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: 


00:00 Intro


04:36 Conformity and its consequences


09:03 Islam and free speech


16:38 Immigration and the clash of civilizations


26:03 Censorship and decline in higher education


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


37:20 Hope for the future


43:58 Outro


Show notes:




“Submission.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo Van Gogh (2004)




Brandeis Change.org petition. (2014)




“When you 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)