What the maidens s back ass? This is SAM harris. Well, there's a lot going on in iran at the moment in as to the murder of mass armine. Obviously I completely Port, the women and men who are protesting there for their secular freedom is quite extraordinary to see what's happening. There. so. Perhaps I'll do upon cast on that because it turns out some years ago I had a conversation was highly relevant to this moment, with a writer and free speech activist Yasmine, mohammed

thus released this on the best of making sense feed but to put it here, because it really gets at the underlying issue of women's rights. In an unusually complete and personal way in story is being lived and now protested. By millions and millions of women in the muslim world. Henderson, light of a story like this that the killing of mass armine should be addressed, good I am speaking with Yasmine Mohammed as many as a human rights activist and they writer she's, a very eloquent advert, for women living in islamic majority countries, an animal some community generally worldwide and a very effective critic, religious fundamentalism and her new book unveiled, how western liberals and power radical islam- and I bet

yasmine corner for a little while when she was getting ready to write her book and it was at the proposal stage. I blurb to her there's the blurb that appears on the book, but this is a blurb really for her as a person before but was even written as read that here, to give you some context, women, Free thinkers and traditional muslim communities inherited double burden if they want to live in the modern world. They must front, not only the theocratic in their homes and schools, but many secular liberals, whose apathy sanctum honey and hallucinations of quote racism throw yet another veil over their suffering. yasmine Mohammed accepts this challenges courageously, as anyone I've ever met Putting the lie to the dangerous notion that criticising the doctrine of islam is a form of bigotry. Let her wisdom and bravery. Inspire you and so you should hear Yasmine writer,

better background and in, operation into conservative islam, and the double standard there eastern liberals used to think about women in the muslim community. We talk about feminism generally the validity of criticising other cultures and other related topics. So now I bring you a very brave women and one of my heroes, Yasmine mohammed. The. I am here with Yasmine Mohammad yasmin, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me SAM So it is a long time coming. I forget where I covered you, it was a twitter or toward where we get introduced. I send you an email

just a call email, a we risk. I was supposed to do a talk in australia with magic about the sum in the future of tolerance documentary and then I had to cancel it because I was going through a lot of you. Basically, basically as having consistent panic attack sudden, I had to take some time off work. Then I just had to cancel all of my my speaking engaged so. I sent you a letter to sort of apologise that I was gonna be able to make it and then back to me has started asking me about the panic attacks what was going on with their and so then that's how I got into meditation. Actually, our interests yeah yeah. I remember that, but I remember that being the first contact, did you not have a twitter presence, yet I did have a twitter presence. You weren't following me out. Someone could have been forty in your stuff. You, like, I saw you there first, but maybe not

who you go hard on twitter twitter, something we're gonna talk about fair in me, so I was just take it from the top we're talking about your book unveiled in the envelope witless, Let's just start with your story from beginning where, where did you come from and what will your parents like and what was your upbringing like? This is the beginning of your story. That is for better worse made, you wanna, most courageous voices. I can name at the moment so to the beginning. I guess would be parents meeting each other in university in Egypt, so my dad's from a sign of my mom, is egyptian. The palestinians could go to university in Egypt as all covered like they retreated as as egyptians, but they weren't given citizenship. So? They met in university in Egypt and my mother's I'm we very angry at her for marrying a palestinian cause. They thought he was so beneath her but they got married and then they moved to San francisco together and they

there during the peace love hippy era, and they had my sister and I was a bit too much peace in love, and so my mom wanted, like a quieter place, to raise the kids, and so then they move to vancouver Canada that's where I was born, but then their marriage fell apart in the end anyway. So when I was about two years old, my dad's, you know left us went to the other side of the country. So here my mom is now in a new the tree, no support system, no community, three children and she's feeling you know depressed vulnerable, sound, lonely all that's enough how religious, where they, this point, no religiosity whatsoever, neither of them they're both grew up very secular. My dad heads like zero connection to religion is

like a cultural thing, very anti, Israel just being palestinian, but there's no religious like him. Personally, he wasn't very em. It was a practising I'm a man's all alone, and so she was looking for a support system and she goes looking at the mosque firm community.

At the mosque. She finds a man who is already married. Already. Has three children, but he offers to take my mom on as his second concurrent wife wrote. So you know she is happy to have somebody take care of her and take care of her kids and so she's willing to put up with whatever he is dishing out. My dad was abusive towards her. He used to hit her and this man never hit her. It hit us of course, but he never hit her. So she felt like this was a better relationship for her, so she stayed with him as a second concurrent wife. We lived in his basement and he is very, like my life changed completely when he entered our lives. So before him I used to be able to. You know, play with my

neighbors friends like we play barbies together. I'd go swimming, had read my bike. I gotta birthday parties, listen amuse egg, ever just like a normal childhood and then once he entered our lives, it was just. Immediate everything as forearm everything is forbidden and all of a sudden, my mom started covering her hair and we had to start reading from this book of this. You know these words that I too understand and a headstart praying five times a day and I resisted it from the beginning. Of course, I missed my old life. I was especially a site that I couldn't play with Chelsea lindsey anymore. They always come knocking on the door wide to play barbies and we never. I was ever allowed to go and they were never allowed in and he's going to the same school at this point, we're yep, but not for long, and then I got as soon as the islamic school was. I mean it wasn't built. It was in the mosque, but as soon as it was established that we would have an islamic school and my mom was teaching

that then I started going. There was this associated with any religious, wakening on your mom's part, or she just needed a man to take care of her analysis and practical and ran roma. Well, I don't know if romantic as part of it, I think you practical for sure, and it was a combination of both of those things, so she needed. I think she was happy to have somebody take care of her, but then also she just became a full on board again muslim, so she just entered it like she just jumped all in. It was never look here. If you see her wedding photos, she look like bond girl. Like short, wedding, dress, big huge beehive. You know there is a bellied answer at her wedding and to go from that

If the woman that raised me that I remember is just that pretty shocking difference and I used to always you know, resent that I'd be like how come you got freedom? How come you got to live like this? Look at your pictures when you were a kid you know how come I don't that life and she'd say because my parents didn't know any better and I am raising you better and you're gonna be a better person and you're gonna go to have it at my parents did the best they could, but they were wrong, and so how old are you in your expressing these doubts? Sir Ladysmith, you know about six old when he entered our life and I just I resisted all the way up it, probably about nine years old. When I stopped because that's when the hijab was put on me, Nice are going to islamic school and it was just too much so you can't really fight any more. When everything in your life is he now pushing you in one direction? You just now succumb, especially when you're a kid, but according to my mom I was never. You know,

good enough. I would. The devil was always whispering in my ear and making me question. I was asked questions, rightly if a lot hated everything who created a law and stuff like that like? How could I even these are such blasphemous? You know if Adam and eve are you know the parents of all people? Are we all children of incest? So these basic questions of lino that a kid would ask I'd in trouble for them so is there any point where you just went hook and sank and fully adopted the world view. Without doubt, did you ordered you always have some doubt how many in the back the the doubt humming in the background finally went quiet once I was forced into the marriage with s arm

for once? I married him, and I warn of so that's like full face, covering the gloves everything I was so diminished that I didn't have anything left the wrist and- and I also kind of made the conscious decision that I was desperate for my mom's love and approval. My sister was always the good girl that always listen, never questioned and- and my I wanted that I wanted to have you know that relationship with my mom, so she kept on pressuring me to marry this man, and I eventually gave in because I thought you know what may be shot actually love me if I follow what she wants me to do, I'll, marry them, and she tells me to marry I'll, do everything the way she says to do it. I've been fighting against this. My whole life. What happens if I just let go and see if she's actually right,

and how to raise this point? Some twenty and I did let go, and I did follow exactly what she said. And until I had my daughter and health, her in my arms and saw that she was about to grow up in same environment that I grew up in my mom was talking to her the same way she talked to me. Her father was talking about f g m and her dying, a martyr for a law, and things like that. Unlike ok enough, he now I'm not. I could maybe accept this world for myself. What am I can accept it for my daughter, there's no way. She's gonna live this same Where was he egyptian yeah? I think people are generally aware that F Gm, his practice in Egypt like ninety eight years.

was it she hastily, like somalia and enjoyment of the prevalence of their practice so, and this was A fully arranged marriage or origin had been courage. What once you had met him so It wasn't fully ranged in that. I didn't know who's gonna marry him my whole life? Sometimes people arranged marriages for their kids like from the gatt go, but it was definitely a forced marriage, which is a very good and thing in the arab world so like This is the man we want you to marry and then you basically just get introduced to him and the woman doesn't need to consent, feel like in a slam. It says silence is consent, so if you just sit there and cry it's like okay, we're good yeah. I you're now you know that's like saying I do, and so there it was. You know you get

ushered into it. In the same way, you get pressured into everything else, so it's just like wearing the hijab and you you get you get given two choices. Like do you want to go to Heaven and you want to go to hell. Do you want to be a good, pure, clean girl? Or do you want to be a filthy whore like these? Are your choices? Make the right choice, so forcing you into a marriage is similar kind of coercion, so it would be things like there's a hadeeth that says Heaven is at the feet of your mothers, so your mother gets to side, whether you're gonna go to have it or not? So this was the one that was used all the time and it's a very dangerous weapon for an abusive mother to have so She would use that when she'd say you're, never gonna go to Heaven. Unless I approve you to enter, have it and if you dont mary, this man you will never go to have it. You will burn in hell for eternity and you will suffer on earth? Because you are no longer my daughter, I want nothing to do with you,

He won't even allow you to come to my funeral because I don't like, as far as anyone is concerned, you're no longer my family and then, when you dial burn in Hell fraternity, so go ahead and make the choice. Reading your book, you say a fairly heroin account of what your child, and adolescents and young adulthood was like, and I think it's useful to differentiate. What is just the sheer bad lock of hair an abusive and perhaps mentally ill mom and having married somebody who will will get into his story in a moment, but. That's bad luck that could happen to anyone in any culture, whether with without religion then there are the cultural practices are necessarily mandated by islam and maybe don't necessarily represent every muslims or even most muslims experience and then there's just what is.

fairly common under Islam, because you can just play, connect the dots and see that it is mandated, or at least encouraged the tax so weird, how do you can carve out those different strands? For me, what is just the sheer bad luck of it based on the personalities involved and where where's the contribution of islam here? So the problem is these: a lot of these elements are sanctioned in Islam, so a sam says, for example, tells a man if you fear that your wife is, you know arrogant or disobedient then you know, go through these steps and then beat her. So is that, like a law's telling men, if you fear that your wife, you know, is going to give you any trouble beat her. So not every single man is going to beat his wife and not every single man is going to. You know viciously

meet his wife. There's going to be you know, different men are going to react in different ways, but the problem is the fact that it is sanctioned. So if you complain about it. Like in my example, when I went to my mom and said he just punched me in the face when he saw that I was wearing a job in the house on the seventeenth floor because he was afraid. People like I don't know seagulls bemoan helicopters, might see me through the window and her response was. He has every right to be you. You are his. It says so, right there chapter four. First, thirty, four! So that's the problem. The problem is that it it's it's, it's codified, it's in the religion and so It can be used in different ways. You not unlike not like I said, not every muscle man is gonna, beat his wife, but those who do have scriptural support near her

debate. Really is not whether or not that support exists, but what is meant by beating It's how hard you can be sure, that's very subjective here, you know and their scholars that come forward, and they say things like oh Oh, you know you just like a sea like a with a toothbrush, her whatever, but those are just scholars offering their interpretations. As far as the hurons concerned, it doesn't say that it just as the rwanda that set it had it offers. No, you know there's no abstracts there, but that's subjective anyway, like you, you don't. It depends on the country that europe depends on the environment, that your use do yeah beating is can be pretty bad and any obviously

hitting another human being is a bad thing anyway, and the creator of the universe really should not be sanctioning husbands to be beating their wives, but there's a there's. A famous critic of Islam named hammered out the summit whose an egyptian german man, who had a really great way of describing lesson he says it's like a laws but her and he had a bit much to drink and he's like you guys, you dislike, eager wives, man and his friends, the scholars are behind him going to know he doesn't really mean that he doesn't know. Doesn't he doesn't actually mean that he needs like like with a feather or something, so those are just the scholars trying to soften it up at the end of the day, people read the hood on and they you know they quote, verse so and you were in the new carpet this point at one point that happen. Punjab was was nine years old you now, as far as I can remember,

and then one say was engaged to him started wherein than a hobby got it all delivered from saudi arabia, and that really helps in dehumanizing you that really helps in turning me into nothing that he can control very easily. It just suppresses your humanity entirely psych up portable sensory deprivation chamber, and you are no longer connected to humanity. You can't see properly can hear properly. You can speak properly. People can't see you knew can only see them. I mean just little thing it's like passing people in the street and just making eye contact and smiling like that's gone, you're no longer part of this world, and so you very very quickly just shrivel up into nothing under there. Yeah. Well we're gonna get to this. But it is amazing how sanguine western feminists

are around this practice like this is just another. Culture is ideal of had honour, feminine beauty and empower women. Who are we to criticise it? We should differentiate the hijab from the nikobob. The hijab is just a straight up: symbol of female empowerment. Now in the west For some reason, people one can't see that most of the women on earth right now her wherein job are not doing it. Based on some empowerment

I felt at an ivy league institution where they're just they're just going to take the male gaze off them at their own discretion, so they're forced to do it the consequences of not doing it in many cases are, if not absolutely coercive social pressures, actually physical violence, but it is also just a step toward the niqab and the burka, which are the actual crystallization of the ideal. Here that's been enshrined, which is it's all of the female modesty, is the only saying that safeguards male sexuality from completely running a monk psych all men would be growers in rapists, but for the fact that women hide themselves. Maybe

jump into that now. I want to talk about your who your husband revealed himself to be, but what have europe encounters with western feminists been like? Well, that makes me really sad that they consider muslim women to be of some other species and that are so come. Fleetly different from them so for themselves. They will recognise. All of those things that you talked about are basically victim blaming. You know, slut shaming they wreck nice, those elements of rape, culture. When we're in the western context, which are you know there are much harder to see in the western context, but under shirt, It's very very easy to clearly see a perfect example of rape, culture. But they somehow when it though,

those women over there it it's empowering like. Would it be empowering for you if you were told You have to wear this clothing in order to protect yourself from men who might rape you or you have to wear this clothing in order to be good and pure and go to Heaven, because if you don't wear it, then you're a filthy whore The you wouldn't and no woman would want to hear that no seven year old child would like to be told you have to wear this in order to go to school in your brother doesn't have to, he can wear whenever he want but you must wear this or you're not allowed to get educated. It is an atrocity like that that something that every human being should be upset about and the fact that they think That it's ok for those humans over there, but not for us, is the part that really upset mania sure, when what do you do with the fact that you could when to any one of these cultures.

find women who will say, I want to wear them I want to wear the burka, just take your colonial bullshit elsewhere, yeah, oh of course there will be, and you can also go to fundamentalist christian. in our cults, and they will tell you I want to be a servant from my husband. You see people like that on twitter, all the time rather, like you know, I quit my job and I cook and clean from my husband, I'm proud of it and whatever it is that women make all sorts of choices, and decisions in that really up to them and their free to do that, and but I am also free to make a judgement on the decisions that are making. So what I'm talking about the the hijab as a symbol of patriarch in a symbol of massage any I'm saying that, because, as you meant,

and not only our girls coerced into it because of you now family or government or religion, but girls can be killed because of this, and not just in the muslim world. But canada in amerika in france. In Sweden, there is honored well was an honour killing going on a girl. A sixteen year old girl in canada was strangle to death by her father and her brother with the hijab she refused to wear and then parents refuse to bury her, because I don't want anything to do with her. There are so many stories around us, the one that some stranger than fiction is the case in saudi arabia. school where the school was on fire and the religious police? Wouldn't let the fire department put it out, because the girls weren't appropriately veiled near and literally parents standing the gates of the school watching their daughters burnt alive. It's just stir and there are women that any wrong.

Today that are being imprisoned for fifteen years and more for refusing to wear this cloth on their head, so it's not just You know it's not just a benign choice when the plan, minister of new zealand or when Meghan Markle put a hijab on their head. It's not a benign support of some benign cultural thing. It is a s not just a symbol, but an actual tool of oppression. There are women being imprisoned and women being killed. There is a fight over this hijab going on right now. women in sudan, Egypt, IRAN, saudi arabia, other burning their hijabs in the streets, their fighting against this thing and then to see free western women and free western women leaders. Take this thing that they are fighting against and v all in terribly dawning at it and supporting it. What does

women are doing. Is they are supporting the oppressors there? some hurting the oppressors that these women are fighting against the other. The double standard is so clear and it really is sanity, straining that it so hard for people to see. So I got a minute what the clearest case for me: in the media was when I remember this, but Warren Jeff's thieves, the leader of the authority, as the fundamentalist mormon cult, his compound was aid and all these old girls and young women were led out in these little house on the prairie dresses rather made to wear this awful eighteenth century dresses and they had been met married, two men who work near their grandfathers ages, and these forced marriages were described as rapes

the men were totally unrepentant. Annual Jeff's got things at least fifteen years in prison. I forget it. You ve got a real prison sentence: and this was all talked about on the news as just an unambiguous example of patriarchal exploitation of girls, the fact that I was associated with it with religious belief was not even slightly exculpatory end, everyone celebrated the fact that there was a sweet team raid on the compound we kicked in the door of this place to freedom. Rules. Are us and it didn't matter at all that the girls didn't want to be free numa. We knew they had been brainwashed, real when there is talk about how they loved their husband for to a man. Whatever was no, had any qualm did county in that for their obvious ignorance and brainwashing, and when you compare

here that to what is happening routinely in the muslim world, the mainstream media has the opposite response, and this is the most benign case of real extremism in the muslim world amiss its ear in truth is not even extra, but they stream ism in the muslim world. You have to add to that the clear, direct amazed. been performed on these girls. The fact that- they were raising their sons to be suicide bombers right and there was an explicit doc. Nation of martyrdom, and they were exporting terrorism to appear the capitals of europe and america? That's how did the fundamentalist mormon cult would have to behave to make it an analogous situation and no one can see it on the left? A s other example. I should mention it, but please

Imagine this on a previous podcast, but it really belongs here cause we were talking about this last night. I just saw eye on Hirsi Ali, give a talk at a university for the first time in three years he has, since she was deeply formed at brandeis as a fairly conservative college. Pepperdine. In an explicitly christian college, and she ran through her whole life story. Onstage miss starting with fever genital mutilation, abuse in school, physical abuse, sexual abuse. She described it routine among her friends at the school she was in. Describe all this and how she escaped a forced. Marriage became a member of parliament which she is just the truce feminist success story. Right and as she starts to get into a discussion of contemporary politics honestly, the edges.

then she said was if I were teaching at a university and some one and one of my students said that they didn't want to read and a certain novel because it triggered them. I would insist: they re that novel, because that's what a university is for and then I think the other thing she said was when me too came up. She expressed blanket support for it, but she said we have to keep a sense. portion there that the harvey wine scenes of the world and then their people

I put a hand where it's not wanted and you slap it away. She was trying to give some articulating that this spectrum of misbehavior that we needed differentiate and as she is talking about this again, she had just spent a half hour describing an a and a background, so replete with abuse, patriarchal abuse that you would think it would. It would have earned her intersectionality points of a sort that you know you. Few people have and I've got these white women students behind me who are beginning to almost heckle her Right, it was just you hissing and laughter among themselves, and then they walked out. It was like a megan over. There is another kind of brainwashing there's, a kind of moral panic happening around variable. Of gender and raised on the left? That is making it impossible to even parse the state

and are they somali woman right who just recapitulated the entire enlightenment success story of of reach We mean secularism and modernity and humanist values in her own case in a few short years. It just amazing. Anyway, The earlier I mean if, when I am had white skin and had overcome all of those things in the west, she would be celebrated should be hailed as a feminist hero. So I mean when you were talking before about the difference between that mormon calls and girls in the muslim world. I started to cheer up because it reminded me of your ted talk, which community again that ted talk to me hit me so hard, because it was the first time anybody in like

media I've ever heard somebody care about those girls the same way. You would care about any other girls lake the argument you are making in that ted talk like these girls in afghanistan. Why are they different than the girls from them? Warming corpse. Sorry, sir, no is relentless hikers laelia. Thank you someplace that sir. You don't have to apologize. This is good radio yeah way few people notice it, but I actually teared up in that ted talk. I can't remember we spoke about this or not, but there was a point. I talk about honour killing and, I said imagine your daughter gets raped and what you want to do is is kill her out of shame and obviously I had rehearsed that

hawk a ton. Unlike any other talk, you ever gave a ted talk, as is like this memory feet right. We have to remember. Every line because you're you ve got a hard time limit and no notes- and so is a very I've, talked to give, because your basically It's a performance as yourself, maybe you're, not thinking out loud, because you really have a script that you've memorized at least that's the way. Most people do it and the way I've done both of my ted talks and so I obviously I knew exactly what I was going to say and I had done this. You know a dozen times at least, but I had just been told a couple hours before going out on stage that my first daughter had taken her first steps so Got to that point, the talk totally punctured me and I will actually almost burst into tears and you can sort of people who, just watching as a ted talk, don't send a notice, but you can see that

and I have I have like I'm almost totally derailed in the talk at that moment and yeah it's you could see that you actually care. That was very evident and that's why it hit me so hard is because I'm so used to there being this two tier system of, like all you know, girls, that matter and then the girls that don't matter- and that was the first time I had seen in the western world. Somebody standing up like in a ted talk, speak king up for us as if we were human beings like every other girl on the planet, and that was very evident in your talk and then, of course, you know immediately after your talk, you get questioned about it and you know the the the all the predictable things happen, and so you know that's a that's a very quick.

It comes to swallow after the yeah exactly here. I am feeling all excited and happy and there it is. But you know I just wish that this is why the the subtitle of the book, how western liberals in power, radical islam, like that's what it's all about. I want my liberal friends and supporters, and you know my this is where I see myself. I am in this realm too. So when I talk about liberals, I'm not saying those people over there, I'm saying us over here. We need to look at what we are doing and we need to stay. Can sustained and if we believe that all humans are equal, then why are we having a different set of

You know. Why do we use a different yardstick for these people versus these peat bogs? I feel like if they could see that if they could understand that, then they would get it like. I feel like if they could get the lunacy of. Would you celebrate a mormon underwear on the cover of sports illustrated no you, wouldn't. You would automatically see that that's ridiculous for many different reasons, but then having a burkina on the cover of sports illustrated that something to be celebrated like I just want them to stay with the thought for farmers and just continue on with that and think? Ok, why is the celebrated- and this is not your yeah? It's is very hard to understand how the point doesn't run through and change.

people's outlook just in real time. Whenever you have the conversations I like an example, I occasionally use when I'm getting criticized for judging another culture like and again I always go to the most extreme, and still it's not extreme enough. So I talk about the taliban. Are you stuck with the taliban a lot before isis came around, but when I was In this conversation a lot I would talk with the taliban, I would say: look at will Then. I am starting to agree with you so, I think I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna send my daughters for a year, internship to Afghanistan, reiser they'll have to wear it erika and they'll they'll just learn to recite the koran and that in other get beaten if they take the bark, often in a little broaden their horizons and just get the full cultural experience some. I am I a good fathers that is at the right decision right and its cost. littered. I've never seen the point. Land lay a is just like. It's considered, oh

On the one hand,. I'll blow or it just doesn't compute. so like a and- and you you find yourself in this conversation a lot with both on social media and in the world. What is it that keeps the double standard ethical in place, even when you pointed out. I think it's because we have been taught that you cannot criticise other cultures. We can only criticise western culture. Is the only culture that safe to criticise so my counter argument, that is when you criticise something that is how progress happens, so western culture has been criticised a lot and that's why there's algae bt, equality here and women's equality here and all of these progressive. You know we got rid of slavery in all of these things happen because of internal criticism

is how progress happens. If you do not criticise things that deserve to be criticized, how will progress happen? So these groups of people that are saying in a no, we cannot criticise the taliban or we cannot criticise the fact that iranian. Not what the iranian regime is doing, recited, raby, arabian, our etc, etc, etc. We're doing is you're saying we want those cultures to progress they need to. Stay the way they are you no fourteen hundred years ago, the way they the religion formed the way she rio was formed. This kind of thinking needs to just be fossilized. Now that is what again, we ve got that two tier system going on Why dont these people deserve progress as well? Why don't? The gay people in those countries deserve to not be executed? Why

Don't the women in those countries also deserve not free the nipple, but like free the face? You know like why don't they also deserve freedom house? They a different kind of human than you are because there are people in those countries that risking their lives. I mean America's got, you know like live free or die they they they embody that live free or die I entirely, and they are let me know I sped away just blogging about humanism. Logging about liberalism gets him whipped in the streets, gets him ten years in prison. You know I mentioned in iran, removing a job off of your head, gets you thrown in prison inside. arabia a woman was walking without hijab on got thrown in prison I could go on and on non about these cases and that doesn't even start to talk about the twelve countries too,

the fifteen countries. I can remember right now that will execute people for being gay, you don't work when you are lost or being an apostate. Yes, if you decide that you dont want to believe in this religion anymore, then you are to be killed. Your given three days to repent and if you dont repent within those three days, then you are to be killed so? If we liberals- and we believe in liberal values, why do we only care about the algae bt that are living in close proximity geographically to us? What a bit about the ones over there. Don't they matter to, can we talk about them as well? But no we excuse. It over there or we ignore it over there. So how Well, those countries for grass. How will those cultures progress? It's unfair? deserve it to feminism. Is it is universal? It's not just western or all of human rights yourself.

I guess it's a concern about racism and the balance of power and wealth between the west and the rest of the developing world, the legacy of colonialism in his white gill? and yes, it s white people in wisdom, in the centre of it all. They always want to be in. center of it all. It always has to be as a result of you know, as if arabs were just frolic king, in the desert, making sandcastles until the white man came along and taught them how to be baddies to each other. You know like please. These things happened and these things unit, regardless of western intervention. Of course that adds in some cases fuel to the fire But that's not the be all and end all the you know. America is not that the centre of the of the reason for everything that's happening in the muslim world there's a whole

their world over there that had existed before the west even existed. So and then again there's this idea that you know People need to remember that islam is the second largest religion on the planet. It's not Some little minor league in them in america about one percent or so are our most some. So they think that is just a small grew better. Not really not that many people in the fire and the concern as its beleaguered minority and in the west, the generally brilliant, especially in a place like america, so that a minimum- that's probably true, but it is not a beleaguered minority on a global scale. So if you just you know, expand, on that and the reason why this matters to us over here is because ideas cross borders. They dont do stay over there. So you know all of these. These massaging estate yes- and these

These things that we're talking about the honor culture and the honor vial, and the honour killing that doesn't just happen over there. and you know those ideas all come here too. I would born and raised in a western country in a secular democracy, but I essentially lived under sharia and my own home and in my own school, because we're separated in a bubble from from the rest of society. So for me to get out of that world was, you know infinitely easier than it is for a woman, inside you re the hour and sudan or in somalia are in Pakistan is having the same lots as I am in the same feelings as I am wanting to get free. She can't because she's you know her she's, not so we did by her government in the way I was right. She couldn't just go, get student loans and get on social system or whatever. Like there's note, there are no, you thoroughness, there's a support system for that shall in fact get imprisoned org. She could be killed.

War defying her family and even in your case, it was still fairly hard for you to get out of you. You told me a story about what it was like. I think what you, when you were twelve to report, your desire for freedom to one of your teacher, so perhaps tell a story. He also that's mr fab browser at the forum to my book. I just met him recently. I was twelve years old when I meet him. We met him again recently. I was twelve years old and I were thirteen, years old and I went to him and I told him about the abuse that was happening at home, so this was during the time when I was still fighting trying to to get out of the home. I was in my mom was married to this abusive man And I showed him the bruises and I told him the stories and he

calling the police send, child services were involved in it s going to court, and essentially the judge ruled that. because my family are arab, and that is the way they choose to discipline me then that's their right and so, first of all I have to explain how difficult it is when you're part of an insular community. to go to the outsiders. So I have to go to the nonbelievers and ask them for help. That's it. That's really a betrayal, it's kind of like if you're in the mafia, if you're the rat, you know I'm going to the cops and I'm saying I need help

so for me to overcome that as a child and to go and ask for help and then to have the judge. Basically tell me sorry, your family happen to have been born in this country, so you're not gonna be protected. Had your parents been born in you know, sweden or germany or scotland. I would protect you, but sorry, you know. That's just luck. Other draw here. You know I'm. I'm hearing him tell me you matter as much as other kids.

And I know that it's coming from a place of trying to be culturally sensitive, but it ends up like this. This whole cultural relativism, moral relativism, you end up hurting the people in those groups, and you end up supporting the people that are oppressing Within those groups yo, this is marges point about abandoning their minorities within the minority, as if you can, about minority communities, also pay attention to the people who are being routinely victimized in those communities as you're taking in this case. You're taking the side of the crowd. Yes, who are abusing women and girls over the where's the women and girls yeah and gaze gary thinkers and apostates in any one else in the community is being abused. Apps lately, and why why does it matter if this little girl

has blonde hair and blue eyes, and her parents took razor or her aunt. the razor and and chopped out her clytius, but then skirl over a year, has brown skin and her family from somalia, and they did the same thing. Now why would one set of parents be treated differently by law enforcement than another set of parents? Those two girls are both suffering equally there. There is no difference between these children. how it's going to affect them for the rest of their lives. Why is one more important than the other? That's what they're there well meaning excusing cultural norms. This is what ends up happening. You end up leaving these kids to be victimized, but then you also end up becoming incredibly racist. You the yet another irony in aid the irony museum. The people who are actually being racist here are the people who are

We are most concerned about racism. Yes, that's what I heard from the judge. That's how I felt and that's what I've been told, my whole life, you know I told these non believers. Don't care about you. These non believers hate you non believers are your enemy and ever believed it, but that judge made me actually believe it. I was I He really just said that to me. He really just said you don't matter as much because you're from that culture, if you are from culture acts you would matter but you're from culture wise and you don't matter so I felt tat he was being racist towards me. That was probably the only time in my life cause. Canadians are in generally, not racist people, but that was the only one

in my life, and it was coming like you said, like you know, it's coming from a place of of good intent, but it ends up being being so counterproductive, and all of these things are so when you say people of color and color it as a person of color. That is segregation. You are sup, it's no different than saint coloured people, because you're saying here is humanity, here's people and then here's people of color, the they're your other ring us. How is that? racism, don't separate us we're all just people. This is a point from which I find very few takers when I'm in these conversations with someone who's more work I am if we acknowledge that the goal is to get to a society where we're all just human beings and the color a person. Skin is one of the least interesting

facts about them totally analogous to the color of their hair and you got blondes you got red. Has you got people black hair and brown hair? Who cares? You know? End anyone who said: will you not? We really need to take an inventory of how He belongs, are doing this sort of job of aid and out of blonde cardiologists, I've noticed and this clearly the sum from the happening there. How do we correct for this an onion article right and I'm not discounting the fact that racism has been a terrible problem and is still a problem in certain cases. But if the goal is to get to a society that is actually post, racist and post racial When can we start acting as though that were the case right? Is it one is? Is it too soon to start acting as though you actually don't care about the cholera person skin? and you don't want to hear every political argument parsed by that variable or any political argument parse by that variable and it's a mess

using when you're in conversation with a white, liberal intellectual, you can almost guarantee that the door to that consideration is bar. It's too soon, though, there is no argument for that, even met. People who say this is a false ideal race is always going to be the most important thing. So am I if your king was wrong when he said that we should judge them based on the content of their character versus the color of their skin. Exactly so, it's a explicit disavowal of that with a clear conscience and no one seems to notice which is really inconvenient for those of us who are left of centre on basically, every issue rice awaited them visited this great scandal that it that surrounds

people like I on And- and perhaps you have direct experience with this it as well that the allies you find when you tell your story of abuse under islamists theocracy are christian conservatives in neo cons. You know people on the right who recording accordingly, for this reason that I don't support yet, but also to take it. My experience with christian conservatives at least these are people who don't doubt the power of religious ideas religious indoctrination. So when were nay run their code with it, the one toggle switched it they know. Ok, I know that isis, even when, when isis makes their videos and frames at all in religious language, the chris in fundamentalists, have no problem understanding what happen

there will be the understand, the power of ideas and secular liberals reliably. Don't they just think for the Gaza be another explanation uses this. Something else is going on here. This can't be religion because they understand the power of religion, the power reverend doctrine, indoctrination. Speaking about the power of indoctrination, who did your husband turn out to be so? My ex husband was a a member of Al Qaeda. He joined when he was eighteen years old so when he was fourteen years old, his father In egypt, there is a very clear distinction between classes, so if you're from a lower class or higher class, it's not you know is not a democracy, others, it's very there's very clear. You dress differently. You speak differently, you act differently and so when he was growing up here,

Family, you know his father when he was about fourteen years old got a better job, they move to a better part of town and he went to better schools. So he didn't really fit an because he is coming from the other side of the tracks and assault that he was being bullied, but it he just didn't fit in with his peers, and those are the ones that the jihad is go around, trying to catch those boys. So much like gangs or you know, neo nazis. You know their catching those boys that are full of aggression and at that age of fourteen to ten. Sixteen, where they're. Just there not you know, they're, not cognitive lee mature, but their physically, able to me another strong in their full of

Starts around in their full of aggression and jam, he was encouraged that if he joined this group of men that he would reach levels of Heaven that no other human would ever reach other than like the profits. So it was, you know it it's intoxicating, so he joined this group and knowledge now his friends at and want to be friends with them didn't matter, because he was friends with these men that were amazing and powerful, and you know, and so when he was eighteen. He told his father that he wanted to go to america too,

daddy and his father. Let him go, but instead he meant to Afghanistan and he and he was with bin Laden- and you know a member of for Qaeda for ever since he was a kid right, she's trains by him raised by have essentially- and eventually he was sent to canada- to be the the the center of the cell that were here in support of nine eleven tat to me. Now to that end, and I live what you're was this. This was now, Ninety six, so I lived com,

close to the american border. I lived in a city called white rock and at the time you could cross the border with jested drivers. Since I mean you could just say, I'm just cry: I'm just going to bellingham to get some gas or whatever like they. Don't nobody cared. You could cross the border so easily back. Then, and so it's easier it was easier for them to come into canada and crossed the border verses. Going on to america. and all of the stuff that I'm telling you now. I learned, of course after we were divorce. Like me, just going on his wikipedia page and finding the new york times, articles and stuff That's so at the time all I knew was that he had cause. He entered canada, so he's egyptian he's coming from Afghanistan and he's entering canada with a fake

saudi arabian passport and sets a lotta red flags, but then, all of a sudden he gets this money sent to him that bills him out of prison and pays for a lawyer, and they have traced that money and that came straight from bin laden. He said somebody from california up to to bail him out of prison and got him one of the best lawyers and the lawyer argued that he doesn't have egyptian citizenship, because Egypt had taken a citizenship away because they knew he was a terrorist, and so he needed to enter canada as a refugee. It's pretty crazy now to think post nine eleven that he actually was approved as a refugee with all these red flags, but you know who knows what they were thinking, but a part of me suspects that the FBI were already following him and I'll. Tell you why I suspect this is because

So I married to him covered had to turn black, never leave the house unless I'm with him, but then one day. My mom starts to bleed simultaneously from her nose and her mouth, and I call nine one one and I go with her to the hospital this. the first time in our entire marriage that I'm out of the house with him not now to me and my mom not next me either I'm alone for the very first time, and that is when I'm approached by ceases. Who are the canadian cia? That's the approach me like immediately in the waiting room. I thought that they were doctors and eyed, and so that's why I suspect that FBI, the kind of like let a man like me along with ceases. They said: ok, go ahead, led him into the country unless we follow him and see what what he does while he's here, because I don't know how they could have found me

so quickly and they sat me down and they told me you I was married to and I had been lied to. I knew he was and of ghana sound, but I've been told he used to drive an ambulance. He was peacekeeper at a permit. I can that's what he was doing and afghan road and he was the reporting. The afghans. Boys are fighting against the russians, training the little heads and you know he's just a do good humanist and I so I learn from sea says who he really is, and the terrorism he was really involved in, and so of course that gives me the kick him, but I needed to get myself and my daughter away from him did you believe them immediately. I believe them immediately because everything that all

the things that were happening that were making me feel suspicious, where everything just started to make sense everything just clicked it was just a click. Click click! Oh, ok! That's why this and that's why that he was always really secretive. I I never like go for like days at a time I didn't know where he was, and you know he he would get like I just I I am it all made sense to me. There was one time there was a time magazine that had bin laden in it and he flipped out and he said, get this out of the house. Why is this in here? Do you want me to get kicked out of the country, and I was like. What why are you having such a reaction like it and then their exp? They showed me a picture of bin laden. Two and they're like did were the radius she liked. Has he talked about this man and I was like, oh my god, that's the same dude in the turban that he flipped out about when he saw him in a magazine and just things like that and plus it's not

that hard of a leap, because I knew that afghanistan was full of majority aim and do you know for them to tell me that he was a terrorist or that he was a jihadi was like ok, well, that that it makes sense right leg. Why else would he have been it in afghanistan for all those years? and he was incredibly brutal and violent with me. So the story, bout him being being out of a paramedic lazarus yeah, like that was those that was much harder to believe you. I mean so yeah and I had already been wanting to get away from him anyway, because I guess I mentioned to you- I don't I mentioned to you on, but he had been talking about getting my daughter. Taking her to egypt to get Fgm performed on her and.

I knew that I needed to get her out, but I just didn't: have the courage yet to do it like us? I was a high school education covered head to toe and black eye was diminished as a human and so it this was the catalyst for me because he was always talking about taking us and going back to afghanistan living in the shower. Where was supposed to be this little paradise and so learning about who he was really pushed me too, to get us out of there, and so how did you get out? And what's happened to him? So I surely and ideal this in my book as it's a very low convoluted detailed story, but I end up secretly

getting to a lawyer and asking case I shall have to explain a little bit about how I secretly did it. So I'm living with him, and I find out that I'm pregnant some going for an altar sound And then, immediately after the ultrasound, I'm told you have to go to this clinic can meet your doctor, and my doctor tells me that the baby doesn't have a heart beat, and so I have to go for infer Dnc surge.

And then they tell me you're gonna go under general anaesthetic. You have, I had like a nine month old daughter at the time, so you're gonna need help with your daughter for, like you know a day or so cause you're gonna be groggy, so I told him I saw this as my opportunity, so it was a very very emotional time because I am dealing with oh, my god. My baby is dead, but also, oh, my god. I have to save the baby that's alive, and so I told him I need to go to my mom's house to recover for a week and so that she can help me with the baby. So he wasn't happy about it. But at the same time does want to help me with the baby. So he let me go stay with my mom for a week, because I knew that it would be easier to get away from my mom than it was to get away from him.

so now, I'm my mom's house she gets up in the morning. She teaches at the islamic school she's ahead of this honest studies, department there she goes to school and I immediately through the yellow pages, find a lawyer get on the bus go to the lawyer here. I am like full black everything carry my baby with me and I will Came there and the lawyer was just like she's, just like an angel. She I went to her and I said I need full, custody. I need a restraining order and I need a divorce and you can't call me you can't contact. Is she was just like right away like? Yes, absolutely and you give me all the information you have we're to get this done and she did

why she couldn't contact me, but I contacted her to make sure that you know he was everything was gonna be okay and who is going to be served with divorce papers? How come you didn't contact the police authorities who had first made contact with you with he says yeah, I had no way of contacting them, they were contacting me, and so I wanted to. I just did this was like a little window of opportunity that I dont even foresee you're. So I just wanted to grab it when it was when it was. There is kind of. yeah it was survival, is just like boom. You gotta just go, go, go damn, and so then he we are coming to my mom's building and scurry main in arabic. You know all of these threats sudden give me back my wife and blah blah blah. So of course, like a six foot for egyptian man with long dark,

like nobody's gonna open the door for him, and so I called name on one and unlike there's, somebody screaming and they'll again are we not? We got like twenty calls me we're on our way, and so they came upstairs to talk to me and they explained to me if the restraining order only keeps them away from the building, but if I were ever to leave the house and to go somewhere that does it doesn't protect me from that, because I don't go to work or school or anything else, so the all they can do is say he he's like one hundred and fifty meters or whatever it is areas cannot come near your mom's buildings that have a restraining order works in canada anyway, this seems to defeat the purpose of restraining order.

Ass, though I were basically when under lake house arrest I arrested myself and I didn't leave that house until ceases, contacted me again and showed me a picture of him behind bars and egypt, and then I felt like ok he's not gonna be lurking around a corner. I can actually leave the house and that's when I started to that's when I got out at certain hiding universities and started my life over again, but so yeah. He ended up getting imprisoned in Egypt. He was sentenced to fifteen years hard labor, and that was almost twenty years ago now

so. I dont know if he survived swerve got out. I sincerely doubt that I dont really that the problem is. He was part of the second largest court case in Egypt, history, like terrorism court case in the first one being on more so that when he was assassinated for trying to have a peace treaty with the with Israel, so he was killed. Fur for that. That was the largest of course,

sums. Court case was the second largest, those very high profile, and that's why, whenever I asked a journalist to investigate form ain't journalists in egypt, they get themselves and trouble cause they're like it as soon as we start asking questions about him, the secret police come to us and we like. Why are you asking about him, and so I ve never been able to get an answer about where he is or if he survived, but imagine was spent one day in the prison that our son

was supposedly that had if he lived spent fifteen years in and that one day that magic describes in his book radical makes me suspect that I saw him probably didn't last fifteen years, because it's a it's a very it's a very harsh place. Road, that's not where majid was for four years no neutral know cause he had a british passport, so they moved him out into the other one so that you know they. They have two systems right. There's the the regular one that the that the rest of the world sees and then there's the secret police and secret prisons and honour the government once well. So now you're out and your free

are getting educated. Then what caused you to take the additional step of being a vocal proponent of western values among westerners who don't want to hear about western values? So I you know, I took a history of religions course about you know fifteen years ago, then that was the first thread that helps me to unravel everything and for a long time I was like. Oh I'm a muslim, but I'm not practicing, and then it was oh, I'm spiritual, but not religious, and you know I went through all of these different iterations and I was just going through. My own personal journey of growth in it and figuring who I was and and wasn't until the

bill mar episode with you and ben our flag that just brought every thing like it just it was like this little perfect microcosm of of everything right there and I was sitting there watching it feeling like Alan and that up a sort of and felt when everybody was like eating chalk bars and doughnuts with a knife and fork, and she stands up just like. Have you all gone mad, her like that literally how I felt like buddy on, like all my facebook, friends and stuff like so abrading bene flair and there, like all yeah, that racist guy sam Harris now just like what my living on what is wrong with you, people in it it made me feel like I needed to speak out. You know everybody's criticism of you. was mainly that year,

american and that your white skinned, and that you are a man, and so am I ok arab with brown skin and a woman, I'm saying the exact same thing that he's saying so. Maybe you'll now have to respond to the actual message: verses, stopping like not. and listening to the message, because you can't get past the identity of the person that is speaking, the message you know I'm from that world so I knew that it was gonna, be a huge risk and I was gonna be there I changed my name. I had changed my daughter's name. We had moved like, I was afraid for my life already, but saw when I first started out. I was anonymous and I wanted to just write my book just to sort of throw it out there and say here is a perspective that you're missing. You know I've got one foot in the

culture and one foot in that culture, and I am able to let you guys know what the miscommunication here as please listen to me. Here's my book read it and then just gonna keep myself at arm's length, but that did last for as long as soon as I started to speak out, I was immediate Lee contacted by so many people. all over the world that were relating to my story and then I started to feel ashamed that here I am in a free western democracy afraid to put my face up and afraid to be vocal when there is people in Pakistan that are like being killed. There's people that are being

now half hacked to death in the streets of bangladesh in and then here I am in canada, saying I don't want it, but my name and phase out there. So basically they were asking me to be their voice. Like the I can. I can say it: they can't please say it for us, and so then I started to do that and of course, as soon as I started to do that, I started getting attacked by my own people, the liberals in the west, that when in that was surprising to me I mean I saw it. Been to you, and I knew that that was that that was a possibility, but I really wasn't expecting it to be as vicious as it was. I know I'm expecting and I am prepared for all of the vicious coming from the muslim community. Of course, they're gonna hate me, I'm speaking out against their religion, that they

hold dear, and so that made sense to me and their indoctrinated, and I was that so I get that. But I didn't you know when it comes was from the left. When it then I have zero patience for it. I have no like no tolerance. I it just gets me like from zero to sixty right away because it makes zero sense to me and- and it's really hurtful I think- that's the bottom line. Is it really hurts because I, when I was a muslim when I was of a fundamentalist muslim I believed in all of the where I was taught of these right wing extremist talking points right, I was hot about anti semitism. I was taught to hate jews. I was taught to hate

gay people, I was taught that women are less than men. I was taught all of these things and for me to risk my life and risk, my daughter's life and fight tooth and nail to get out of that world and come into the light and leave the darkness behind and then to start. To have people in the lights attack me was, it is just it's just a betrayal, it just fell is just really painful. I dont know how to reconcile that like that still makes me really sad. Whenever that happens,

what we are talking last night we had dinner last night with them megan phelps roper, who was also just recently. The pod cas has a book out unfollow about her experience in the west, where a baptist church and her spirits, leaving it and is fascinating and instructive to see how different lee your risks responded to you. You assent have the same story and yours. Your story is one of greater abuse and greater danger, but it is still. It is the same story of your. U two little girls get in translated into cults and manage to get out based on their own courage, Insight and the EU s could not be more similar. all of the relevant variables and yet, in her case,

she's repudiating the most extreme form of fundamentalist christianity, and because that is the orthodoxy she's pushing against. it checks all of the boxes on the left of this. Is it? Is it all good right? You just go Angry white man, grandfather, religious maniac, christian homophobia or burning all that down and coming over to the left. There there's no problem- and yet you because you're beauty in Islam. Again all the scary details are amplified in your case. You try to port that over to the left, and the ethical intuitions get all scrambled. There's the scrambling device of leftist politics dead man Is to make up down and down up here and it's really interesting I see- and I think you and Megan could have great conversation batches together.

At the very interesting availing because he had, I would love to have that, like as a public events where with megan and entered to compare you know how, like you just said how the two of us had very similar experiences growing up. But you know megan feels badly about the fact that she is. You know, celebrated and revered that she left essentially her family ray like it's just a group of less than one hundred people, whereas I'd as she as she. You know I've been through similar stuff as her, but of course it was a much bigger hurdle getting away from a much larger, much more powerful group. So this is not like. I I feel like. I am grateful and happy that people are celebrating megan and she absolutely deserves to be celebrated for what she has done and what she is doing by

I get that same feeling that I got from that judge when the world on the left is basically saying we support in love and celebrate meg in because of what she has done, but you are a horrible, bigger and we're gonna, try and silence you on. You know whether its amazon or facebook or twitter or wherever I try to speak, I'm being mass reported and demonized, and you know somebody like Jake tapir tries to retweet me and all of a sudden. These people are telling him What a big it I am and how I'm like a nazi supporting cake Kay member or whatever they My point is: what's amazing, an end not appreciated by well intentioned peoples is that there is a systematic nature to this and part of it. State. You have a very large muslim community who will

spam the world in in repeating, and of any rational, sound of the sort that you're making. So when you get on twitter, when you get some when you're interviewed on somebody else's youtube, show say they will get demonetized, talking to immediately and its part of it. It may be algorithmic. It may just be the fact that if you get enough, people reporting something good well or or twitter or or any platform will just flag it. You know shut it down, just as you try to figure out what's happening, but you know I've had to get you reinstated on twitter twice. I think Yes right because they give someone, you know some white woke millennial over. There can't figure out what's going on if they see your tweets in someone's reported them and they just again the can't do the arithmetic, yeah and it that same hurts that same sense of betrayal. From when I was a kid and the judge telling me

Your experience doesn't matter your pain. Doesnt matter is the same for what I'm getting now, it's just being on a much much larger scale, and it it is. So you know it's not just hurtful for me on a personal level, but it's hurtful because I am trying to speak up free, I'm happy, I'm gold, him right, I'm married to a wonderful man. We have another door together have to great kids, I ever you know tenure position as a college, professor, I'm good. I could just go on with my life and just live it happily and not care about any of anything, but I feel compelled to speak up because of like I mention all of these people that have been contacted me from all over the world. Telling me you can be our voice,

You know I tried to take a break from twitter and I have women from iran writing to me. Saying: no, don't do it. You know we need you just you know, meditate or something and get back on. I have a responsibility, and so that's why it hurts so extra. Much is because I'm not just speaking up for me I am speaking up for all of these peoples and when you silence me your silencing all these people as well. And when you ignoring me, your ignoring all those people as well- and so I feel like I'm failing them and and that's why I guess that's why I get so upset about it yeah. Well, that's why you one of my heroes so to finally get on the podcast episode an absolute honour fan. Thank you so much for inviting me