Ep. 229: Ayaan Hirsi Ali will not submit

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in a culture of conformity. She was beaten and mutilated. She was told who she must marry.

Eventually, she rebelled.

"You don't speak up at first," she told us. "First you leave and you find a place of safety. It's only after that experience that it occurred to me to speak up about anything."

Hirsi Ali is a human rights activist, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, the founder of the AHA Foundation, and the host of the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Podcast. She is also the best-selling author of a number of books, including "Infidel,""Nomad,""Heretic," and, "Prey."Her latest initiative is Courage Media, which describes itself as a space for courageous conversations.

Read the transcript.

Timestamps:

00:00Intro

04:36Conformity and its consequences

09:03Islam and free speech

16:38Immigration and the clash of civilizations

26:03Censorship and decline in higher education

34:14Cost of criticism and finding one's voice

37:20Hope for the future

43:58Outro

Show notes:

• "Submission."Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo Van Gogh (2004)

• Brandeis Change.org petition. (2014)

• "Whenyou use AI to replace every mention of 'our democracy' with 'our bureaucracy,' everything starts making a lot more sense." Bill D'Agnostico via X (2024)