As a Somali native who was raised as a Muslim and grew up to become one of the most outspoken critics of Islam, you fled to Amsterdam and served in the Dutch Parliament before fleeing again, to America. What kind of security do you have here?
I don’t go from A to B without being escorted by people who are armed. But please, let’s not talk about my security.
In your new book, “Nomad: From Islam to America,” you urge American Christians to try to talk to American Muslims about the limitations of their faith.
We who don’t want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.
That could be dangerous for the proselytizers.
It may be, but in the United States we have a police force and the rule of law; we can’t just say something is dangerous and abstain from competing in the marketplace of ideas.
What Islam really needs is a reform branch — Reform Islam, which, like the Reform Jewish movement, would reconcile an ancientfaith with modern ways.
The problem is that those of us who were born into Islam and who don’t want to live according to scripture — we don’t have what the Jews have, which is a rabbinical tradition that allows you to ask questions. We also don’t have the church tradition that the Christians have.
You have the mosque.
The mosque is not the church.
True. It seems like more of a men’s club.
It’s like a men’s club, and it’s a place where you discuss politics. There are some mosques with facilities for women; it’s usually a back room with a back-door entrance.
In this country, you’ve been embraced mostly by conservatives, especially those at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, where you’re now a resident fellow. Do you see yourself as a conservative?
I don’t. I call myself a liberal, a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
Your own life has been a case study in female subjugation. At age 5, you underwent genital mutilation under the supervision of your Somalian grandmother. Did that include stitching you shut?
Of course I had the stitch-up part. If your family is convinced that you should remain a virgin until your wedding night, they’re going to apply the approach where you get sewed.
You were expected to enter into an arranged marriage with a cousin of yours.
I just looked at him and told my father, I don’t want to marry him. He said, “My child, your presence is not required.” He went on and conducted the marriage without me.
Have you seen the new film, “Women Without Men,” by Shirin Neshat, which is about four Iranian women in 1953 who are driven to the brink of insanity by the ways of the Muslim men in their lives? One of the women is prohibited from leaving the house by her brother, who dreads being humiliated by her.
That is the main difference between the position of Western women and the position of Muslim women. A Western woman is not her brother’s or her father’s property. She’s just herself. She can choose her own lifestyle. But in a Muslim family, the honor of the man is between the legs of a woman. What they think is that she has to be chaste so that their honor can be preserved.
During your years in Amsterdam, you collaborated on the film “Submission” with the journalist Theo Van Gogh, who was consequently killed by an Islamic extremist. Have you been in touch with his mother?
Yes. That poor woman. She is one of the strongest women I have ever encountered. She went on national television in Holland and said, I don’t want Ayaan to feel guilty.
Are you in touch with your mother?
I talk to her on the phone. She says, Please go back to being a Muslim because that’s the only way that you’re going to have any kind of redemption in the hereafter.
