Ayaan Hirsi Ali

American-Dutch-Somali Activist and Author

Born in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali earned international attention as a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, actively opposing forced marriage, honor violence, child marriage and female genital mutilation. In 2007, She founded the AHA Foundation – an organization for the defense of women’s rights.

She has written several books including Infidel (2007), Nomad: from Islam to America, a Personal Journey through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015), The Challenge of Dawa (2017), and her most recent, Prey, published by Harper Collins in 2020.

She served as a Member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006. While in Parliament, she focused on furthering the integration of non-Western immigrants into Dutch society, and on defending the rights of Muslim women. 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Previously she was a Fellow at the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard University, and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. She received her Master’s degree in Political Science from Leiden University in the Netherlands. 

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