Ayaan Hirsi Ali || Protecting Women's Rights

In two thousand and five, Ion was named by Time magazine as one of the one hundred most Influential people in the world. Ion, so great to chat with you today, Scott, thank you very much for having me on. Well, now you've done I imagine quite a bit of podcast interviews for your new book, and you must be exhausted from talking. Well, first of all, you must be exhausted from the interviews, but you also also must be exhausted telling your story,

your life story, over and over and over again. I'd love to maybe we can get some new stuff out of you today. You know, who knows what's going to emerge because I know how it goes with these interviews.

You're you're a rebel right. I mean, you're I want what I want, really want to understand as and you might disagree with it with that characterizations as a rebel, and I'd love I'd love to hear that, you know, as a psychologist, and this is the psychology podcast, you know, I'm always very interested in, like what the sort of personality character structure was that that led someone to be able to take such stands as you've taken in your life,

and to uh take such unpopular stands, stands that could even put your life in jeopardy. Were you like really young in child, because I know you're born in Somalia, Is that's right? You know, yeah, I was born. Well, you know, what were you like as a really young child? Were you Were you constantly questioning things? Or was that only happening sort of in your teenage years when you started to question? Is you know what were you like

earlier than that? I would say I wasn't constantly questioning things. But I did grow up, you know, time in Somalia. I don't really remember that much about it. Then we

went to Saudi Arabia, we went to Ethiopia. So by the time I get to Kenya with my family, I'm ten years old, and having been exposed to those different cultures, you know, it's quite obvious even to a child that Somali is very different from Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia is actually different from anywhere anybody has ever been to. And then when we go to Ethiopia, again the difference is striking. I mean, Ethiopia would call back in the day it was regarded as a Christian country. There were

Muslim minorities, most of them Somali's. But really I wanted to say, of all the countries that I have been to, Ethiopia might be the closest to what you would call Western. But again I was very little, so I might go there today and think differently. And then in Kenya, that's where I went to school, from middle school to high school, and my classmates came from different parts of Africa, different parts of the world, So again exposed to different cultures.

Now was I constantly questioning everything? I sort of see myself as the average kid. Most of my classmates and age mates had the exact same questions. Maybe the only difference is that they whispered it to one another and were more mindful of the trouble you would get into and actually some of them would warn me and say, you know, stop it, because you'll just get yourself beaten. You'll just get yourself punished. It's pointless. So the asking

of questions wasn't something that was encouraged. But it's not something that I can lay soul claim to. I mean, everyone had the exact same questions I had. We saw the way that voice were treated was very different from the way we were treated. The freedoms that they were given, that was deprived. We were deprived of those freedoms. And if you asked questions about why I think so asymmetrical, why I think so different, then the answer was always the same, which was its God's will. And you can't

argue with God's will. Things are just as they are. And my parents, my teachers, the adults in our society, they thought it as their duty to make you accept things as they are, not question and change. And you had some quite traumatic aspects of your childhood. You underwent general mutilation at age five, is that right? I underwent gentle mutilation at the age of five, But again that was the norm. So every girl I know knew underwent

that and later on as grown up. When I was in the Netherlands and I listened to people condemn it, there was a time when I thought, maybe this is something that just my cland as or my country, and started looking up the figures of the World Health Organization of the United Nations, and it so happens that countries like Egypt, it's ninety seven percent of women, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, We're talking about all of these countries, over ninety five percent,

almost one hundred percent of the girls have been subjected to this general mutilation in various forms. So again the nor nothing exceptional. But what is exceptional is that then talking to people in America parts of Europe, they see that as something that's you know, for many I mean, now there's so much intermingling. People are traveling a lot. We live in the information age, so people are familiar

with these things. But in nineteen ninety two when I went to the Netherlands, it was seen as something very strange, and most people are completely ignorant of it. And when I say most people, I mean in the Netherlands in the West. So it's so amazing to me, how you know, even when you just look at colts and some of the things that just become normalized, and then when someone from the outside looks in, it's like, what the hell are you all doing? And then yeah, it's it's just

fascinating me how things get normalized in these in these ways. Now, did I hear that? To hear correctly that you the general mutilation? It could have been even worse because you had it done by a man as and and it's often even worse when a woman does the general Is that right? Am I making that up? No? You're not making it up. I think I was very lucky that

it was done by a man. Man usually so my brother, my sister and myself it was we call it purification if I translated the Somali word to English, who are purifying the children? So with all three of us are

purified at the same time by the same person. And this to be a guy, and I think he probably was, in hindsight more familiar with cutting off voice, genitals and girls, and so I wasn't subjected to the Really it's called infibrillation, the most severe form which many girls are subjected to, and many of them die and or have to live with, you know, with effects side effects that are just too

horrible to describe here. So again, it's a count your blessings, is what I would say to you know, when you're in your own mind, do you feel like you've a good idea of what values are really moving humanity in a better direction? Which ones are moving humanity in a uh, you know, worse direction, And how do you have so much confidence in that? Well, let's just go back to what you said. You said. You know, I'm a Western liberal person and when I when I come to learn

about female genital mutilation, I find it horrifying. I found it horrifying as a child when it's happened to me. And all, there's no child who's going to tell you that they enjoy the experience. But what happens, and then that comes to the second part of your question is, first of all, it's explained it's ingrained in you as a child. Why the people you trust the most who say what we've just done was physically painful, but it's

done for a higher reason. And so resistance to it or judging it harshly will get you nowhere, or it will get you into more trouble, because then you get to the point of being a rebel and so on. You bring shame upon your parents, you are disobeying God. Whatever argument is used to instill that value into you and for you to adopt that value system is done.

But then, as an adult who gets exposed to different cultures in different settings, if you ask me to take an objective look and say, you know Western liberal culture where the physical body of the human being is protected and cherished and showered with love. I'm not saying every Western person does that, but such a value system has come about so and that's enshrined in laws, their attempts

to enshrine it in treatise and so on. I personally find that superior to the value system of my parents and my clan and my bloodline and the religion in which I was raised, where all sorts of physical cruelties justified in the name of This is what God wants, this is what the Qur'an says, this is what the hadith prophet Muhammed's example. So it's I don't think it's harsh or wrong to make judgments, and I think that there are universal standards by which you can judge and

can develop. But you can't do that without conflict. One of the things that I've learned over time, and I know we're going to talk about this book at some points, is some of these value here, some of these values are they cannot be reconciled, and so you're forced to make a choice. One of the things that's hard for me to understand about Western society is the line line of arguments that is embedded in the philosophy that if you are not a part of a particular culture, you

have no right to make a judgment. And so you, being a white male, you have no right to judge. You have no say over whether female generally mutilation is right from horrible, good, bad. You know, I think that that is just rubbish and that's being charitable. Yeah, you can, and you should, you know, take model positions otherwise humanity and again here's maybe the short answer to the question you asked is do you first you see yourself as a human being and do you see what you have

in common with other humans? Or is it the first thing that you do that you see yourself within a sub category of human beings. And if the answer is we're all human beings and surely there must be universal it's a minimum well, I certainly share those humanistic values. I consider myself a humanistic psychologist. So I'm all about trying to find the calmon humanity. I'd like to trace a little more, you know, sort of at what point

did you start to become disenchanted with Islam? Because there was a point where you were a card carrying member, you know, metaphorically, but you know where you were. You know you were, you carry the Quran, you know by your side, right, and well, yes, indeed there was a time when I consulted the Koran as guidance, as a source of moral guidance for me, and I was attracted. This is around nineteen eighty five and members of the movement called the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now a worldwide

movement but it originated in Egypt, came to Kenya. And there's this man I write about in my book. We call him Balsam, he who fasts one hundred days. And he came preaching, and so did a woman in my school, sisters. So these individuals came to us preaching about morality, and where do you find morality? It's all in our faith. So just calling you, identifying as a Muslim and going about your daily business wasn't enough. You had to really

show that you are Muslim. So you had to consult the Qoran and the mores of the prophet Muhammad and tried to abide by that as much as possible, and to try and make other people do it, so that it's those years that I did carry the Koran around and you know, navigate. I just use the way you would use a GPS system right now, like before I make a decision or before we go to the next thing, let me fast consultancy. What does the currency? What does the prophit say? And you can imagine if you try

and live your life that way, how difficult it is. Yeah, and how life becomes impossible because you're carrying around the book that came about in the seventh century and you're trying to apply it to the twentieth century. So back in nineteen eighties, that was twentieth century. So that's what I was doing. And did I rebel? No, I think I failed. I just failed to keep up with that kind of diligence and devotion and I strayed quietly away from it. And I think that's what happens to most people.

Either you're so fanatical and that you go ahead and you know, live to the logic of that, what's the moral system that's in that book, or you find yourself becoming lax, hypocritical, you know, keeping up appearances for people to see how religious you are, but behind the scenes doing your own thing. So this was a sole progression. It wasn't like an overnight sort of thing. No, it wasn't an overnight think if you were to talk about

on you know, a sort of a sudden change. It was for me nine to eleven, two thousand and one. And with that event, I think I was forced into I was forced out of my mental shelter where I had retreated to and decided, not really decided. I wasn't living by the Koran. I was leading the life of any Dutch woman. My friends were white Dutch people, some of them Christians, some of them atheists, some of them agnostics. But I socialized with them, I ate with them. I

had a Dutch boyfriend with whom I lived. That's a violation of all things that the Quran and the profit stand for. So but I wasn't criticizing Islam. I still identified. When people ask me what is your religion? I still said I'm a Muslim. I used to have sometimes not big fights, but small fights with non Muslims when they

tried to say something negative about Islam. And then nine to eleven came and I think I was forced to I can only speak for myself that I think others do, to take a stand in either supporting what these guys had done or refusing to support it, and be just as horrified as everyone else. And then it wasn't enough for me to be horrified only at the act of destruction.

It is also the philosophy behind the destruction, the motivation for the destruction, And I couldn't turn away from the fact that that came from my Holy Book and my profit and religion that I was and so I had to contend with that on a personal level. And I haven't found anything since that has persuaded me to go back and identify myself as a Muslim. So I don't do you identify yourself as an atheist. I hate identifying myself as any yeah, as anything, but it is so.

I don't believe in Allah, I don't believe in Muhammad. I'm not religious in the least, but I think I'm a little softer say, in terms of comparing religions, and I think Christianity as it's practiced today is much gentler than it was practiced during the Spanish Inquisition, and Islam hasn't gone through that evolution, if you will. Some people like to use the worde reformation. I don't care what word you use, but it hasn't evolved to a point

where the religion does not violate basic human rights. Yeah. So, just going back to when you saw asylum in July nineteen ninety two, you escaped in arranged marriage. Is that right at age twenty two or so? Yeah, I escaped an arranged marriage and that was again just like the female gentle mutilation the norm. So that's how things work

where I come from. The father is your guardian, and he decides for you who you're going to marry, and at what age and what kind of exchange takes place between him and the person that he marries you off to. That's how we do things in my clan, the country I come from, and that's exactly what he did. So I can, obviously, and I did judge him using Western standards, but if you were to judge him by Somali Muslim standards. He did the right thing, and yes, I escaped from that.

It wasn't the right thing for me. I've booked at some of your critics. They say that it didn't exactly happen as you said it happened. What do you say to that? People say that that you were even at the wedding and stuff like that, I was not at the wedding and it happened, and the people who deny it. Yeah, there's this double standard of and I remember this, it's even my own brother who came and talked to a

reporter and said she was at the wedding. The female general regulation didn't happen, And there's this sense, this double standard where he is looking at himself through the eyes of the white man who's asking him these questions, and he thinks, oh, we are being condemned, and he feels a sense of shame, and so the clifflex is to

deny denial, none of these things happen. And again you see it's in any encounter between Muslim communities and non Muslim communities when these types of value judgments encounters happen, a lot of Muslims react just like my brother did, and say, what are you talking about on a don't happen here? Female genital mutilation, It doesn't happen here. No, our family doesn't do that. You know, my father was too this and to that, and so on and so forth.

So that aspect of denial, I would say, is really a part of the pain that is felt by people who grew up with the religion of Islam, who take it seriously, but who also see or maybe who feel enticed by Western, Western values, the Western way of life, modernity. And there's this dance where people want to convey the message that Islam and Muslim civilization is superior to Western civilization.

But at the same time there's this painful awareness that when it comes to modernity and advances in modernity, we're wofully behind. So so many people who have these practices that you criticize, you get the sense that, like, deep down, they know it's not right. You know from a that there's there's a conflict that probably a lot of people have in that religion between their practices and what they're

told in condition. And you see this in lots of things and how people are raised, and there is that conflict. So I saw some interesting distinctions being made that. I don't know if you think that this is an important distinction to me, but I've seen distinctions made between Islamis, which is the political ideology, global Jihadis, which are those who the use of force to spread Islam, and that tends to be a small minority. Then the vast majority

of Muslims are conservative Muslims. And then there's the Muslim reform movement, which seems different than the conservative Muslims as well. What do you say to people who say, well, we really should have that level of nuance, We shouldn't sort of decree the entire you know, because global Jihattists are really the very small minority of it all. What do

you say anything like that? Well, first of all, I think I know at least one person who looks at it from that perspective, that sort of conceptual framework, and that's my Noahs. And Magic has become a friend. I remember a time when he and I were on the opposite side of the debating is when you're debating Islam. So yeah, actually it's not only Magic. Many people would like to use that framework, conceptual framework and then leave it at that. I think there is a need to

go deeper. And the reason why I say that, well, number one, it is true maybe even algo fathers, it's a truism to say that it's a minority of people who organized and their objective is to bring about Islamic dominance not only on the local level, but also on the global level. So there are Islamists on the local level they want to seize power, and then they want to have the last word on all things local and

sometimes it's regional. And then there's a group that think of themselves as people who are going to bring Islam to the whole world through jihad. But if you wanted to understand and be more precise about the diversity of Muslims, I prefer to use a different conceptual framework, and that would take us to the philosopher of Islam, or the

founder of Islam himself, the prophet Mohammad. Maybe I choose this particular way of looking at it because I was educated in political philosophy, and maybe magic's background is in something else. And so I always think you have to go to the original texts and the original philosopher and see when people in the twenty first century invoke Mohammed, what are they saying what are they trying to convey? So if you look at Mohammed when he first comes in Mecca and he says to the people of Mecca,

please come to my religion. You know, do away with your gods. This is the true and One God. For the fast ten years in Mecca, all he's doing is preach, persuade, to try to cajole. He's not using force, and at the end of ten years he's persuaded about one one hundred and fifty people to come to Islam. That's not huge. And then he moves with a small group of very devoted believers or disciples to Medina, and in Medina he takes on a different strategy and he starts to use force.

So now it's not hey, Scott, would you like to come to the One God? It's if you don't, you're going to lose your head. And that approach back in that time and under those circumstances was way more effective, and a lot of people, not just in Arabia but across the planet were converted to Islam through I would say a combination of both the persuasion, which is the invitation it's called dawa, but also in mainly through force.

And so if you're talking today in the twenty first century to a Muslim, how can you distinguish a fanatical Muslim who is following Mohammed's example in the jihadi sense, from a peaceful Muslim who is saying, please leave me alone. All these violent Muslims they don't speak for me. Islamis a religion of peace. I'm a peaceful person. How are

you going to tell them apart? And I think the way to tell them apart is to listen very carefully to the Muhammad that's been invoked, the Mohammad that's been quoted. If it is from Mecca and to you your religion and to me mine, then that is I would call that a Meccan Muslim. You go to Medina and he's like, you know, followers of Isis al Qaeda, the minorities we've just been talking about, they are clearly invoking the prophet

Mohammed's work in Medina. And not only that, the current itself says the revelations that came in Medina abrogate the revelations in Mecca. In other words, the events and the philosophy and the morality of Mecca of Medina voids Mecca. And so if you don't, if you don't take all of these nuances and all of his information into account, I think you wouldn't be able to get to a place where you have or you can't get close enough to a place where you can understand the diversity of Muslims.

And then there's a third category, and Margit mentions that as well, and I work together with him to try and bring these guys out of the closet, guys and girls. And we call them reformers, modifiers, the other people who acknowledge both of these developments, what happened in Mecca and what happened in Medina. But they're not just passive about or I'm just a good peaceful Muslim And they're not actively seeking violence like the Medina Muslims. They're saying, we

can actually change, modify the religion. That is very, very difficult, but they're there. And it's these reformers modifiers whom I think we should seek out and help and ally with. I mean, so, do you see certain aspects of the religion worth saving? Then well, for me, the objective is

not about saving the religion. For me, the objective is about How can we get to a place where we can peacefully coexist with Muslims, respect their identity and what they value, without conceding the most basic human rights life liberty, the subjection of women, or rather the emancipation of women, gay rights. There's a lot of anti Semitism today that's driven in the name of Islamism, Like, how can we

improve on these things? How can we persuade modern day Muslims to come to us our side of the argument, I don't really I don't see it as my job to save Islam or Christianity or Judaism or any other religion. I take this as sets of ideas, man made sets of ideas. Yes, some are better than others, some are more cruel than others. But if we just focus on Islam in this conversation or any other conversation where Islam is the topic, then I would say there's one Islam

and three sets of Muslims. And I describe it fully in my book Heretic, and I'm open to criticism. I'm sure that people who can come up with even better, even more precise, conceptual frameworks which work in practice. But that's how I see it. Yeah, I mean it gets tricky because whenever you take and whenever you generalize to a whole group that doesn't pertain ter everyone in the group, you always run the risk of speaking for people that

don't want to be spoken for. You've been called in my research with you, working into you and preparing for this interview, I've seen you've been called an isamophobe. You've been called an anti Muslim extremist, and you've been called a Muslim hater. Now, I mean, do you not see it that way in the sense of, you know, you don't think you're being an islamophobe by speaking, you know, for Islam in a general fashion. Can you kind of

defend yourself here a moment against that claim of islamophobe. Well, it depends on who's making the claim. Sometimes the claim is made by someone who's trying to proselytize, trying to make Muslims who are not really active or not really persuaded to be more, to practice more, or to devote

themselves to jihad and things like that. And if the objective of the person who's calling me an islamophobe is to persuade those people, and even one step father, there are people who at this right now in the US

are trying to convert non Muslims into Islam. If people like me come along and say, wait a second, in the name of Islam, all of this violence takes place that person would call me and is loam for because it's really just a way of a distracting and trying to silence anyone who criticizes Islam, because the more people look at Islam critically, the less they tend to abide by It's. In fact, today one of the great phenomena we are seeing is so many people who identify as

Muslim are leaving Islam. Very interesting, that is really interesting. Do you know what percentages that do? You? You know what it's First of all, I want to tell you it's very difficult to come by percentages because it's not the sort of thing that you advertise. Just imagine the consequences if people started to say I'm not a Muslim. But because of the Internet, I think there is a

way of looking at it and making estimates. And there's one estimate it was published in the Wall Street Journal, of about one hundred thousand people who call themselves Muslim leaving Islam today in America alone. But in the same article I think it was by Daniel Pipes. In the same article, he also said there are one hundred thousand

people who are non Muslim who convert to Islam. So the effort to convert people to Islam continues, and that is why it's important to know who is making the accusation islamo fork or Islam hater or who are these people. I've also been called an islam hater or a traitor by people who say, you know, their feelings get hurt. They're not converting anyone, They're just sincere Muslims, but they don't like anything negative said about Islam. And what I say about Islam in their ears is not critical or

critical thinking. It's just negative. And so those might also call me names. I mean, given the just the sheer amount of violence that is perpetrated today on the planet by people invoking the prophet Muhammad and people invoking the Holy Quran, I think it is inevitable that we have to discuss Islam, think about it, analyze it dissected, regardless of what accusations people make, and regardless of whose feelings

get hurt. Because on the one hand, we are talking about feelings on the other hand, we are talking about people being beheaded, enslave, you know, whole swords of countries and territories being made unstable, women raped systematically. These are big things. These are huge violations of human rights. And if your only opposition is to say, my feelings are getting hurt, then I would advise those people maybe to ignore people like me and not pick up my work

or not listen to me. It's up to them. We have that freedom, but we will continue to try and understand this phenomenon so that we can come up with ways of stopping the violence. Yeah, you have a trigger warning in your book right at the beginning where you say you will be triggered, you know, something along those signes because you want, well, you want people to engage in this conversation, which is inherently uncomfortable because of the

natural conflicts that arise. Something that's just so interesting to me about all of this is that someone you know who didn't ask to be born, you know in Somalia, you know, didn't ask to uh to be you know, it's not like you know, they were ever given a choice. You must believe in Islam. And then they say, you know what I I think I'm good, I'm gonna I'm going to go to Christianity or something they can get in really serious trouble. It just seems it seems inhumane

to me. And yet, of course that's our universal reality is none of us knew or had any say of where they were going to be born and what the future holds for them. When I came to the Netherlands, size fascinated by that country and why it was so wealthy and peaceful, and why people were so good to strangers and meaning strangers. I mean, I thought of myself as a stranger when I fast went there, and I obviously it was curious as to why they were showering

me with so much kindness and generosity. And you know, that sparked my curiosity to dig into what made the Netherlands what it is and what makes Somalia what it is. And we started with you and I this conversation. We started it with trying to compare value systems. And so then I came to the conclusion, whatever they're doing in the Netherlands, that's right, and it's a model. And if I had the power to export it to the countries where there is political turmoil, and economic turmoil and all

sorts of violations of human rights. I would take some of these Western models and try and transplant them there. Obviously I don't have the power to do that, and I know these things take a very long time, But as we encounter one another people from different parts of the world, I think these are the sorts of conversations we should be having. Not say, oh, if you're born in Switzerland in your life is amazing, you have no right to say anything about a person who's born in Somalia,

and vice versa. I think we should do the exact opposite, because once upon a time, Switzerland and Holland and England and all of these countries that are now in relative wealth actually very violent places. But somehow they evolved, and it's good to take note of that history and see if our own violent societies, like the Somalias of this world, can evolve and become peaceful places. I just want to reflect for a moment, say that this. I'm really enjoying

this conversation. I'm actually learning a lot in the past forty five minutes then a lot of my episodes combined, So thank you so much for enlightening me. You just got me thinking, like, so you live in America right now? Is that right? Yes? What are your thoughts on like a modern American femine? And this is obviously a big question in itself, but coming from you know, you care deeply about human rights, you care about women's rights. Do you think do you have any criticisms of sort of

the prominent flavor of modern of feminist in America? You think they're not going about women's rights in the way that that's even best for women. I mean, have you what are your thoughts on that? Well, I'll tell you yes. Obviously.

Sometimes I'm frustrated by some of the outputs of feminists, especially these gender studies, feminists who have been through these gender studies, modern day gender studies, And I think that some feminists are preoccupied with issues that for me are not a priority, but I understand why it is a priority for them. And then I think we have avoid there are very few women who call themselves femanists who are actually speaking for women who are in a very

bad place. So this afternoon, before I came to speak to you, I was asked about Women's International Women Today, which is about five days from today, and you know who are the women we should be talking about right now. If again, if I had any say, and I don't not that much, I would say right now, I would prioritize the community of Wigas who are being held in China, the wigger women who are being systematically raped and forced

into sterilization. You know, all of feminists should come together and say this is something that should not be happening in the twenty first century and demand from our governments that they take whatever diplomatic, economic, whatever steps that they can take to try and address that situation and bend the will of the Party of China to release those who and grant them their freedom and their dignity. Stop

the sterilization, stop the genocide. I would talk about, you know, the masses and masses of Yazidi women and other non Muslim women who are humiliated and terrorized on a daily

basis because they adhere to a different religion. Inside America and Western societies, there's this whole thing about human trafficking, most of which men and boys are trafficked, but mostly it's girls, little girls and women who are trafficked into and as seen as commodities taken away from taking from place to place for sex and sold into sex slavery, we should be taught. I think these things are just horrifying. They're as bad and as horrible as the slave trade.

And as feminists, these should be our top priorities. If you want to talk about the glass ceiling, you want to see more female members on boards, if you want your fas American female president, you know what, that's fine, go for it. I would sort of flip the priorities. And I would also every time we make an achievement, you know, that makes me think, look, we've had so

many female leaders, let's check that box. Now, let's go back and help these women who have nothing to say about their lives and those who have been mass you know, killed and raped and sterilized and just subjected to these horrific acts. Thank you for bringing attention to these really important issues as well. I mean, you identify yourself as a feminist, surely, I mean you don't identify yourself with anything. Yeah, no,

of course I identify myself as a feminist. But it is because I understand feminism to me someone who seeks for women to be equal before the law, and if necessary, to change those laws so that that equality before the law is achieved for all women. I'm not the type of feminist who tries to bring about equal outcomes. I think that's a very very dangerous path to go down. And the people we call woke these days, the critical raised theorists, the critical justice theorists, when they talk about

they've stopped talking about equality. They now talk about equity and it's all about equal outcomes. Again, very dangerous. You talk here to pursue. But unfortunately that is when modern day feminists find themselves. So it's good to clear the confusion. Yeah, oh I agree. I mean, you're a real humanitarian, thank you. But there are so many others. There are lots and lots of people who are, oh sure, doing a much better job than I am doing. But yeah, these are

the questions. Ver So if you you know, are you a feminist? Of course, I'm a feminist, and so are you. Anybody who thinks that men and women are equal before the lawyer and deserve equal treatment, equal respect, dignity. Everyone thinks that acts on those premise disease a feminist. Okay, so let's talk about your book in the last two minutes of our conversation today. But I do want to

get some of these ideas in there. You know you taught discussing your book various Well, first of all, there are various potential causes for violence against women in Europe outside of immigration specific issues. I'm just curious why in your new book you decide to focus on the particular demographic mainly, you know, men from particular countries. In your decree against rising rates of sexual assault toward women, I was just wondring why you focused on that in particular.

So I think the first reason is scale. It is just the sheer number of attacks and the fact that they're going to increase. Those attacks are going to increase because the number of men coming from Muslim majority countries is going to increase, not only through immigration but also through birth, et cetera. Having said that, I really want to make it very very clear that not all Uslim men engage in sexual violence or have contempt for women.

There are lots of Muslim men, some of whom I have spoken to for this book, who are completely assimilated into the European society that they've come to a full of respects for women and would never do any such things. The second reason why I focus on this particular group is because far right and populist parties are taking advantage of this situation, exploiting this increase in sexual violence against women perpetrated by men from Muslim majority countries for their

own narrow path to power. So they're exploiting the situation. I think if mainstream parties, center left and center right, if they take up this situation, if they take up this issue and do something about it, that the extreme right wing parties will not benefit, probably evaporate, and that's

what we want for them. And finally, we do have a well established Islamist This is radical political Islamist groups that prey on the young men and they say to the authorities in Europe, yes, sexual violence against women has gone up, and they don't deny that it's men from

these countries that are committing it. But the remedies that they put forward are along the lines of all women should stay at home and they should cover themselves up and in these societies you're selling alcohol, you shouldn't be doing that. So it is really a way of Number one, you want the violent acts against women to stop, to cease,

including violence against immigrant women committed by immigrant men. You have to take into account the political salience and significance of this phenomenon, and you want to push against the Islamist's message that men can't help themselves, they are going to behave that way. The only way to stop it is by forcing women to change their behaviors. I hear your argument, and this will be my kind of last question, because I think this is probably the million dollar question

I had when reading your book. You know, you've mentioned that you feel it's important to exercise compassion towards the suffering individuals who arrive in Europe fleeing violence in their home countries. So it can certainly have compassion for that, but you say without selling out women. You know, so there's the quite final question. Answer is how can we support both while sidestepping verification and fear mongering toward two

vulnerable populations. First one the vulnerability of the immigrant men who actually, and it's absolutely true, fleeing conflict freedom places with non economic hope for many of the young men who come, and the journey that they take his arduous.

They have some of them cross the Mediterranean, as you know, many of them have died, So it is completely justified to feel only compassion for them, and I do that feel a great deal of compassion again, but we can express that compassion without selling out women and women's writing, going back to a time where Europe will look exactly like the countries where these people are fleeing. And I think the way to do it is to build on choice.

And this is as an adult human being. If all the norms and values are made explicit in the countries, in the host countries, and then you give each and every individual the choice, and you see, if you refuse to abide by these rules, you could have a point system, you could do There are so many different ways to implement this, but the basic philosophy is you have a choice.

You adopt our values, you adopt our norms, you respect women, you treat them with dignity, you don't break the law, and you get to stay and build your self a future here. And we fight against discrimination of immigrants, people of color, women, et cetera. You refuse to do that, and that refusal is a choice in itself. It's a rejection of the norms and the values and the human rights of others. And when you do that, you then make the choice to go back to your country of origin,

and that should also be implemented. And I can tell you that most people will choose to stay and abide by the law, because why would they take the trouble to flee these places if they're going to go back, And that European leaders have never given these people that choice in the explicit way that I'm pushing for. That's right. And in your book you discuss various ideas for public policy for assimilation and integration. Do you want to tell

our listeners about your new podcast at all? Yes? Please? My podcast is imhircli dot com and click on podcasts and listen to it through that, or you can go and subscribe please, or you can just go to any of the other podcast providers Apple, Spotify, others. And again I arg you please to subscribe. Wonderful. Thank you so much for your compassion, humanitarianism and for your time today on my podcast. Thank you, Scott, and I also really enjoyed talking to you and I wish we had had

more time. Well let's talk again someday. Fantastic, Thank you so much, Thank you, bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard. I encourage you to join in on the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.