Background

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born Ayaan Hirsi Magan on November 13, 1969, in Mogadishu, Banaadir, Somalia into a devout Somali Muslim family. Her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a political dissident who spent several years in jail. When he escaped into self-imposed exile in the mid-1970s, his family followed him from Somalia to Saudi Arabia, then briefly to Ethiopia, before settling in Kenya, where Ali spent most of her youth. In 1992 she was married - against her will - to a distant cousin. While en route to join him in Canada, she fled to the Netherlands, where she applied successfully for political asylum; during the process, she changed her name to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and adjusted her birthdate to make it difficult for her family to find her.

Education

Throughout her school years, Ayaan Hirsi Ali received a strict Muslim education. She studied at Muslim Girls' Secondary School in Nairobi. In the Netherlands, Ayaan Hirsi Ali studied political science at Leiden University and graduated with a master’s degree in 2000.

Career

After Graduation Ayaan Hirsi Ali worked for the centre-left Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid; PvdA) as a researcher on immigration issues. While with the party, she developed a reputation as a sharp critic both of Islam and of the Dutch government’s policies toward immigration and the integration of immigrants (especially Muslims) into Dutch society. She contended that Dutch laws were overly accommodating toward immigrants, enabling the formation of “backward” Muslim enclaves whose practices ultimately posed a threat to the country’s stability. In 2002 Hirsi Ali shifted her allegiance to the liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie; VVD), and she was elected to the parliament the following year.

As a legislator Hirsi Ali became an increasingly controversial figure, championing immigration reform while also fighting for the rights of Muslim women. In 2004 she worked with filmmaker Theo van Gogh to create Submission, a jarring, incendiary film depicting Islam as a religion that sanctions the abuse of women. Several weeks after the film aired on Dutch television, van Gogh was murdered - shot and stabbed, with a knife pinning to his body a letter that called for the death of Hirsi Ali also. Hirsi Ali left the parliament in 2006 following an announcement by the immigration minister that her Dutch citizenship was illegitimate on account of false statements she had made on her asylum and citizenship applications. While debate over her situation raged in the Netherlands, she traveled to the United States to promote her first book, The Caged Virgin (2006; originally published in Dutch, 2004), which criticizes Western countries’ failure to acknowledge and act upon the oppression of women in Muslim societies.

Although she ultimately retained her Dutch citizenship, Hirsi Ali moved to the United States in the wake of the controversy; she became a United States citizen in 2013. In Washington, D.C., she was welcomed as a resident fellow by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, where she continued to study the relationship between Islam and the West and to condemn culturally and religiously rationalized violence against women. Within five years of her arrival in the United States, she published two more books, which address these issues through poignant accounts of the abuse and adversity she experienced as a Somali Muslim female, as an apostate, and as an internationally prominent critic of Islam. Like her earlier book, Infidel (2007) and Nomad (2010) became best sellers. Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015) also was successful. In 2007 she established the Philadelphia-based Ayaan Hirsi Ali (AHA) Foundation to help protect women in the West against militant Islam.

Achievements

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, has gained an international following speaking and writing about what she believes to be the inherently violent nature of Islam and its subjugation and abuse of women. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was named one of TIME Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2005, one of the Glamour Heroes of 2005, and Reader's Digest's European of the Year for 2005. She is the best selling author of Infidel (2007) and Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015).

Works

More photos

• book

  • Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now

    (Continuing her journey from a deeply religious Islamic up...)

    2015
  • Infidel

    (One of today’s most admired and controversial political f...)

    2006
  • The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

    (Muslims who explore sources of morality other than Islam ...)

    2004
  • Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

    (This violence isn’t a figment of alt-right propaganda, Hi...)

    2021
  • Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations

    (Nomad is a portrait of a family torn apart by the clash o...)

    2010
  • De Zoontjesfabriek: Over vrouwen, islam en integratie 2002

Religion

As a young child, Ali was subjected to female genital mutilation. As she grew up, she embraced Islam and strove to live as a devout Muslim. But she began to question aspects of her faith. One day, while listening to a sermon on the many ways women should be obedient to their husbands, she couldn't resist asking, "Must our husbands obey us too?" The events of September 11th disillusioned Hirsi Ali to Islam, which she came to believe to be responsible for the attacks. In 2002, Hirsi Ali read The Atheist Manifesto by Leiden philosopher Herman Philipse. The book deeply influenced her and gave her strength to denounce Islam and acknowledge her disbelief in God.

Politics

Ayaan Hirsi Ali worked for the Dutch Labor party in 2001-2002. From 2003 to 2006, Ayaan served as an elected member of the Dutch parliament for the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. While in parliament, she focused on furthering the integration of non-Western immigrants into Dutch society, and on defending the rights of Muslim women.

Views

Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues violence is inherent in the core Islamic text and this is something most Muslims fail to recognize. According to Hirsi Ali, Muslims can be categorized into three groups. First, there are "Medina Muslims," who seek to force extreme sharia law out of their religious duty. Second, "Mecca Muslims," are a majority of the faith who are devout but don’t practice violence. The problem with this group, says Hirsi Ali, is they fail to acknowledge or reject the violence in their own religious text. The third group, "Muslim reformers," explicitly reject terrorism and promote the separation of religion and politics. Hirsi Ali argues this third reformer group must overcome the extremists to win the hearts and minds of a majority of Muslims.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was initially seen as a feminist activist who championed the cause of oppressed Muslim women. After moving to the United States in 2006, she's associated herself more with right-wing groups than women rights' activists. She became a fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and a regular interviewee on Fox News. Married to historian Niall Ferguson, the couple has been described as "the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of the intellectual right." She has also tweeted her support for Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the United States Supreme Court despite allegations of past sexual assault.

Hirsi Ali's right-wing views and harsh criticism of Islam has seen Western activists target her alongside Muslim fundamentalists. In 2014, Brandeis University in the United States reversed its decision to award her with an honorary degree following objections from students. The Southern Poverty Law Center - a United States advocacy group famous for defending civil rights - once categorized her as an anti-Muslim extremist. Hirsi Ali says she can't understand why she's become the enemy: "It has always struck me as odd that so many supposed liberals in the West take their side rather than mine. I am a black woman, a feminist, and a former Muslim who has consistently opposed political violence."

Membership

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

• 

  Freedom From Religion Foundation , United States

Personality

Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks six languages: English, Arabic, Somali, Amharic, Swahili, and Dutch.

Physical Characteristics: As a young girl, Ali underwent traditional Somali female genital cutting, ordered by her grandmother in keeping with her understanding of Islam.

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Socrates, Voltaire, Stuart Mill, Frederick Hayek, Karl Popper

• Politicians

  Kemal Atatürk, Jawaharlal Nehru

• Writers

  Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Connections

Hirsi Ali married a British historian Niall Ferguson on 10 September 2011 with whom they moved to the United States. They have one son, Thomas Ferguson.

Father:

Hirsi Magan Isse

husband:

Niall Campbell Ferguson

Son:

Thomas Ferguson

colleague:

Theo van Gogh

In 2004 Ayaan gained international attention following the murder of Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh had directed her short film Submission, a film about the oppression of women under Islam. The assassin, a radical Muslim, left a death threat for her pinned to Van Gogh's chest.

References

• Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui
  2012