AYAAN HIRSI ALI
WRITER, ACTIVIST, SCHOLAR, & FORMER MEMBER HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, NETHERLANDS
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (AHA): They had to be told to go there and say Islam is a religion of peace. I said I'm not going to say anything of the sort. l've got six armed guards. I'm not going to say Islam is a religion of peace.
Ted Cruz (TC): Repeat that for a second. You had six armed guards. Why? Why is that? Who was trying to kill you?
AHA: What I was ..., the people who were trying to kill me was the protected minority of Muslims. Many of them who were radicalized by the Muslim, local Muslim Brotherhood in the Netherlands.
And the local Muslim Brotherhood had control of the larger Muslim communities. And at that point we knew that not all Muslims in the Netherlands were loyal to them. But they it was like the mafia. If you're a Muslim living in the Netherlands in one of these large cities, if they told you vote this way, you vote that way. And so the woman who was sort of sent in there, you know, colored immigrant, whatever, she was saying, I can't win the votes if Ayaan is saying is making these statements about Islam and the position of women and homosexuals and Christians and Jews and all of these things.
So in order for me to win the vote or to even be competitive, I have to at least accommodate them in some of these policies.
Now what?
So tell us what is Islamism and how does it differ from there well over a billion practicing Muslims worldwide.
Not every Muslim is an Islamist.
What's the difference between the two?
Political Islam, I would say, is in some ways different from general Islam.
I know some of my fellow researchers are just going to be really upset with me when I make this distinction.
But in practice, when I look at countries like the United Arab Emirates and the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, what they are trying to say is look, there is Islam as a civilization.
We're trying to cope and modernize and do this is our national identity.
This is our religious identity.
But on the other hand, there's political Islam which is that what is promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood.
And political Islam is a modern movement that was born out of the fall of the Islamic Empire in 1924 when the Ottoman caliphate fell apart.
They developed this ideology collectivist totalitarian which is in pursuit of establishing Islamic dominance over the what used to be the Islamic heartlands and then spread out throughout the rest of the world.
So we're looking at an Islamist political ideology versus Islam a civilization.
Islam has a lot of problems and I'm the first one to admit that.
But I think as Americans today, our focus should be on political Islam because it's easier to diagnose. It's easier to define.
We know what their objectives are.
We know who leads them.
And we know also that they have and formed an alliance with radical communists with communists.
They operate as a subversive effort which I call dawa and then there is of course we are familiar with the terrorist or jihadi aspect of it.
So complicated, yes, conceptually but in practice easy to define, easy to understand and in my view easy to combat.
Countries to listen to today are the heartlands of Islam, the rulers of the United Arab Emirates and maybe even Saudi Arabia, because in 2010, 2011, 2012, I think these countries were support before that they were supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
They had welcomed them.
They had given them access to their institutions of socialization.
And then they discovered that the ideology that the Muslim Brotherhood was committed to was one that wanted to overthrow them.
And from that moment they were able to do that U-turn where they kicked them out.
They banned the Muslim Brotherhood understanding them, number one, to be a subversive effort and terrorism and jihadism is sort of a tool to help the subversive effort.
So these the Muslim Brotherhood is banned in the UAE, they are banned in Egypt, in in all of these countries.
And I think we should be doing the same thing.
But the danger for us in Europe and in the United States is the Muslim Brotherhood comes in legitimately saying, "Hey, all we're doing is observing religion. We are taking advantage of our freedom for association, freedom of speech, freedom of freedom of freedom of."
And they're using these freedoms to subvert our own societies.
And I think that is the trick for us.
You as a senator in Congress, you are going to have to grapple with the question, how do I deal with a subversive effort like this one that's seeking to destroy our system. While at the same time not violating those freedoms.
And that's something that some of these Arab countries don't have to deal with, Singapore doesn't have to deal with.
That's our problem.
l compare the Muslim Brotherhood.
If you ask me, can you explain it to someone who doesn't know?
l'Il say, "Hey, if you live in Texas, have you ever been confronted with a termite infestation?"
When I was little and we lived in Mogadishu, we had termites and they would eat up into some of these valuable wooden like my my grandmother had this enormous cupboard that she had been moving from Aden and Yemen all the way here.
And from one day to the next, the whole thing came. It just she moved it and it just felI.
Wow. Wow. And she discovered in the back were th ese teeny tiny termites that were acting as a colony. They were eating eating away at it.
And that is the Muslim Brotherhood. It's a bottomup
operation.
It's decentralized.
It's globalized.
One day they'll speak the language of peace and unity and the next the language of jihad and war.
And it's very very difficult for us to look at this.
But because they've been around since 1928, for those of us who really want to see the truth, we can see it. We know how they operate.
We know who they are.
We know that they go through universities, the media, the elites, through commerce.
And so now that we have this big picture, we just need the courage and the political will to say, you are not going to do to the United States what you did to Europe. You're not going to do to Europe what you did to Nigeria and to other parts of Africa, Indonesia, India, etc. Seems to be really I think smart in a way where it's almost like they have times where they grow while dormant, while peaceful and as I've studied them more than l honestly ever thought I would. Because of what we've seen over the last 15 years. It's like they have these ups and downs, where it's like here's a time to build and be quiet and look like we're peaceful as we plan for the next big thing that we do is that part of the reason why they've been able to stay around and continue to grow around the world for so long.
Absolutely. Also, because they operate on a different timeline, that's it's very important to bear that in mind.
They know that in the United States, we operate, oh yeah, 2 years to the midterm, 4 years to the presidential election. So, they think, oh, these white western Christians, they have 2 year and four year timelines. They have a hundred year timeline, 200 years, 300 years. As long as Islam becomes dominant and they can impose Sharia, that is their faith. Number one.
Number two, they form alliances with organizations and movements that are completely different from them. So for instance, the communist Marxist again infestation that is there to destroy us. They form alliances with them because they have that common goal of as long as we bring down the structures of America way down down the road, we're going to figure out who is going to dominate.
Now, let me give you one hint. In the years prior to 1979 in Iran, the Islamists and the Marxists were operating together. What happened when they succeeded in their goal of destroying the Shah and his regime. {Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the Shah of Iran from 1941 to 1979. He succeeded his father Reza Shah and ruled the Imperial State of Iran until he was overthrown by the 1979 Islamic Revolution led by Ruhollah Khomeini, which abolished the Iranian monarchy to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran.}
The Islamists then destroyed the communists. So that is a warning for the Marxist to say I don't know who's going to repeat itself.
Yeah.
TC: So what do you make of the red green alliance and that seems to be the energy and passion behind Zohran Kwame Mamdani . What do you make of Mamdani and as someone who has come from Somalia, who has seen this? How do you assess what's happening in New York?
AHA: Well the way I see it is , Mamdani is a reflection of both movements. So he is a watermelon, the son of a watermelon.
TC: And he comes in saying, so explain watermelon to someone who hasn't heard that before.
AHA: It's the red green alliance. If you've ever seen a watermelon, it's green on the outside. We say Islamist or political Islam on the outside. And red communist or Marxist on the inside.
So they have a common objective which is they hate capitalism. They hate our system of government. They have a each of them. There's the green utopia which is the world is going to be dominated by Islam and we'll have Sharia law and then everything will be well. And then of course you have the red, the Marxists that they're going to destroy capitalism.
TC: And so Ayaan, what does it mean to live under Sharia law? Like what would it mean for America if the Islamists succeeded as they're moving closer and closer to doing in Europe? What would that mean as a practical matter?
AHA: It would mean a great deal of violence, chaos. Women will be the subjects of men. I mean they'Il have absolutely no rights. Non-Muslims will be subjected to um the Jews are how do l explain that? It's a lower status for non-Muslims. If you're only people of the book, gosh, if you're Jewish, you're going to be subjected to what Jewish people are subjected to on October 7. You see this.
TC: So, you're talking about violence and rape and murder.
AHA: Violence, rape, murder. I'm talking about floggings, public floggings. I'm talking about public stonings and some of the horrors that you now see in Nigeria, you see in parts of Indonesia, you sal
N in Afghanistan, you still see
it. Do you remember how the Taliban had
promised a few years ago to the Biden
administration, oh, we're not we're
going to give women their rights, but
they have denied women the rights to go
to school. They have denied women the
rights to do anything. Basically, you
become sun factories. Um is what I I was
told when I was forced into marriage. Um
the w the man I was about to be married
off, he said, "You're going to have six
sons for me or else." This is well
platforms, with hashtags like #HirsiAliExposes, #CruzStunned, and #MuslimBrotherhood. Files trending worldwide. Supporters hailed the discussion as a “wake-up call” about ideological subversion in Western politics, while critics accused Hirsi Ali of “fearmongering” and spreading conspiracy theories.
Political analysts say the fiery back-and-forth will likely reignite debates about free speech, religious tolerance, and national security — particularly in a post-9/11 world still struggling to balance openness with vigilance.
In a follow-up interview, Hirsi Ali doubled down on her warning: “We can’t defend democracy with denial. The truth may be uncomfortable, but it’s necessary.”
For Ted Cruz, the moment underscored why Hirsi Ali remains one of the most compelling — and controversial — voices in the global fight against extremism.
No comments:
Post a Comment