and Infidel and Nomad and Heretic. She was voted in 2005 as one of Time Magazine s 100 Most Influential People, and she has started the Ayan Herssey Ali Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the enlightened world on islam and the threat that it poses to women who have not chosen to believe in God. She is also a frequent target of quote feminists and people on the left who object to her criticism of islam, and most unjustly, she is derided as a "bigot" and a "fear mongol" by many. Ayan shares her experience of growing up in exile in exile, and how she became a feminist and human rights activist in the late 90s and early 2000s, and why she continues to fight for women's rights and human dignity in the face of Islamic fundamentalism and misogyny in the 21st-century world. She also shares the story of the murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by a note promising to kill her, and what led to her eventual release from a Dutch internment in the 1980s. This is an interview I did on the making sense episode of the Making Sense podcast, featuring Ayan's book, "The Caged virgin and infidel and nomad and heretic. . I hope you enjoy the episode, and that you'll find some of her writing about it on your favourite books, and share it with your friends. Make sure to subscribe to Making Sense! Thank you for listening to the podcast, making sense of the podcast. -Sam Harris making sense, Sam Harris - The Making Sense Podcast, by making sense - by Sam Harris and by of Making Sense to find out what it means to be a feminist in the modern world, and to learn more about women in Islam, and about Islam, the threat posed to women in the West, and their place in the world, by women in history, by a woman in the culture, by the Quran, by Ayan in the Quran
Transcript
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welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing
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today i'll be speaking with ayan hersi ali ayan will be known to many of you but for those who
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don't know her she was born in somalia in 1969 she was the daughter of a political opponent of
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the somali dictatorship and she lived in exile moving to saudi arabia and ethiopia and then kenya
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and like 98 percent of somali girls she was subjected to fgm euphemistically called female
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circumcision and came from a quite blinkered context of islamic oppression and then in a few short years
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really just recapitulated the full enlightenment project in her own life she escaped a forced
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marriage she was being sent to marry a distant cousin in canada and rather than do that she got
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off the plane in frankfurt i believe and fled to the netherlands where she was granted asylum and then
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citizenship and in her first years in holland she worked as a maid and in factories and quickly learned
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dutch and then began studying at the university and wound up getting a master's in political science
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worked as a translator for somali immigrants and began to witness this clash of western liberal
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values and islamic culture in this case in holland then eventually became a member of the dutch parliament
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where she was tasked to work on issues of immigration to raise awareness about violence
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against women in that society and honor killings and genital mutilation and all the rest
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and then in 2004 she became very well known because her colleague who she made a film with about the
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oppression of women under islam a film a short film entitled submission her colleague theo van gogh was
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murdered and a note promising the murder of ayan was pinned to his chest by his killer and the amazing
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thing and you can read about this in ayan's books in the caged virgin and infidel and nomad and heretic
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the amazing thing about her story is that it exposed just the complete inability of dutch society to deal with this
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problem and keep her safe and ayan remains a person with exquisite security concerns and most unjustly
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quote feminists and people on the left who object to her
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criticism of islam i mean here you have one of the most courageous people on earth
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paying an extraordinary price for doing so and she's derided by people on the left as a bigot
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one of the most frustrating things in my life has been to see ayan get criticized by imbeciles
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as unpleasant as my encounter with ben affleck was on real time my encounter with nick christoph of the
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new york times in the green room afterwards was worse because nick is among the army of seemingly
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enlightened liberals who can't figure out that ayan is a true feminist icon and hero
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so in any case ayan though she is liberal in the classical sense on almost every question
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has really only been supported for the most part by conservatives in the u.s as someone fighting for
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human rights and the rights of women and that has been a real disservice to her message
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nevertheless she was voted in 2005 as one of time magazine's 100 most influential people
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and she has started the ayan hersey ali foundation the aha foundation aha a link to that can be found
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on my website and she's just an extraordinary woman our time was somewhat abbreviated here we had
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an hour to work with but it was great to get her voice on the podcast and so i now bring you ayan
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i am here with ayan hersey ali ayan thanks for coming on the podcast sam thank you very much for having me
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great to talk to you as always it's great to have an excuse to talk to you yes same here how do you
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describe what you do at this point um i describe it as it's almost like um running on a treadmill and
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never getting off you know for the last 15 years i've been trying to educate the enlightened world on
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islam and the threat that it poses to women to people like me who have chosen not to believe in god
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to christians to jews even to and probably i would say mainly to those who actually are muslims and
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believe in the quran and the prophet muhammad i was trying to remember how we first got in touch i
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think if i'm not mistaken and this is the the only time this has happened in my life i think i actually
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sent you a piece of fan mail you sent me a beautiful letter yeah a beautiful letter in your book and
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and that's how we met yeah that's that's how i found out about you it was uh just after you had
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written and the book was the end of faith yeah that's amazing because you know now one imagines
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it's just impossible to reach someone with a letter you know you can occasionally get people with email
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but i remember reading about you in the new york times magazine and just being totally blown away by
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you and your story and then i just i don't know how i got the the relevant address but i remember
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sending you a letter and that achieving a connection that was really it's fantastic that
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that happened yeah it was you sent it to the parliament in the hague the dutch parliament
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i was a member then and it's astounding to me today how on that very same platform those issues
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that you know a decade ago we were talking about the rights of women we were talking about islamic
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extremism we were talking about terrorism how nothing it seems nothing has moved forward
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except what way back then were warnings from my side and others are now unfolding in the
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netherlands and on the european continent if you now see how women are treated not just muslim women
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in muslim households but how because of uh you know a lot of men coming from africa from south asia
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from the middle east how they are now treating non-muslim women it is no longer safe in the
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public square in europe in germany in sweden in the netherlands it's no longer you know the kind
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of safety i used to take for granted i remember coming in 1992 to the netherlands and really marveling
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at how at 1 a.m at night friends of mine would girls would take their bicycles and just they could go
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anywhere and now that's all gone well i want to get deeply into that i want to talk about immigration
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and the migrant crisis and the future of europe but before we go there i just i want to talk a
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little bit about your personal story i i don't want to go into it in great depth because you and i have
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done that on my blog and i will link to that article with this podcast so people can read that first
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conversation we had and and your story will be pretty familiar to most of our listeners but what do you
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think you would be doing if your collision with islamist theocracy hadn't occurred i guess i would
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still be in academia probably uh you know writing on and learning um the topics that i really care about
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i could take time off to do art learn about music literature travel i think i would lead the life
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of the average american woman or the average dutch woman and in fact before i got into this that's
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exactly what i was doing i had found a job uh with a think tank in amsterdam and i had been asked by
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my boss to work on the issue of immigration and i remember complaining and saying well are you asking
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me to do that because i'm an immigrant i'd like to do uh the european union and ever closer
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integration i'm fascinated by that topic please let me do that and he said you can always do that
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but we only want you to do immigration now because it's a hot topic so the answer to your question is
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i would be leading the life of i think the average american woman or the average european woman if it
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hadn't been for 9-11 and what happened afterwards do you think you'd still be in government i mean back
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then i wasn't in government i had a healthy interest in politics but i had no plans to become a
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politician i was fascinated by ideas and that's why i chose to work with this think tank it was a
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social democratic think tank sam you have to understand that ideas such as social democracy
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and liberalism and all that that that was all new to me and i had this hunger of you know wanting to
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find out more and discuss in depth how a small place like the netherlands was able to be so wealthy
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and to be able to be so stable and i i mean i came i grew up in somalia i lived in saudi arabia in
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ethiopia in kenya to me for a whole nation to to live in peace with one another to respect the rights of
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girls and women this used to be just things that we heard about it wasn't real for me and i was
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fascinated i still am and you know how did these things come about and now my big worry is how can
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we hold on to it how can we hold on to these freedoms and to the notion of equality and the
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rule of law how would you describe yourself politically at this point i'm still a classical
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liberal i think i'll always remain a classical liberal i always need to explain what that means
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to the average american because i a liberal for an american is maybe someone on the far left
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or the hard left or you know someone who reads the nation and and believes in big government and
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or emphasizes justice more than liberty i politically i would describe myself i would say
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perhaps prior to in the middle between the two parties there are things about the democratic party that
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i do not like and i think are wrong and the same applies to the republican party so
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a classical liberal a centrist a libertarian i love your work on reason in that sense i think i'm
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i've been very stable in terms of my ideas i've always found it alarming and we've spoken about this
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before that so many liberals ditch their commitment to gender equality and attack you in the name of
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religious sensitivity and i'm wondering and this this also explains why you have been associated with
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classically conservative think tanks is this changing at all have you made any headway in on the left
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in in the u.s in particular i i don't want to claim uh any progress that we now see on the left
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in admitting that islam as a doctrine as a civilization as a culture subjugates women
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and is a very intolerant doctrine where there is admission of that i want to say that it mostly
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probably comes from those people on the left who are still willing to look at facts and allow the
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facts to change their minds you know with the rise of isis even though there is a huge taboo
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in western countries on the discussion of islam you can see for yourself when verses from the holy
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quran and the practices of the prophet muhammad are applied in practice what that looks like you get
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the islamic state of iraq and syria and i think so many people on the left can see that now
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and for those who are rational people i think they're willing to have these facts change their minds
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the internet has also helped a lot you know saudi arabia is a very closed society and it's very
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difficult to see what's going on there and people who are who were very happy to ignore what's going
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on there are now finding that it's extremely difficult and all this their mission work uh their dawah
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their you know islamic missionary work that they have been propagating for at least the last four
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decades uh what we're now seeing is the outcome of that uh and that around the world not just in
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the middle east you know my continent the country i come from africa groups like al-shabab in somalia
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and boko haram in nigeria pakistan bangladesh now you've seen what's going on there with all the
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free thinkers and free bloggers being targeted and hacked to death on the streets this is a direct
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consequence of the propagation of radical sunni islam and people on the left can now see it and
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those who want to see and learn i think they're changing their minds and i hope that they are
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alarmed enough by it to know that sitting around and condemning it is not enough well you must get the
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the frequent criticism as i do that and this comes from both muslim obscurantists and and their liberal
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apologists that you are promulgating the same interpretation of islam as isis does or as the
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extremists do by drawing this linkage between ideology and behavior and therefore you're giving
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it legitimacy and obviously the you know the president of the united states has taken this line
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that you really don't want to call isis or any similar group islamic in any sense what do you say to
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that a number of things i think the first thing is i know that these things are well intended i think
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that our president obama he really means well he has good intentions when he refuses to associate
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islam the religion of yes one-fifth of humanity with the outcome of that religion you know that that
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once you apply that doctrine that's what you see it's well intended but what he's also expressing
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is a lack of respect for muslims as reasonable individuals the assumption that by pretending
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that what we see has nothing to do with islam is an assumption i hear it very i'm trying to choose my
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words as carefully as i can if you think that a human being who happens to be muslim lacks reason
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if you think that that human being will lash out in violence if you think of that human being as a
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child not mature enough to handle ideas then you're going to talk to that human being and about that
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human being in a way i would say in exactly the same way that our president and many other western
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leaders talk to and talk about muslims here's where the world is upside down you're doing all of this
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because you want to stimulate respect from the non-western sorry the non-islamic public
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for muslims and not to be prejudiced against them but how can you ever achieve that when you refuse
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to allow them onto this platform of reason because human beings i believe change their minds not
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because of the gun not because of violent but through persuasion and if you want to persuade most
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muslims to reform their religion or to give up at least those parts such as jihad and sharia that are
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violent and oppressive you just have to be explicit about what this doctrine says not doing so means you're
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simply discriminating against them you don't take them it's it's the expected it is the prejudice of
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law expectations yeah and ironically you're you're doing absolutely nothing to come to the aid of the
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most vulnerable people in those communities so you're not you're not empowering reformers and women
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and everyone else who can't really find their voice because there's no safe context in which to do it
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yeah it's incredibly frustrating to not have this talked about it's frustrating because here i am trying
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to say okay i i got out of a context where my rights were compromised and i felt that i was not in control
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of my life and in the west in the netherlands and here in the u.s i have found a life where i am in control
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of my destiny now i find it my duty as you do and i think as many many people here do that you can't
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just turn away from the others the other girls and women who are in that context but how on earth can i
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explain the subjugation that they're submitted to the child marriages the forced marriages the honor
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killings without talking about the religion the doctrine the culture that has brought that forth
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on that point how do you address the rights of women say in majority muslim countries and even in
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the muslim community in the west when women themselves are often the oppressors or at least
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collaborating in oppression and how do you deal with someone like dahlia mujahid who just went on the
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daily show and celebrated the hijab as a sign of female empowerment and got absolutely no pushback
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this has to be fairly bewildering i mean it is it is fairly bewildering for the liberal non-muslim who
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looks at this and says well what is the reality here we're being told by women in veils that this is
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their choice and that it is a sign of you know colonialist arrogance to judge that anyone wearing the
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veil and whether it's in afghanistan or anywhere else is being oppressed the only way to do it the only way
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that i know is to talk about it to publish to you know take to public platforms to discuss it and to air
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what exactly it means to be forced to wear the veil i've written about this a lot and i discuss it and
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that's unfortunately again through the internet i have found a connection with women who choose not
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to wear the veil they write to me they call me they talk to me there's the aha foundation and they explain
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they relate to my experience and they explain to me that they are not like dahlia mujahid that all
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these women who are covering themselves from head to toe and who are saying that they speak for muslim
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women don't really speak for them that if they didn't fear for their lives if they didn't fear
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that they would be ostracized in their own communities or that their parents would beat
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them up lock them up take away whatever little rights that they have they would have spoken out
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to themselves if they had these platforms what would you say to dahlia have you have you ever addressed
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dahlia or someone like her in a public platform that where there's video that i could point people to
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i've had when i just published um when i just published heretic the last book i was with her
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on a discussion on mpr and i think the way mpr did it they first interviewed her and then they
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interviewed me very early on when i came to the u.s in 2006 2007 i was at the brookings institute and
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she and other women were there defending the hijab defending the position of women and the status of women
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in islam and saying that all the excesses that we see are exaggerated and committed by a fringe who
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are not truly islamic so i have i have had discussions with her but i've come to the conclusion that
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i don't need to convince dahlia mugahit to change her mind i need to get as many people as possible
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to see for themselves what is done to women in the name of islam i need to remind them that
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that treatment of women is not going to stay only within muslim households and muslim countries when
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the world is globalizing as it is and everything i've been saying so far it we see it now in europe
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there are gangs of muslim men in sweden in germany in britain who are singling out
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non-muslim women sometimes blonde women only now tell me how i know that's misogynistic but how is
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that not racist how is it not racist to organize for men to organize themselves as gangs and only
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target one group of women based on their skin color and their hair color and and you say target
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for sexual abuse sexual abuse yeah do you have a sense that this is being fairly reported on in
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europe and or is or is there a kind of politically correct suppression of this news because i in the
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initial wave with the the cologne catastrophe there was there were reports that that this was actually
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being suppressed and and people were i mean there was even this extreme case of someone in i believe
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it was the german government some woman in the german government had herself been raped by three
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migrants and when she reported it to the police she lie initially lied about their identities because
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she didn't want to give further cause for for racism in her culture so she you know said that
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three german men had raped her to speak honestly about the problem there's this social impediment of
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you know an understandable one especially in a place like germany that you don't want to give voice to
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any kind of kind of global animus toward immigrants or toward you know any one group of people
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what's the level of discussion there i mean right i'm following events there especially in germany
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right now and what i see is that this is on the side of the establishment if you'd like to continue
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