Ayaan Hirsi Ali - let’s talk a bit about her. She is one of the most courageous voices of our time. She was born in 1969 in Mogadishu, Somalia, into a strict Muslim family. As a young girl, she was subjected to female genital mutilation. She grew up between Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya under a strict Islamic upbringing. In 1992, she fled to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage - she jumped off a train in Europe and applied for asylum. There, she learned Dutch, earned a degree in political science, and began working with integration. She lost her faith in Islam. She became an atheist, and later converted to Christianity in 2023. She saw clearly how Islam oppresses women - forced marriages, honor killings, female genital mutilation, polygamy, and the total lack of freedom. In 2004, she made the short film Submission together with Theo van Gogh. The film showed violence against women in Islam. Shortly after, Theo van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight in Amsterdam by a radical Muslim. A threat against Ayaan was left pinned to his chest: she was next. She received death threats for years. She had to live under police protection. She was elected to the Dutch parliament for the Liberal Party, where she fought for Muslim women’s rights and against the illusions of multiculturalism. She has written books such as Infidel, Nomad, and Heretic, where she directly criticizes the core of Islam - not just “extremism,” but the ideology itself. Today, she lives in the United States, married to historian Niall Ferguson, and continues her work, among other things through her foundation (AHA Foundation). She warns the West about mass immigration from Muslim countries, parallel societies, and the self-deception that claims Islam can be reformed without confronting its texts and history. Like Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has paid a high price for speaking the truth. Rushdie was hunted for a book. She was hunted for showing the reality of her own life and the lives of millions of Muslim women. She is not “Islamophobic.” She is a former Muslim who has seen the system from the inside and refuses to stay silent. She points to the uncomfortable truth: that Western values such as freedom of speech, gender equality, and individual liberty are incompatible with classical sharia Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a living example of why the Enlightenment is still worth defending. She risked her life to say what most people don’t dare: that the problem is not only “extremists,” but a religion that, at its core, oppresses women and rejects criticism. She deserves respect from all of us - not because she is “controversial,” but because she refuses to lie in order to be politically correct. In a time where many bow to threats, she continues to speak the truth. These are the kind of people who keep the soul of the West alive. Thank you Ayaan.❤️🔥🪽✝️
