Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali , ; ; , .}} (; born 13 November 1969) is a Somali-born Dutch and American writer, activist, conservative thinker and former politician. She is a critic of Islam, and an advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, opposing forced marriage, honour killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. At the age of five, following local traditions in Somalia, Ali underwent female genital mutilation organized by her grandmother. Her family moved across various countries in Africa and the Middle East, and at 23, she received political asylum in the Netherlands, gaining Dutch citizenship five years later. In her early 30s, Hirsi Ali renounced the Islamic faith of her childhood, began identifying as an atheist, and became involved in Dutch centre-right politics, joining the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

In 2003, Ayaan was elected to the lower house of the States General of the Netherlands. While serving in parliament, she collaborated on a short film with Theo van Gogh, titled ''Submission'', which depicted the oppression of women under fundamentalist Islamic law and was critical of the Muslim canon itself. The film led to death threats, and Van Gogh was murdered shortly after the film's release by Mohammed Bouyeri, driving Hirsi Ali into hiding. At this time, she became more outspoken as a critic of Islam. In 2005, ''Time'' magazine named Ali as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Her outspoken criticism of Islam made her a controversial figure in Dutch politics. An investigation by Zembla uncovered that Ayaan lied about her past and real name, prompting her to resign from parliament in 2006.

Moving to the United States, Ayaan joined conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, where she established herself as a writer, activist, and public intellectual. Her books ''Infidel: My Life'' (2007), ''Nomad: From Islam to America'' (2010) and ''Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now'' (2015) became bestsellers. In the United States, Ali has founded an organisation for the defense of women's rights, the AHA Foundation.

Ali was a central figure in New Atheism since its beginnings. She was strongly associated with the movement, along with Christopher Hitchens, who regarded Ali as "the most important public intellectual probably ever to come out of Africa". She announced her conversion to Christianity in 2023. Critics have accused Ali of being Islamophobic or neo-orientalist and question her scholarly credentials "to speak authoritatively about Islam and the Arab world", saying she promotes the notion of a Western "civilizing mission". Ali is married to Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson. The couple are raising their sons in the United States, where she became a citizen in 2013. Provided by Wikipedia