The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

This episode features a very special guest, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has an incredible life story and track record of speaking out against oppression, fighting for freedom of expression, and fostering a deeper discussion around some of today's most important topics. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist, feminist, author, scholar, and former politician. She received international attention as a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, actively opposing forced marriage, honor killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. She has founded an organization for the defense of women's rights, the AHA Foundation. Ayaan Hirsi Ali works for the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

I'm Lawrence Krause and welcome to the Origins podcast. In this episode, I had the opportunity to talk to one of my favorite people, I Ann Hersey Alley, who has had a remarkable life and I've admired her for a long time and been pleased to say that she's a friend of mine. She has constantly put herself in harm's way to speak out in favor of freedom and against depression throughout the world, but particularly the Islamic world from which she emerged and from which she was. saved when she went to Europe in the first place. She not only has had her life threatened in part, initially in the Netherlands, because of working on a film with Theo Van Gogh about the oppression of women in the Islamic world, but then was catapulted to international fame

with her book Infidel, which further inflamed some people. She has moved to the United States and continued to be an outspoken advocate for free expression against the oppression of women and in favor of basically free and creative activity in an open society. And I've continued to enjoy her writing since then. Her most recent book, Prey, deals with an issue which isn't talked about as much as she thinks it should be, which is really the changing face of Europe due to Islamic immigration and how it could be managed better than it is. In particular, the fact that people don't want to discuss what is emerging to be a real problem,

which is the assault on women and oppression of women, both women from the Islamic world and Western women as a result of the immigration. And she thinks it could be handled in a more humane and equitable way and make society better than rather than worse. I wanted to talk to her about that, as well as many other things, including her fascinating life. And it was a great conversation, I think,

and I hope you enjoy it as well. If you're watching us on YouTube, I hope that you'll subscribe to the Ordin's, podcast will help us and I'll help you because you'll learn more about upcoming episodes and if you want to help support the foundation which really creates the podcast please consider subscribing to us on our patreon channel either whether whether you're watching it on patreon or youtube or listening to it on iTunes or Spotify I hope you enjoy the podcast and I'm pretty sure you'll you will especially if you've never had the opportunity to listen to IAN Hersia Ali she's a complete delight

Well, thank you, Iyan, for being with me. I'm just so happy to be with you. It's always such a pleasure. Thank you. It's always such a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Yes, it's great to follow up. I did a podcast with you, and now I get to ask you questions, and it is a pleasure.

And of course, I always enjoy researching because I learned more about you. And I was always in awe of you before, but now I'm in more awe than I was. Oh, please don't. You're very nervous. Okay. Okay, well, look, but first I want to, this is an origins podcast. And before, I want to spend a lot of time on your new book, Prey, and which I've gone through in detail, which is, as all your books, very brave discussion of what, of dealing with a social problem that people don't like to talk about. But first, I want to talk about your origins and how you got to where you were. You're, you're, I want to know first about your mother.

and father. Your father was an activist and he was a he was a he was a he was he was elected was he or he was in the Somali Salvation Democratic Front he was a politician as well. Yes, a rebel. Somali Salvation the Somali Salvation Front was the group of politicians, their donors and militia that stood up to our dictator Mohammed Siyadh-Caray, who took office from, he seized office in October of 1969. And before that, it was after independence. I think Somalia became independent in 1960. There were attempts with, you know, the old colonial powers, the UK, Britain and Italy, to set up a democracy. And my father was one of those young people who were educated and who were seen as potential leaders.

He got a degree here in the United States. And I think he had this dream that with independence, Somalia could become like the US. And he thought of himself as one of the founding fathers and all that, very romantic, very idealistic. And then very quickly, what happens in Somalia is what happened in many other African countries. Someone from within the newly created military thinks, you know, all this democracy. and talking to hell with them. I'm going to take power and that happened.

And Mohammed Z. Adberg took power in October of 1969 and stayed in power all the way to January, if you call that power, the last few years were not so good. But up to January of 90, I would say December 31, 1919. Now your father was in prison then. Is that right? Yeah. My father was so one of those people who, so the two ways that dictators in Africa deal with their opponents. They blow them up.

So the sitting president was blown up in an airplane. And then people like my father were put in prison. And then the opposition responds, if they make it alive, of course, by escaping from prison. And so my father was one of those people who was helped by a relative out of prison. And I think the story that I heard, and I have no way ever of verifying these things, but the story we were told as his children was that it was a relative in who was, had a managerial position at the prison who let him out. And then my father walked to the border with Ethiopia.

And that's how he got out. And he wasn't the only one. There were others. But that's how lots of people were escaping. Yeah, I was wondering how he escaped from prison, whether it was a, you know, normally it's not so easy. But, but. Now, what was he? see he studied in the US. What did he study? Political science. He deviled in anthropology. He became

really fascinated with making Somalia a literate country. So I don't know how much you know about Somalia, but Somalia is an oral culture. There's very little that Somalis shot down at the time. And over 90% of the population was illiterate. So he went on these campaigns of trying to get the population to learn how to read and write. And he developed, his cousin developed this, it's called Esmania, a script for writing Somali. And my father then father developed that, spent a lot of time trying to get money to get typewriters for that and typesets. And he and my mother met at one of those campaigns where she was persuaded to go. somewhere to learn how to read and write. And he was the teacher.

Oh, he was her teacher. Oh, that's kind of nice. Well, he decided they weren't any teachers. So he said, well, I'm going to teach it. So he did, you know, had this anthropological interest, did political science and decided that some of the work there was no one to do it. So he was going to do it. It was very, very active and energetic. Yes. Well, look, that would be so many questions. Interesting that she married her teacher in a way. But, um, which happens and it's fine although nowadays it's well you had a university degree and she was illiterate so you can imagine yeah yeah i know i know i'm glad it was allowed back then but um

uh the but since he was so interested in getting people literate what about you um was he was he insistent that you therefore learn uh you know be be literate and read and did he encourage that that um academic aspect of your psyche absolutely um and i don't know um you know, how far he would have gone. But just to give you some context, I don't want to say he was fully Americanized. For instance, he had a wife, his first wife, whom he sent to the US to start and finish her degree.

And she had difficulties getting through it, but he just insisted that she had to do it and she wasn't allowed to come back to Somalia until she had got from her degree. She had a daughter for him, and the daughter was left in Somalia, then meanwhile he meets my mother in one of these classes, and he marries her, and he has three children of which I'm one,

and some of the children, we had a lot of children who died. But at that point, he's saying, I'm going to send my kids to school all of them. And I'm lucky enough to say, I'm just so fortunate that he insisted that I go to school. So even though his father, if you look at my father, his culture of, you know, Muslim nomadic, collectivist, women need to be in their place, accepting of polygamy.

He was part of all of that. And yet there was a part of him that was really serious about literacy and education. So it was a clash of cultures occurring within him as well as. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, well, let's see. you know, I was looking for information on your mother and I could not find it.

Did your mother encourage also, I mean, she had learned how to write because of your father. Did she also encourage your interest in reading and writing? Up to a point. So she was really much more traditional, much more rigid in her beliefs and in the wider, you know, normatively she was formed by that. context. And so initially she did encourage going to school and learning how to read and write. And she dropped out of school when my brother was born. So my father would send her a letter and then she would ask my brother was about 10 years or so to read the letter to her. And she would say,

that's what I don't want for you. I want you to learn how to read and write so you can read your husband's letters. But that's about the boundary of it all. And so my mother's story is very interesting because she was born in a very nomadic setting. That is where people go from waterhole to waterhole. Okay. And modernity hadn't come to them at that time. And she is married off by her father to a man of his choice. 99% of girls, that's what was happening to them unless they were orphans.

And she dislikes the man he chooses for her on site. But she goes through with the marriage because that's expected of her and her father threatens her and says, if you divorce this man, I shall curse you and you shall spend the rest of your days in hell. She does. She goes through with it, but she finds it unbearable. And he moves her from that nomadic setting to Kuwait, to Kuwait, where there is some kind of modern life. And it's there after they have one boy together that she decides. She doesn't want to be with him anymore.

And then she goes to Somalia. She goes back to Somalia and she goes to Mogadishu. And now Mogadishu is this emerging independent, the capital of an newly independent nation and enrolls for these literacy classes. So that's her background. So she's also, she's, you know, even within her own self. Yeah. And in her own mind are all these sorts of clashes that are going on.

Remarkable. And, you know, when I think of your mother growing up in a nomadic area, waterhole to waterhole and I see you. It's just amazing how in one generation the world can change. It's really, really remarkable. But you know, I did read one thing that I read a quote that your mother said to you, which really kind of impressed me. She said, I guess this was coming later. I read about it when you went to Netherlands to escape a forced marriage. She said, she wanted you to finish your education so you could leave, so you could leave your husband or at least not be married to that man. So she said, so anyway, that's what I read, she said,

that she wanted you to finish your education largely to be free basically from a forced marriage. Is that true? No, she didn't say it's that way. She would never, she wouldn't, from a normative, you know, from her beliefs in God and in honor and in shame and that sort of thing. She wouldn't say, you should get an education to leave your husband. Okay.

But she would say if you find yourself in circumstances where the husband believes you, which is what my father did to his fast wife and to her, my father left all of us because he was so dedicated to his political program. He left to. Abandoned and angry. And she always used to say, when that happens to you, you should be in a place to lift yourself up. Oh, that's a good lesson for a young girl. All of these constraints on it.

And so it was very, she was a very paradoxical, it is a paradoxical figure. She's still alive? She's alive, yeah. She's alive. And I mean, I don't know if you've read infidel. I've told this whole story, infidel, fast part of nomad. But I had all of these conflicts with how ways, but you told me to do this. You said, if I didn't want to be with this man, I believe you left your own husband.

And now you are. And then she will just go on and on about honor and shame. and submission to God. And if you don't submit to God, how can you, if you don't surrender, how can you find salvation in the hereafter? And then, you know, our conversations are that. This is 2003, 2004.

Our conversations, you can imagine, you know, the directions in which they're heading. Has she come to, as she come to accept now that, you know, in 2021, a little more where you're coming from? She hasn't come to accept. that I don't believe in life after death. Okay. And I think that that's nonsense.

I tried really, really hard sort of in my, you know, when you're new to this kind of change, you feel this almost, I was just almost as fanatical as she was about trying to convince her there's no life after death as she was trying to convince me there is. And what I think ultimately did happen is, We just dropped, I dropped that subject. Sure.

I just said to her, you win mom. Okay. At some point, it says it's not worth it, especially with your parents or children or children, either way. Yeah. Now your father- That's the relationship we have there. So when I'm on, I have phone calls with her. And when I'm on those phone calls, it's just one big monologue when I'm going,

until it's time to hang up. And then that's that. I know what that's like. Okay. It's good. You're a good daughter. Your father left you. Did he stay in Somalia? My father left. So my father went to Ethiopia, but did he come or come back? Yeah. So he walked to Ethiopia and my mother managed to get my two siblings and me out of Somalia. And I think all of us were under the age of 10 at that point. And she didn't want to go to Ethiopia. We were at war with Ethiopia at that time. So she took us to Saudi Arabia. And we

lived there for a year and then we got deported. Two. And then we left Saudi Arabia. And when we were told you have 24 hours to leave the country, no country was willing to take us except Ethiopia. And my mother was insisting we should be going to a Muslim country. So no other country wanted to have us. We flew from Jida to Khartoums in Sudan. The Sudanese government wouldn't let us in. We were at the airport for four nights. And then with the help of the UNHCR, my father spoke to the authorities in Ethiopia and they said, you're welcome to be here. So we ended up going to Ethiopia for a year and a half.

My mother was miserable, lost a baby there, and then said, get me out of here, get me out of here. And then we ended up going to Kenya. Yeah, Nairobi. Yeah, my father's work, his political activism was in Ethiopia. And so he took us to Kenya, went back to Ethiopia, came back, hung out until 1981, and then said to my mother, you and the children are coming back with me to Ethiopia,

and if you refuse that, I don't care. I'm going anyway. And so he was gone for 10 years from 1981 to 1992. And she stayed married to him? Well, as a Muslim woman, you can't get a divorce. Well, let me put it this way. He stayed married to her. He didn't let her go.

He didn't let her. I don't know. They did talk about it. And my mom refused to talk to him when he came back. and it was just a lot of you know okay oh well we'll skip that but you know every family has its dramas but but yours your dramas are dramatic but one thing it interests me and you went to samoa to kenya and you were enrolled you had a comfortable life i read there but you were enrolled in this muslim school was that i was surprised to see that a little bit was that your

mother's doing or was it more like um in the united states where people enroll their kids in catholic schools because the public schools are no good and sort of the religious schools are the only opportunities. So I wanted to ask which of those are both or the reason you went to a Muslim school. So I went to Muslim girls secondary school. Okay. And so remember my father is not there at that time when I'm turning 13 to go to what I think you call here. Is that middle and high school or high school when you're 13 years old? 13 is probably middle school, yeah.

Yeah, middle high. So when I'm enrolling, when she's, you know, shopping for a school, she says, first of all, she has this argument with my father who says, okay, I'm going to pull the girls out of school because they're at that age. And that is where he says, if you do that, I'll cast you and you'll never find peace after your death and whatever. So she then starts to look for a school that is girls only. that is Muslim-oriented where you're allowed to wear the head scarf and so on.

And that's how we came to that school. Now, that school used to be, when I went there, it was pretty moderate. And I've now, I haven't been back to the school itself, but you know, with the internet, you can go look at the old school. And I find what a change. What a change a few decades make. What a change. It's become less moderate. Is that you're telling me? Now, all the girls are covered. It's now become a truly, Islamist school. It was a Muslim girl school. And now I think it is an Islamist school. But I was, I read that that already that the Saudi Arabia was already funding those kind of schools. And it'd become more of the Saudi, more rigorous interpretation of Islam even then.

And you yourself sort of bought into it, right? I mean, even so even the, the seeds were being planted during that time when I was there. So I went to that school in 1984. And by 1985, we have a teacher who had done her, should we had degree in Medina, Saudi Arabia, come back and teach us and show us that, you know, we all identify ourselves as Muslim, but she completely disagreed and said, nothing that you guys say or do is Islamic. This is the new way of. And so that really was, for me, the transitioning from being a Muslim and becoming an Islamist. Okay. And then you, and you did, you actually joined at least supported the fatwa against someone we both know, Samner-Roshti, right? Yeah, so then I'm from 13 to 1989.

I was about to town 19. By then, I had completed high school. But in those years, and I mentioned, you know, how this teacher comes to school with a degree from the Bina and a lot of money from Saudi Arabia, but it wasn't only happening at school. It was also happening in the mosque. It was happening in the neighborhood. we were really changing.

As a community, we were transitioning to this Wahhabi posture. Okay. Muslim Brotherhood came to our neck of the wood and were very active. And I became a volunteer. I signed up for it. I liked it. It gave me a place where I belonged. It gave me quite, I would say,

a good definition between what's wrong, what's right, and how do you know the difference? And it gave me a sense of focus. focus and and I made I delighted my mother by showing up at home instead of you know instead of this resistance as a teenager where I just my sister wanted to wear mini skirts and shorts and tank tops because other girls were doing that and I showed up in this big hijab and she said you know you're in God's God is guiding you and so she was delighted that for those many is and really yeah But it was reading that began to liberate you in a sense, right?

You read English adventure stories, Nancy Drew, and you liked the idea of a strong woman who was sort of rebelling, which also followed in your father's footsteps at least, right? But I actually, I was intrigued by something. You also thought of your grandmother as kind of an example because she refused soldiers. But was that the same grandmother who, while your father was away, forced the genetic, the female genital mutilation that he had to undergo?

Or, if you don't want to talk about, we don't have to. But was it the same person? Yes, that's my mother's mother. So when I was saying from Waterhole to Waterhole, my mother was, I don't know, maybe 17, 18, 19 years when she left that environment to go to a more urban environment. But my grandmother stayed there and she became the enforcer of those rules. And then she came to us when my father went to prison to help my mother out and she never left. She stayed with us. And in some ways, I felt she was more flexible than my mother, but in other ways, she was more rigid. And when these young people came from Saudi Arabia and they said all these years,

your Muslim rituals, your Islamic rituals were all wrong. she just used to scream them out of the house, get out of my house, get out, get out of my, and she would get them all out. So you couldn't bring these new things to her and insult her in any way. And when Mohammed Siyadh-Syad-Ber's soldiers, so this is very early on,

this is while we were still in Somalia, well, I was probably six or so years old, when these soldiers come and they are enforcing the new communist law that Siyad-Bari had brought into us, And part of that was the rationing of food. So every household was allowed an X amount of food. But we are a clan system.

So my mother and she and they would talk to members of their, you know, the brothers, the cousins, nephews and so. And so they're able to bring, smuggle a lot of food into the house. And here the soldiers come and they're going from door to door to see who had smuggled food in. And when they try to come through the front door, that's why my little grandmother goes. and stands up to them with this needle that she uses for sewing baskets and mats. And she's standing there saying, how dare you?

And you're not coming through the front door. And back then she was relying on the norm that if you're a younger person, and especially a man, you don't touch a woman. That's a very rigid tribal code unless you are at wall. And you could see that some of the young men, even though they were in uniform and were carrying guns, were very inhibited in dealing with this situation. And my grandmother standing there really looking very fierce.

But there were some young men who didn't have that inhibition and just pushed her over into the room. And so for me, growing up and watching that, it was also clear that, you know, all norms were being trampled on. new norms were coming along, not taking full form. And so this whole fluidity of change and the challenge that change brings, that's something I grew up with. And so. Yeah, well, it's it, yeah, so you saw the change, but you also, I guess, had this experience of strong women. And would you consider your mother a strong woman as well? Woman as well? Yeah, very strong, but in some ways also very weak. And I would

say in terms of her weakness is, it is, weirdly, it's coming from her strength, because if she wasn't so inflexible, she could, you know, go with the flaw. For instance, when we went, when we moved to Kenya, she hated the canyons, she hated life there. And so she refused to learn the language. She refused to learn English. She refused to learn Swahili. And that's the kind of, is that a strength or a weakness? Yeah. Wrong enough to say, I don't, I'm not going to learn the language of the infidel. But it's you're hurting yourself. Yeah, well, yeah, well, it's biting off your nose to spite your face, as we say. Exactly.

Okay, well, I was just trying to, so who, I want to move off this in a second. I think it's really important to get to lead up to where we're talking about. First of all, not only is your background fascinating, but, but, but, but when we get to pray and we talk about the, the experience of, of immigration in Europe, I think this is useful. So in any case, I want to continue it a little bit. Who do you think influenced you more, your mother or father? I would say both of them, but in different ways. And I think I thought I'm more influenced by my father because of course,

I romanticized him. He sent me to school. He was more modern and flexible and so open to things. And in that sense, I think, oh, he influenced me. And, you know, I love my father more than I love my mother because my mom is so hard core, you know, immovable. She said no to friends. She said no to everything.

But I think in some ways, she did influence me without even being conscious of it because I also find myself sometimes been really inflexible. Well, we all become our parents in some ways. And for some of us, I think I told you once when we talked, it's a foil. Sometimes my mother, who's now going to be 100 in it this week, sometimes when I catch myself behaving like her. It's a good lesson to change. Anyway. But you then, you did in 1992, you, you moved to the Netherlands. And, you know, and this, a lot of it's well documented, but I mean, and you had problems, but you were to escape an arranged marriage. But you, you became a,

I was intrigued. You became a translator when you were in the Netherlands. for uh in in a refugee camp which which which uh where i was in you sorry go on so my translation back i went to the netherlands in 1992 after i escaped that marriage and because i went when i was in nairri when we were in kenya i went to part of elementary school middle school high school i did all of that in english as my first language so it's not my first language but in cania When you go to school, that's your first language. You go to school in English, not in Swahili, not in the tribal languages. Interesting.

So I had, I spoke English well enough when I was in the Netherlands, and I was put in an asylum seeker center to help out with some of the Somali residents. And for that, I wasn't paid. I was just volunteering. But as I was doing it, some of the people, people who walk at the asylum seekers center were saying, you could actually get paid for this and make quite a bit of money. But you're not going to do it in English, Somali, Somali English. You have to land Dutch. And then you have you do that in Dutch Somalia. And I looked into it.

And I thought, yeah, do you think I can land Dutch and enroll? At that age, well, you had six languages, but I guess maybe you had a lot of experience in languages. I've been trying to learn a new language. I speak French, but at this age, trying to learn a few new languages and it's much more difficult. Wow, that's great that you learn Dutch and but then I was intrigued that you became at that time in a in a premonition of the book Prey in some sense. Yes. You became critical of the way the Netherlands was handling asylum seekers from from that experience in the asylum area. I mean, I think I started first with questions like so when I'm among my Somali community inside the asylum seekers,

center you have people who have come from a war-torn country and they come into a place like the Netherlands and they're given food and shelter and medicine and all of these things and day in day out my Somali friends would say I hate this place I hate the weather I hate the food I hate the people and so my reaction always was well what's the alternative you're not going back to the issue and in order to move on and I think a lot of Somalis who were able to make it to places like Europe. When the Civil War broke out, they had homes, they had servants, they had occupations, they were making a lot of money as business people. And so when you go to a place like an asylum seeker center in Europe, you've lost all of that. You've lost all of your

dignity. You feel really, really sorry for yourself. And some people, a small group of people would start over and say, okay, what is, you know, where am I now? And what can I do to make this changes. But a majority of people just never did anything. They just kept getting this government handouts and then ask, go back to the same government and say, can you get members of my family out and bring them here? And the government would indulge that. So it is, it's through asking, I went to the Dutch people who worked at the center and said, why are you giving us all of these things? And why are you welcoming us? And they talk about laws and norms and treaties. And And so anyway, my attitude was critical of both sides.

And I thought it would be very good for my Somali friends if they were just given some tough love and told, get off your back sides and get on with it. Well, but again, I think talking about the difficulty of assimilating, which is going to be an issue we're going to deal with. That's certainly an early example of it in some sense. And the point is that the lack of need to do that, the ability to have maybe not a comfortable life, but a life without having to go that extra effort to integrate into society. You began to notice that early on.

I noticed that early on. And then also I noticed the problems. So for instance, you know, there was a lot of compassion. I think there's still a lot of compassion in the Netherlands and other European countries for people who come from places. like Somalia. But then when those people then break the norms, for instance, the way men were behaving, Somali men, men from Iran, from Nigeria, from Afghanistan, the asylum center I went to, there were lots of people from many different countries.

The way these men were behaving towards women was against the norms and the laws of the Netherlands. And there would be a lot of complaining, why are they doing this? This is wrong. They can't do this. But there wasn't any corrective measure. You know, I would have thought, this is, again, in hindsight, I would have thought that is the exact context where you could begin classes or courses where you teach them about you've now come, you elected to come to this country.

You've sought asylum here. You're in the process of wanting to be accepted. Well, here, here's how we live here. Our laws. Here's how we treat our women. And here's what we think about, racism. A lot of Somalis. a lot of Muslims who came there were so rapidly anti-Semitic and would just express it in front of

Jewish people who work there. And it was never corrected. And so again, I find that really baffling, you know, I still do. Yeah, yeah. No, I can imagine. Yeah. Well, yeah, well, okay. I mean, it is bad. Well, we'll talk about the court. We'll talk about that in much more detail, I think, as we go into your book, so we'll get to it. But you, you, in the process, did you study at the same time as you're learning Dutch, you got a political science degree, right? I had left the asylum seekers center by then. They had put me in a home. Like imagine the generosity of his stuff. I come with nothing. Yeah. Over a period of 11 months, I was in that asylum seeker center for 11 months. And I was there because there was a huge waiting list for

apartments. But then they get you into a government financed house. And then you can enroll in all sorts of, you know, vocational and anything that they try to help you to get into the labor market as quickly as you can, as you possibly can be accepted into. And it was while they sent me into an accounting class. I told you I'm very bad with numbers. Yeah, we've talked with that. And I didn't enjoy it. So I went back.

I talked, I made friends and I talked to my friends and I said, this is really what I'm excited about. I just want to learn how these things work. I want to go and do political science. And my friends, not members of the government, not the subsidized social workers or caseworkers, but the friends that I made were saying to me, we here are the three best places to go to

if you want to take up political science. And if you want to improve on your Dutch classes, and if you want to do this, and if you do, I was assimilated by my friends. Friends and not the government. Oh, interesting. Not the government, not the case workers, not the subsidized.

infrastructure that really wants these problems to go on because if they resolved these problems, then it would be out of a job. Out of a job. We'll get to that. The immigration, what was it called? The immigration, well, we'll get to it. You have a way of saying basically it's these people who are in business to make sure that things don't change. It's interesting you say that. Do you think if you had a different group of friends, you could have been, it would have suffered a fate that might have been more more like some of the people in your boat? Well, yeah, I mean, it depends on you could fall in with friends.

I could have fallen in with Somali friends. We choose our friends, I guess, too, though. I suppose it's... You could eat cut and just and gripe day in day out, or you could fall into... There were also lots of opportunities to get into, if you call that an opportunity, to get on the other side of the law,

women who were, you know, electing. I don't know if that's really a good word. I find that too harsh and too judgment coming from me, but who would get into the sex market because it's easy bucks. But then I was very fortunate to, when I was at this asylum seeker center, a lot of young people from the locals were volunteering. And those were the friends that I fell in with. These were people who came, who volunteered to come and help us navigate our way in a new environment.

And they've become friends to this day. Oh, that's wonderful. Well, we can thank them all. You chose to do political science and you say we're interested in what was going on. But surely was the fact that your father studied political science and impact? Was that one of the reasons that you... I assume you never decided to be at one. You never thought of becoming a physicist, for example, right? I would never qualify.

Actually, it's wrong to say. I'm the kind of of I've got the kind of mind that once upon a time we used to say it's a female mind, harsh to numbers, and frightened of them. But no, I wouldn't do, it didn't become a physicist. I really did want to understand. I think I had come of age in a household that was affected by politics. And so when I was a little girl growing up, our house was very chaotic. And I thought that that chaos was caused by my father's. And my father was absent because he had devoted himself to bringing order to the country. And so I thought, well, this was his life goal.

This is what he dedicated his life to and he never achieved it because Somalia didn't go from a dictatorship to a democracy. It went from a dictatorship to complete anarchy and it's still in that state. But coming to the Netherlands, I thought, how do they do this? If only he could learn their tricks, then maybe, and his colleagues and his fellow activists, maybe they could turn some of the Netherlands. Maybe they could turn Somali around to become like the Netherlands. But for me to really, truly understand that, I thought I had to go to school and understand, you know, figure out, get those answers. And I think I did to a large degree.

Well, that's impressive. It's impressive that at that age you were thinking so strategically that that is impressive. But around the same time, your faith began to shake. And I want to go into that a little bit. And I was really intrigued that the first person who caused you at least, to think about religion as not being an essential part of a good life with Sigmund Freud. Is that right? Yes.

So this is before I did political science. I know, I know, I know, but I was intrigued by that. I took social work and that one of, obviously, a major part of the course work is psychology. So you do have to read a lot of Sigmund Freud. And you have to read with this, yeah, the conscience and the subconscious and all. things Freud. And I have to say, you could say, I mean, you're really analytical, you could say maybe the seeds for my atheism were planted during that coursework, just getting through psychology and how the human mind works and all the things that affect you and all. And actually, when I,

I was going to complete those four years and become a social worker myself. But then I realized psychology is great if you're applying this to yourself but if you're leaving this environment and you're going to solve other problems other people's psychosocial that's such a tall order and get me out of here oh okay well again it's strategic i'm impressed but you at least but i also you Freud and i'm no fan of Freud but that he i'm not a fan of yeah yeah but but at least give an example that you could have a moral system that wasn't based on God. I think that's really important for people to realize that you can be moral without God. And my understanding was that he gave you the first inkling that that's possible,

but that may not be right. Well, it starts with then if you apply some of those things to yourself, not like a religious person would apply holy scripture, but in the sense that it encourages you to ask questions. And that, you know, the questions that I was asking before I came to the West, that some of those questions are actually justified. Remember, I come from a background where if you ask questions, you're seen as antisocial, as rebellious, as trying to cause problems.

And so it's best not to ask questions. That kind of curiosity is always found on and smacked down very quickly. Hi, this is Lawrence Krause, and I'm really happy to talk to you today, on behalf of Audible. Audible is a leading provider of spoken word entertainment all in one place. I'm an Audible user and I also am an Audible producer. I've read a variety of my books on audiobooks that you can get through the Audible catalog.

I find in my current position with the podcast that Audible has become even more important for me because I have discussions with many different authors and I have to read a lot of books and I find through Audible I can listen to a number than when I'm otherwise doing other things like driving the car or working out. Almost any book I want to read electronically or in hard copy version I can find spoken on Audible. So all in all, there are a lot of good reasons to consider joining Audible. And right now, there's a particularly good reason. There's a promotion that Audible is involved in involving a new sort of masterclass podcast about well-being and ways that you can basically help yourself to feel better.

So go to audible.com slash well-being. That's audible.com slash well-being. So being in the Netherlands and in this environment, we're getting homework. Compare Freud to Ellis. What are the differences? What are the similarities? I was just in heaven with that. Yeah, no, the idea that you could ask questions. Yeah, it used to be that you could ask questions in education. Maybe one day will again. But I mean, that's, and you know, I'm intrigued by several times where you point out that

and something I couldn't agree with more as a scientist, that that asking questions about our social situation is an essential part of trying to make it better. And, and I, you know, so even if you're not a physicist, you have a very scientific mentality. which is questioning, looking for evidence, continue to question. And I find that throughout your writing, and that's really kind of amazing. And did that, that just came out of a love of questioning?

It didn't, wasn't, maybe out of your academic studies as well? No, it's absolutely the academic studies. But I think when you look at, you're a physicist, you look at these, the hard sciences, a few, true science, really. Yes, I'll agree. I'll agree. Yeah.

You get these definitive answers. So something is either true or false. But in what is called the social sciences, that doesn't exist. That certainty does not exist. And my professors, my teachers in the Netherlands, would really insist on that all the time. You know, from the beginning of the lesson to the end of the lesson, we would be reminded. There is no definitive answer to this. There are some ideas once transatlantic.

into practice that are better than others, but none of them are perfect. Okay, well, that's, yeah, that's great. And all them have, they are, many have different, different positives for, I mean, I haven't done your level of immigration or, or being a, being an, immigrant. I've moved from one kind to another, but it's a one, it's an experience that teaches you that, no, exactly, that no, not only is no society perfect, but different societies have different good things about them. And it's just, and this ridiculous nationalism that people have, that people have, that, that one place is the best place in the world, just because the accident of being born there,

as opposed to being born 300 miles away, it always amazes me now when I see that. Absolutely. And to get really to my religious criticism or awakening, it began, let me say, I was asking these questions about why is the Netherlands a place you want to come to? And Somalia, a place you want to leave. And then with all of these other people coming from different countries,

during my five years in political science, the one subject I loved the most was political theory, where there were all these ideas on, you know, what are the best organizational and institutional methods to put societies together that give the best outcome to everyone within that society and in relationship to outsiders? And so when my father would say Sharia law applied as it should be.

And so then I would look at countries that apply Sharia law. This is Saudi Arabia, it's Iran. There were other attempts that were made in different places like Nigeria and Afghanistan. And I thought that's actually that far from the truth. It's unappealing. People are forced to do things they don't want to. It's based on fear and threats and lies. and lies and secrets.

And so that's not a great theory for society. These secular theories are. And then from there, you know, you can, you just can't, once these questions pop up in your mind, and you embark on these path to find out what they are, figure out what they are, remember, nothing is perfect. Yeah. But some ideas are better than others.

and I just couldn't help but think, Sharia law, it wouldn't give me what I want. It wouldn't give us what we want. Okay. And you're right. I can't, I mean, I'm biased, but I can't help but think that once you start to think, it seems hard to imagine remaining religious.

It becomes empirical because there were masses and masses of refugees from the bureaucracy of Iran in the Netherlands and elsewhere, and they want refugees from the Netherlands going to Iran, yeah, it's true. It's a good empirical fact, I guess. Well, but partly, I mean, partly, I mean, to be fair, let me play the devil's advocate. You can also be fair to say, one society is richer than the other. So why would you want to go from rich?

Why did they get richer? Yeah, of course. No, with that absolutely. We'll get to that, in fact, actually. No, that's why killing one another the other day as Protestants and Catholics. It was more bloodshed in Europe than anywhere else. Yeah, it just took a little longer to get, you know, they're a little. They were all many Afghanistan's.

I've always said the problem with Islam is there's just 600 years, later and it's just in a maybe one hopes, one may hope, although I'm not sure, one may hope in 600 years that people will be as, that being a Muslim will be the same as being a Christian in the sense that you won't believe any of the doctrines. You'll just like to call yourself that, which is what most Christians do. You, you, I want to move away from this a little. I want to get to the book, but you also, it was around 2001, but then a little later that you read the atheist manifest, Aethyst, Aethyst, Aethyst, atheistish manifest of one of your professors that really caused you to give up religion. Is that right? First, I had a boyfriend from 1996. Ah, that'll do it. All the way to 2001. That's when we broke up. And I think it was good for both of us. But confrontations on a social level, so law level, confronts. confrontations between Muslims and non-Muslims were happening all the time.

And I thought, you know, the most important thing for me to do is to avoid it. So sometimes my Somali friends would call me and I wouldn't call them back. I wouldn't socialize with them because they reminded me too much of that world I left behind. And I wasn't ready to tackle it. I wasn't ready mentally to say, am I now a Muslim and where do I stand? And my boyfriend would say, I don't even understand why you bother with that religion. It's just such nonsense. convinced atheist. He was Dutch or he was he was Dutch he was and I was within a group you know

Leiden University we graduated together most of them were atheists and in fact to be an atheist was the sort of elite establishment position and people who believed in God were for mocked and seen as and I felt that that was too arrogant and anyway when we didn't really we didn't really break up because of this book for other reasons. But then I moved on and had a new boyfriend and this is the author of the atheist manifest. He didn't only tell me, he didn't just say, oh, that belief framework, whatever that is,

you shouldn't be asking these questions. He just gave me his book. Oh, I said, read it. He did. And I actually read it. Wow. And it's a lucky guy. Yeah, and it's a small book, but it's a

great book. And I say it's a great book because it does exactly, it did for me exactly what I was seeking, which is ask all these questions. Don't fear the answers, just explore and see where they lead. That's great. I don't want to say it's a humble book, but it's a good book. Yeah, no, no, that's great. To teach, well, you've heard me say before, the teaching by questions, asking questions is the only really good way. And absolutely way, because people, you can't convince people of of things, but they can convince themselves by asking questions. Yeah. Continue to questions. That's great. That's that's excellent. You all not only do you become a sort of an atheist ultimately, but you also may partly as a result of September 11th,

2001, you also began to become particularly critical of Islam and and and around that time, right. 9-11 happened. Yeah. And I think that was a big deal. It was for a lot of people. You had a grown up at that time. And you realized what happened, it was a very big deal. And I think there were a lot of people in my environment, in the think tank environment, academic environment, who were trying to figure out,

why did these 19 men do what they did? What is it that motivated them? And it was just a laundry list of reasons. People gave, you know, Israeli, Palestinian politics, none of them were from Israel, none of them were from Palestine. Then it was an American forum. policy and then it was colonialism and then it was this and it was that and I said what about if it was

just conviction but if they actually believed on a religious level that what they were doing was right that this is a declaration of jihad and I didn't realize how I mean the reaction from my liberal friends the atheist friends that was seen as just so just a really dangerous way of thinking about it. Oh, interesting. But then that, that then led me to, and there was a fascination with it. So even though I was condemned for asking those questions loudly and writing these and articles about it, the journalists would never, they wouldn't stop inviting me to their radio shows and TV shows and interviews and so on. So there was this paradox of, please don't ask that question, but, you know, you do it. So we'll just, you can make a freak out of yourself by,

Yeah, well, yeah, we'll help sensationalize it. Yeah. Well, that was good for you. Not everyone was a sensationalist. Not everyone was a sensationalist, but I think that the question of, so are you a Muslim yourself, that popped up in a radio show,

where she let me go through all the steps of criticizing, you know, Islam and women, Islam and power, Islam and this. And then she said, what about you? Are you still a Muslim? And I made a huge mistake of saying, hesitating and then saying no. And that then opened the doors to threats.

Yeah, you started. I mean, you know, we all know the threat, the threats you've had because of not only associated with the movie, but the books. And I remember the first time I may, you know, but. It started with the public declaration of leaving Islam, because as an apostate,

it's every Muslim. duty to kill you. So in that sense, I think it is, it's the other criticisms are fine, but that is for me, that's a major sin or major crime I've committed is the public expression that I'm no longer Muslim. So you had already begun to have experienced death threats. So when you really became under threat of death, you sort of were more used to it. Maybe it was a little less dramatic, but I don't know, I can't imagine it wouldn't have been critically traumatic. And as I say, I've been with you. And I remember the first time, I mean, you know, surrounded by security guards. It's a tough going. But it's amazingly important to be brave enough to do it.

And anyway, it's interesting that you, that you've always spoken out about those things you believe in. I was intrigued. I want to go slightly, and this will also be relevant to think of an immigration. You started working for a think tank, which was center left, and then a labor think tank. And then you moved to a political party, which was sent to right, and eventually moved to the American Enterprise Institute, which one would say, I guess now one would call it center right. When I first visited, I would have called it right. Yeah. But and so there was an evolution at the same time, maybe towards left to right, or have you, or is it just that you've remained the same in the political definitions of, have moved? What would you say?

I would say I probably remain the same to a large degree. I still believe, so if you look at the conversation, the controversy between center left and center right, you know, if you look at society's problems, how much of it should be left for society to resolve versus how much government should we bring in? I think in that sense, I am solidly in the center, I believe that for some,

things you really do need the government. For others, you should leave it to the market and society, civil society. But when you look at the problem of integrating immigrants from cultures and societies that are very different, this left-right dichotomy, that framework of trying to understand it, it doesn't work. And what I find, and I'm very angry with my, upset with my sentiment, center left friends is that they actually used that the narrative of compassion and the government should do more not to help the immigrants assimilate but to stay in power and to expand their power base and so they they to me became so cynical and the cynicism back in 2001 2002 when I'm with the center left think tank is expressing itself in but we need their votes.

So if you go out there and you upset them, we're not going to get the votes. That was the trade-off. Now, the other side, the VVD, the center rights party, were prepared to say, you know, morally and from a place of compassion, the Netherlands should continue to accept asylum. seekers and family reunion and bring more immigrants in they were willing to accept that but they wanted to apply tough love and that I think in that sense I would say even though the left right framework thing doesn't work for the assimilation process but the center right groups were way more interested in dispensing that center love is and tough love approach and that's tough love approach has been demon

a point where it's a lose-lose situation. So immigrants don't get to assimilate and get absorbed into the labor market or, you know, the values and norms, and they're causing lots of problems. This book, A, it focuses on what is changing for women because of immigration in negative ways. We can't talk about it because the whole tough love package is seen as monstrous. And the other side, they don't have an answer. They just won the votes. And so that's very, very upsetting. And it's worse in America than it is in Europe.

Yeah. Well, the problems of it, you did say somewhere in the book, I get to it, that dealing with immigration in Europe now is more to the right of the United States in a lot of places. But we'll get to that. But the point is that to deal with immigrants, you need, I mean, the one thing you would agree with is that government plays the primary role in dealing with trying to help immigrants assimilate. It's not the private industry or the private sector that does that or should do that.

The government should, so the government is in charge of who comes in and whether they stay legally or whether they should be deported. So government is in charge of evicting the people whom they have decided are not allowed to be in the country. And then providing, and here I think I'm more of a social democrat then, but providing the resources for then creating some of these courses that civil society can't do. That is the case in Europe. In America, I think the history of assimilation in America is very, very different. But in the Netherlands, for example, other European countries, it is government that provides these resources for language classes.

There are some private language classes. of superior quality to what the government provides. But then if you're just an asylum seekers entering now, you can't afford those classes. And so there's that, I mean, I want to navigate that. Who do you pay for? And how do they pay back and so on? Yeah, no, I mean, Europe provides those services that the United States just doesn't.

And then suffers for later by not having provided them. People tend to think it's a way of saving money, but in the end, it's a fool's way of saving money. because you it's a fool to upsetting money but also remember what i told you it wasn't the caseworkers paid for by the government that were responsible for my assimilation i was i made friends and i made an effort to try and get through these language courses and that was done by friends but your but your preference would be if you don't mind but your preference would be somehow to have a government system that did what your friends did for you no my my friend my preference would be in the

the space that the government controls. So an asylum seekers center in the Netherlands is a government controlled, government paid for space. And if within that space you start the initial steps, and as an individual leaves, now you are being housed, I think it's then the responsibility of the individual. And I know that there are numerous, numerous, every country you go to, numerous volunteers,

people who are not paid by anyone, but who wants to do good. And I think then it is part of the responsibility, and I think you should hold an individual immigrant accountable for what have you done, what are the steps that you have made to improve your own life? And asking those questions and trying to get to figure out the best setup is not apostasy.

These are real questions, but what you run into all the time, including, I live in the Bay Area, and San Francisco is rotting. Michael Schellumbago, who loves San Francisco and environmentalist. He's written this book called San Francisco. Yes. Cisco. I know, I know.

I know the book. So we run into the same problems of there is a large infrastructure of people who take government money and promise to solve these big social issues. They don't. and they oppose those who want to do it differently. And so this isn't a unique. I think it's an affluent society problem. Well, it's a problem.

It's interesting. I don't know how influenced I was, but I just did a, it'll come out after this one, but I had a discussion with Charles Murray. And he, of course, as you know, because he's a colleague, at least he's a colleague at the AI,

claims have done a lot of studies to show that there's limited influence you can actually do in a lot of these programs. And he's been vilified. I'm a fan. I'm a fan of Charles Murray. And I also, and Shelby Steele and Thomas Saul, and all of these guys who looked at, you know,

a blight in the United States of America, particularly within African American families, even though Charles Mary also actually looks at poor white families. Yeah, sure he does. The breakdown of a number of institutions and the correlation with light, with homelessness,

drug abuse, family breakdowns, all sorts of traumas. That's not well documented. And I think it is, it's immoral now to hide away from that truth and to pretend that preparations for slavery that will resolve the problem or just this fixation on racism. Yeah, well, yeah, it's ridiculous. In America, we fixate on racism, and in Europe they fixate on colonialism. Why is it that so-and-so has abused a woman?

He hasn't been to work. He's on government welfare. What can we do about that? And they start conversations about colonialism. Yeah, instead of, yeah. And you're finding these explanations that have nothing to do with the specific causes for this person and labeling them as something else.

And yeah, it's interesting. Well, we'll get, you have a chapter also. So it's culturally, or at least part of a chapter, individual responsibility versus group, the sense of victimization, which you've argued in some sense is also built into Islam, but we'll get there. I promise we'll get there,

sometime in the next six hours. Anyway, but before, I was intrigued by the AEI. I've never asked you this personally. I remember when I heard you moved to AEI, American Enterprise Institute, and I'd been there, as I think I've told you, and I lectured there, and then eventually I thought it went well and then I was I was told afterwards that I shouldn't come back.

But anyway, I thought it was a coup. I thought, you know, for me it was the first example of what I thought of as the right usurping sort of issues that were the left. But now I see for the most part the left have abandoned those issues. But I saw the right taking you in as a as a very brilliant. publicity not maybe not publicity stunt but but but I'm wondering I'm wondering how that AI thing happening if you if you don't mind talking about it if you do it doesn't matter I I we can move on to other things but but it was a brilliant move of someone's part so you know the Netherlands is a small country yeah and I don't

think that the AEI in 2004 2005 2006 were paying a lot of attention to the Netherlands I don't think that What happened is when Theo van Gogh was killed to November 2nd. And in the... Who made a movie, who you helped make a movie with him. It's very famous. He was stabbed and you were, this movie submission, you were helped make it. And that was a major international event, which I knew about at the time.

Yeah. This was 2004. I was in parliament. My term was going to end in May of 2007. The cabinet made it through. We have a coalition system in the Netherlands. So you don't know if the cabinet's going to make it through to the next election. And if it was going to make it through to the next election, I didn't want to pre-seek election.

I actually hated being in politics. Interesting. I think I hated being in politics because I idealized I came out of political science and thought that's what it's all going to look like. And it wasn't. It was different. Yeah, no. You could say what you think if you're not a politician and if you're political scientist. but when you become a politician.

It was a whole suit of the truth and critical thinking. And once you go into parliament, you realize, oh, my gosh, it's the opposite. So I decided I wasn't going to seek the election and I was going to do something else, which became very, you know, it became very clear, very quickly to me and everybody who cared about me that I couldn't do that in the Netherlands, that I had to go somewhere else, get out of that pressure cooker. I was surrounded 24-7 by security people. I was being moved from safe house to safe house.

It was pretty dramatic at one point I was moved out of the country to be safe. Yeah, just incredible. While still standing in Parliament. So that was just, that was very odd. Anyway, I had made up my mind and I started applying for jobs in the US. I went to Washington, D.C. with a liberal, a Democrat friend of mine. And we started shopping for a think tank that I could work for would accept me. And we went to the Brookings Institution.

We went to the Rand Institution. took me to Georgetown University. She took me to George Washington University. And then at the very end, she said, I have this friend at a place called the American Enterprise Institute. And I remember recoiling and thinking, no, you're not there. And she said, but he's a Democrat, and his name is Norm.

And let's just go see what they say. And everywhere I went, we did this whole interview thing, Who Are You? And they fully understood the picture. And Colin Bowman, who's still with the American Enterprise Institute, said the Iraq war was raging. And I was expressing what I thought about. And she did, do you want to write a piece for the Wall Street Journal? And I did.

And it was published. And then she said, we'll follow up very quickly with you. And before I knew it, the president back then, Christopher Demuth, Christy, who's, I'm such a dear friend. He was the president. And he said, yeah, we're going to follow up. and he talked to me. We had, I think it was lunch or dinner, and he, he, you know, did this due diligence interview

and that whole background. This is in 2005. Wow. And then the others never got back to me. The Rand Institute came back and said, you don't do what we do, so I don't think it's a good fit. But none of the others, even though they expressed admiration, none of them wanted to have me.

And then I went back and forth with the president of the American Enterprise Institute, and he said, as soon as 2007, do you want to start tomorrow? And I said, no, I have to sit. I've got to wait until the next election. He said, when that happens, just give me a call and we'll walk out of the process of getting you here. And that's how it came about. The cabinet fell because of my passport. And there was this scandal I had been accused of lying, a documentary was made. And this is what I think, another thing about my bitterness and anger with the left, people on the left is they don't like your arguments, they don't like your questions, they don't like your theories, then they set us to demonize you. Yes.

And that demonization process was unfolding. And that's precisely why the think tanks on the left didn't want to have me, because I had been framed as a rabid right-wing Islamophobic. So when I called him and I said, well, here's what's happening. And there's this whole scandal. Do you still want me? He said, absolutely. Okay. And that's how I ended up with the American Enterprise Institute. He went to the board of trustees.

He and everybody there was true to their word, welcoming, compassionate and went into this overdrive to help me get immigration papers settled because you have to, you know, vouch for this person. And so my experience there is I'm now part of a, family the AEI family that's wonderful well you know I always wonder whether might you know I'm obviously behind you but I because you know at the time I thought hey I and Wall Street Journal and now you know 15 years later the place I publish is the Wall Street Journal and uh oh look at your channel is amazing if I'd send them a proposal

that they think is rubbish they literally say that oh yeah you know that's right but we're not going to do it but the different but what they'll publish it but yeah but it's Exactly. They're open about that, but at least they publish it. But what, what finds is exactly what you said is the left begins to demonize. You know, I used to write for the New York Times. I used to write. And now the places I publish are I'm now called a right wing pundit, you know, and it's kind of amusing for me to see that as a relatively left wing. But you've experienced that.

I mean, so there's two aspects, again, of things that have been really on my mind a lot, which is cancel culture and this nonsense about offending. I just wrote a piece for the National Post in Canada, which is the Wall Street Journal of Canada, I guess one could say, which I'll send you on a fence. But you were canceled. So you wrote about that in 2006 in a speech, I think, you gave in Berlin, about this, the importance of the right to offend people as a fundamental right.

And you're way ahead of the game as far as I was concerned, I mean, as far as my own thinking. And then you were also canceled in 2014. You had an experience, which again, a number of us have had, of I think, beginning an honorary degree and then having it withdrawn. In my case, one of the honorary degrees was withdrawn sort of privately, not publicly. So it never became a scandal. But you've been a part of both.

And so of that vilification process and cancellation process, which is so nefarious today. Yeah. And I had a lot. First of all, the cancel. and free speech confrontations that I was a part of was all centered around insulting Islam and Islamophobia and this attempt by a minority group in Europe and in America and in Canada in other liberal societies who were saying we want an exemption just for ourselves. It's okay if you want to insult Christianity. it's okay if you want to insult any other kind of ideology or religion, but we just want an exception for us. And so when I gave that speech in Berlin, it's when that whole controversy broke out

in Denmark with the 12 cartoons and Eelens Post and the newspaper that published them was either being vilified or, you know, how do we deal with this? And I remember being really in the epicenter of that hurricane of a controversy. And then things. thinking, well, I think it is very, very important to go and state. And I don't even remember what else I said in the essay, but my headline, the group who hosted me wanted to change was, no, I'm here to defend rights to offend. That's the rights of First Amendment defense when you talk about free speech. It's not about good manners.

And I love good manners. I think there is no need to offend for the sake of it. But the ideas that offend. that's what's protected. And so you can't get away from this by saying we're going to avoid. And I think my message was if you really truly, truly accept Muslim minorities, you're going to make them a part of that. And then fast forward, here we live in the United States.

And we don't have only a small group of immigrants who identify as Muslim, who don't want their religion to be insulted. that we now have all sorts of groups, women's groups. We have who are saying, I'm not, I don't know to what extent women are a group in any way, but the demand is this with the me too, that if I accuse a man of sexual misconducts, me, I, the accuser, is always right. You're guilty until you're proven guilty. Yeah, that's right.

And I thought, how can that be good for women? That's terrible. What a novel thought. No, no, no, no. That's not how it works. It is, I want to have an environment and an infrastructure that allows me as an accuser, not to be vilified and victim blaming and to be protected from that sort of thing. And that's in a court of law, the court of public opinion.

But he has the benefit of the doubt, surely. and we should engage in this, you know, truth-seeking mechanism to reach, to get to the point where if the accusation is justified or not. But that's one. And then there's the transgender community. And I don't really think that individuals who are transgender are the ones who are seeking all this attention, but there's a group of activists, very militant and probably the most dangerous of all of them. They're not like the Islam is trying to blow things up. But boy, are they causing trouble? And I would say, I always want to ask the transgender activist,

why on earth would you take the smallest minority and set them up against 50% of the population? Because when they come after women, like the numbers are just not right. I think we can work this out. And so on. And so, I mean, what is to stop then other religious minorities from saying, and I want an exception too?

What is to stop all these fights that have been, happening since time immemorial on a class level for everybody to to to claim some form of exemption from and then how does that make as a society and what makes it different from tribalism because if you go to africa and places where you have the tribe based on bloodline or the clan that's exactly what it is it's just you know you have the in-group and the out group and the out Well, this is a perfect segue, the idea of why should people have exceptions to the notion of the fact that we have to recognize that we can't give a free pass to people on the basis of religion or some guilt. So I want to get there. I want to move that's a perfect way to move into it.

I will say, by the way, you're not allowed to use the word tribalism anymore because that's also offensive, apparently, as I just. wrote in an article that the journal of hospital medicine censored and removed an article that had the word tribalism and because it hurts my my response is and i think it should be us and everyone's is i use anyone that i want to oh absolutely well you know when i as i said somewhere but i almost wrote it in a in a piece but i didn't but um you know when i was a little kid we used to be told sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt me and and that's how we used to sell it people but anyway in any case and the other thing i don't know if ever told you but i actually got one of those cartoons in a physics paper I wrote. So somewhere I have one of the, I shouldn't say

this because maybe there'd be a fatwa, but I did change some of the words, but it's, it's, it's, it's in one of my physics papers. I felt as a, I felt ethically obliged to try and put it in a paper around that time. I have to say to you, I've been, I have today, I have more Muslim friends than 20 years ago, and these are true Muslim friends, not, not because we're in the same in-group. Yeah, yeah. And they come from everywhere. And we all agree on my Muslim friends and me, we agree on going through that period of time when questions were asked.

And the Prophet was, the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam was criticized and the Quran was criticized and authoritarianism in the name of Islam, all kinds was criticized. And the way women are treated was good. They said that has actually really been the best thing to happen to Islam because you see now more and more young people moving towards an attitude of critical thinking and asking questions and without giving up the Muslim identity. And so it's really, you know, yeah. That'd be great if it's true. I haven't seen it, but then I'm not a part of it as you are.

Well, look, the idea that no group should get a free pass is combined with your, with your ultimately your scientific attitude, the right to offend, truth hurts, but who cares? Yeah. Too bad. And you wrote once, I just, I wrote, this down because I love what it said is the communities cannot reform unless there's a quote scrupulous investigation of every former and current doctrine what a wonderful mantra and what a and of course a scientific one as well but i think um if we were to if that were true which is in my mind the scientific approach to the world then it would be better and i think you you expressed it perfectly and and and and that acknowledgement that acknowledgement that acknowledgment that

goes to my professors at Leiden, the ones that I was exposed to between 1995 to 2000, and that was a university debt. That was their, you know, I call it their doctrinal attitude. These kids come and that's what they taught us, that they give us, you know, I think they would be very happy if all of us had maintained that attitude and look now what you universities are doing. And I don't know where Leidenies arts, maybe as an institution, it's immune to these new developments, but back then that was... Well, it's got to distinguish. I know, all I know is it's got a very distinguished physics

history. I visited a variety, I've lectured it back in the days when I used to do that at a bunch of Netherlands universities. I have a bunch of very good friends who are Dutch physicists, but not Leiden. I haven't done that yet, but it has a very distinguished history. case those two mantras of scrupulous investigation of every former and current doctrine and you argue basically that we have to investigate the doctrine of how we especially in europe of how immigrants especially from muslim countries are are treated and and and and not not and not being afraid of offending i think um you know right in the introduction to that book and we're moving into the book happily um and i have just so you know we'll see if we have

many we get I have 23 different questions there we'll see we'll see we'll see if we'll see if I have 10 minutes well we know I hope we can if you only have 10 minutes I was hoping you could go two hours can we not go two hours why don't we wait for an interruption from okay from from from the real world yeah okay good I hope so because yes I really was hoping we'd go two hours so let's see I mean I could go a lot longer to be safe prey is about a cultural problem that migrants bring from Muslim majority countries to Europe, even though the principal victims are women, it's still difficult in today's increasingly intolerant quote-unquote cancer culture to write on this subject.

My view is that foreclosing certain avenues of inquiry ex ante is the antithesis of the scientific method, and of course it is. It makes little sense to insist that immigrants cannot be seen to be over-representative in sex crime statistics and that it's better not to publish the statistics rather than risk exacerbating anti-immigrant feeling. Such obscuritism never ends well. So basically almost sort of the thesis of the book in a way. And let me read at the very beginning. You say from your personal experience,

the point of this book is not to demonize migrant men. Rather, it's to better understand the nature and significance of the sexual violence that has occurred in so many parts of Europe in the recent past. As I was researching for this book, the Me Too movement, Sean a light on sex abuse, I found myself wondering why an equally bright light was not being shone on the more often serious crimes against women in lower income neighborhoods in Eastern Europe. So that people were, you know, we see all these stories and the headlines and the news in the United States having to with Hollywood stars or things like that.

But what was going on to people that weren't people who would sell newspapers, if you wrote about them, you didn't hear any discussion at all. And I think that's what's really important. It's you say time and again in my career, I've come across authorities and commentators, including self-described feminists, who are prepared to look the other way

when it comes to harassment and abuse of immigrant women at the hands of their own men. Afraid of being called racist, these women strike an apologetic tone on behalf of those who assaulted them, some even apologizing for bringing them to justice. And the last quote from this page, which I think sort of summarizes a lot of where you're heading is, and the media self-censoring their reporting, all in order to said to avoid stoking racial and religious tensions or providing ammunition for right-wing populace.

So the point of the book, and I'm worried we may not get to spend as much time on it as I liked, is that there are serious problems with policies of immigration. And you're not advocating keeping immigrants out, which is nice. But you're advocating that we have to recognize, first of all, scientifically and realistically, the empirical facts. Those empirical facts should then govern policies, and policies can be made that can try to address what is in some sense a clash of culture. If I'm going to sort of summarize the book,

as I'm worried I'm going to have to. I hope I won't, but we'll see. Does that seem a reasonable summary? Yes, it's a great summary. It's exactly what the book is about. And I think every time I have a discussion, a conversation about the book and why I'm trying to convey and so on and so forth,

I learn something new and I want to say things, just the same thing, but in a different way. So one of the annoying words is immigrant. Yeah. Because it obscures so much. If you have, let's say, our common denominator is just being human. Yeah. And you have men and women, you've girls and boys.

That's a wonderful, rare and new thought that we actually are, they have a common denominator. It's so rare to hear that. Go on. So if you're living in Germany and you're attacked by a white heterosexual male, there is such a huge outrage, not just from the victim, and the victim's family and friends, but also the perpetrator's family and friends. You know, the first question is what on earth was going through your mind when you did that?

And if the victim seeks justice, it's quite possible that she will get it because she has this support. And will she face challenges? Yes, because the victim, this is white-on-white sexual crime, still goes through the shame and why did this happen to me and what part of it was mine. what is this going, what am I going to gain from this? And if you go to a court of law, you steal as the female, you get, you don't know what you're going to get out of it. It just makes the trauma worse. So given that setting, I want you to then imagine the next scene, which is now there is

a man, he's of color, he has dark hair or dark skin, and he engages in the exact same conduct. And the victim now has to say, for you to even take me seriously, as I tell you my story, I just want to put out there, I'm not right wing and I'm not a racist and I'm not onto immigration. We're not even talking about what just happened to you. The father and the mother or the victim's family and friends may be outraged, but they also have to express themselves in, this is different. So we have to deal with the situation differently. And then the legal system doesn't even want to go anywhere near it. Now, if it happened once or twice or three times, you could call out anecdotal evidence. You could say, you know, we're just going to find this young man, sit him down and talk some sense into him.

But that's not what's happening. We're seeing as the number of immigrant men from societies where they're not immigrants, they're native, their locals, and they behave just as badly towards their women, but a sort of different dynamic applies there. And they come to Europe and they just carry on being young men. And now they're finding that there are crimes that they can get away with. And things have changed. First of all, women are more readily available. Because in the places where they come from, most women are protected from that,

like physically protected. I used to go out with a chaperone, not go out at night, avoid all the situations where something like that could happen. Women in Europe and in America have been told that they're free and protected by the law and by their families, they can do whatever they want. and men are now finding more and more women to prey upon. And let me just interrupt for one second. The other side of it is that men are never in a,

find themselves in the Muslim countries in an equally sort of inhibited position. They can never interact with a woman. And they are or have sex or any of the things that they would naturally want to do and find themselves equally sort of women are protected, but you might say at the same time, And so are men for this. Anyway, I would just want to go ahead. If something bad happens to you, where I come from the first question from your own family, your loved ones is not, oh, we're going to go after this bastard.

It's as well, what were you doing? What did you do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what we're doing there? Okay. And, you know, in Europe, if you apply that question, what were you doing there? There is outrage. It's like, I have every right to be there as he was. Why did this happen? It's because he's physically stronger than me. And we've been told for years and years. we have this legal infrastructure that protects those who are physically weaker from those who are physically stronger. It's applied when a native causes a problem like that. It's not applied when the immigrant causes it.

Where does it take you from just a logical perspective? For the immigrant communities, the message is sent. You can behave this way and get away with it. if they ever get caught or if the thing makes itself to a court, they may get a lenient sentence. They may get off lightly, but they have a criminal record. And that impacts your future in the labor market. And so it's not as if they're doing new favors,

because you still have that criminal record right there. For the victim and, you know, for women, the message is clear, even though we have, even though you are a taxpayer, even though you subscribe to these laws, even though you hold the law, you shouldn't be where you get into that kind of problems. And that I found on just that level, I thought so all this time we were being told, immigrants are going to integrate. It's just a matter of time. And that integration was this one-way path. And now are we seeing, if you heard, pray and in between the lines, the natives are integrating into the cultures that the immigrants bring, and we're moving backwards.

This is regression, but it's solved as progressivism. Yeah, that's a very important concern in your book, is the fact that we are, that fundamental rights, which were sort of taken for granted in a liberal society, are being eroded because of a concern of sort of, sort of, sort of, of accommodating a culture that that that doesn't have those rights and um and and and it's called us progress yeah yeah and it's called progress and and you point out um you know i'm trying to summarize some of this just in case we do have to end a little early but um the that um there's a chapter where you talk about the there's an institutional there are institutional reasons for this the immigration industry i remember that's what you called it but you also said um You say there's no shortage of people who want to deny the reality of what is happening in Europe.

Part of the reason for this is, as we've seen, and by the way, I should say, and since you don't want to talk about numbers, that the first part of your book basically provides the data showing that sexual assaults have gone up and looking, not all places can label who's doing the assaulting and when, but when those labels are there, specifically after major immigration moves in 2015, that there's a significant increase. and violence against women, and largely the perpetrators, one could say, I mean, again, summarizing a lot of information are from Muslim societies. So you provide that data. But then you say, so there's no shortage of people who want to deny the reality of what's happening in Europe. Part of the reason for this is, as we've seen, that sexual assault is often underreported by

victims wherever and whenever it happens. But it's also true that it's politically inconvenient for most European governments to acknowledge the existence of this particular crisis. much evidence remains wrapped in reams of red tape and buried under piles of bureaucratic paperwork. And you say you encountered both those obstacles in writing the book. But you're saying that basically you talk about Angela Merkel in Germany and, you know, her, quote unquote decision to ultimately open the gates. And you point out it was never really a decision. It was just a, it was just, it was mad.

it was really matter rather just not taking action that could have been taken, partly as a result of political backlash, right? Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I'll start with the last one with the Angela Merkel situation. When I was interviewing German members of the government and the bureaucracy and the media, everybody, first of all, said, I will talk to you, but if you leave my name, status out of the book. And again, I want to point out how critical. You see that is if you live in a liberal society where we have, it's an open society.

If our society is still as open as we pretend it is, then you would want your name and your position in these things to say, I'm happy to discuss these problems. That's number one. But what does it tell you? It also tells you, beyond the sexual misconducts of some of the immigrant men, what it tells you is, The whole deal with immigration in Europe has been in a state of impasse for a long time. It never moves. You have one side of people who are saying there should be no borders, everybody should come in. Compassion is then translated into this unrealistic idea where if you take it to its logical conclusion,

and you basically abolish the idea of a nation state. And that's one side. The other side is no, we need to depart everybody who's here, who doesn't integrate, and we need to close the borders, and we need to go back to, I don't know, whatever the original identity is. Again, I'm describing the extremes. Yeah. But these two groups don't move towards the middle

where you can figure out some reasonable, rational, logic. you know, set of answers and sets of solutions that work for everyone. And politicians like Angela Merkel would enter this debate and then find that it's not going anywhere and then take on a position of avoiding it. She would rather talk about the financial crisis. She'd rather talk about Brexit. She'd rather talk about nuclear weapons than talk about immigration. And so every senior member of the political establishment of,

Europe would rather just avoid it because it ruins your career. It ruins your agenda. It's it's the kind of topic that never gets you anywhere. But the problems were getting more and more. Now we have the breakdown of from the Arab Spring, you know, country after country and all of them are sending refugees and asylum seekers and displaced peoples. And then we get to the point of Syria. And I think right there with her facing the cameras, and that's what the German politics, I spoke to and the German media who observed this year, there was no plan. There was no program. She was just faced with the cameras.

She wanted from, she came from a good place. She wanted to show the world that Germany is not racist. It's a welcoming place and it has changed since the Second World War. His young girl cries and that is the straw for her that broke the camel's back. So the whole thing came from a good place. As often things happen, well-intentioned, well-intentioned, you know, dealing with racism is well-intentioned until you turned it into an ideology that claims that everything that happens to everyone as a result of white supremacy.

Yeah, so exactly, came from a good place, but then it led to this crisis that she then ran away from. Yeah. And so when it's not just that, because that show of compassion was amazing and it was good or bad depending on which side of the argument. But showing true leadership would then have been to say, okay, so for many years we haven't been able to deal with these assimilation issues. Now is the time, and I'm going to set resources aside for that,

or use my leadership to do that inside Germany, and show leadership among the other European countries. We've got to deal with this problem, and she didn't do that. And that's what makes local Germans angry at, Well, in fact, let me, let me, let me, you begin one, when you talk about the broken windows of liberal justice, you quote a Berlin integration officer, I was going to say interrogation officer, but integration officer. Arnold Mengelech. In an interview in 2018, he explained that newly arrived asylum seekers are confident that they will be released quickly after arrest. Yes.

For them, an overloaded and undersourced justice system poses no threat. I've seen this again and again in the course of researching this book. If a man harasses a woman and gets away with it, he may try probably the next one who walks past him or follow another one down the street. And if he gets away with that, he may go further still because it's highly unlikely that his actions will make it to court, let alone subject him to prison or deportation.

And I like that you put it that way because the frustration expressed by that man was expressed at every level. It is expressed by the journalist says, why are you not reporting on these things? She said, whoa, wait a second. I would love to report, but for journalism, she said it is a lose, total lose-lose, because you report on it and you are told you empower and pride in people.

The policeman who wants to enforce it is in the middle of a case, they know they're going to win that case because it's so brazen, and they're told, drop it, and not you drop that one case, but you drop the entire case low, all of these cases. And so on an institutional level, every individual not coming out with their name in occupation, are saying, I want to do my job, but I'm frustrated in it. And all that frustration builds up and goes to the level of Angela Merkel.

If you look at it even further, you're going to see so. Which institution is really causing the biggest problem? It's the courts. Because you go and get away. The courts are so crazy. First, everyone encourages if you want to, you know, walk towards trying to, to get the judges to look at the case seriously that culture doesn't play a role. All men are sexually charged in this way. They are all suffering from toxic masculinity.

It's a universal phenomenon. So don't bring culture into, don't bring religion into it, don't bring any of that the whole background. What makes this particular perpetrator different from that perpetrator. Don't talk about that. That's taboo. the case gets on and there are facts that can't be hidden which in the book I gave case after case after case. And then suddenly culture matters and says, well, we'll just excuse this one because he had no clue. You see, if I'm in Iraq, under these circumstances, I had no clue that I would be punished for behaving in this way. And suddenly, that is an argument that the defense uses to get the perpetrator either acquitted or get a very light sentence.

So it's all this Kafkaesque stuff is constantly happening. Does culture matter or does it not matter? Yeah, no, it's it. Well, in fact, you have a great chapter called the Playbook of Denial. Yes. Where you give, you know, I was, if we had more time, I was going to go through each item, but you list a list of, you know, in analogy to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross is published on death and denying, where denial, or death and dying, where denial is one of the five stages of grief.

You call it the brush off. off misdirection, the semantic model, bogus research and commentary, dismissal of honest academics as bigots. Oh, I just want to keep reading the titles. Appeals to compassion and platitudes, bad advice and bogus solutions, fear of bigotry and backlash, and the playbook of denial. And it's applied over and over and over again. Maybe what's missing from that is then the vilification of the Cassandras, the people who say we can't really keep on looking away. This is getting out of control. Yeah. Another point, I mean, it's laughable, but another point is they keep saying, if we really, if we stop the denial, you're going to empower the right wing. Well, look at the status of the far right in Europe. Yeah. In every country, they've now become a major voice. Their parties are now well established. If you had dealt with these problems, you wouldn't give them a chance to have anything to talk about. Look at the Russian disinformation. agents, they now have something to disinform about, solve the problem, and the people who want

to exploit these problems, you know, they'll be cornered. It doesn't happen. So the right wing is increasing. The disinformation people are increased. The Islamists are increasing. The lawlessness is increasing. It's the playbook of denial leads to these lose, lose, lose, except for those who benefits, who take the taxpayer money. Oh, tax bear money or get votes. The idea that short-term gain overrides long-term gain, which is a key point. You point out to say, the case of left-wing political parties, having seen their traditional white working class voter based erode, turn immigrants as a new source of vote. So lots of people are looking for short-term, and that's the problem with most of our global problems, including climate change,

is that people are looking at short-term gain and not looking down the road and realizing that you lose so much more in the long-term by taking these short-term. But I think we're built, Unfortunately, evolution has largely promoted the idea of gain in the moment rather than thinking about the, you know, thinking a long term is something that we've only come to do and you know, well after the fact, and I don't think we're all hardwired for that, that illusionary basis. That is true. And I think the other point, and I think you alluded to it right now was there is a class problem. Yeah.

If the things that are happening that I describe in that book. were happening to the upper classes, the daughters and mothers and sisters and grandmothers of the upper classes. Oh my goodness, can you imagine? Yeah. There would be no immigration. They would put up the borders. They would deal with. They would deport.

They would lock up. They would do whatever it takes to protect their girls. This stuff is happening to working class people. It's the girls. It's happening to the grooming gang. these, yes, Pakistani young men were exploiting working class white girls. And the grooming guns were blatantly racist, telling the girls that they were exploiting them and doing what they were doing to them because they were whites and infidel and all the rest

of it. But they were ignored and their plight was completely ignorant. It affected so many that those girls were so let down. And the whole thing has spread. It's all over Europe. It's happening to poor girls. It's happening to the poor. It's happening to working class women.

And what I say in the book, the immigrant women were fast, the immigrant women into Europe. They were the victims of the culture of misogyny that men bring from their countries of origin. Yeah. And now it's affecting the working-class women. And I think there's a natural coalition there for the Muslim women immigrants and the walking class white to work together and to bring this into the open and to civilize these young men. Yeah, you know, you make it personal a bunch of cases. So you talk about sitting in a bus and and, you know, trying to behave modestly and

appropriately and being hassled and experiencing that. And you point out, that there's a that there's this well in Islam there's this modesty notion which which sounds good in the front but what it does is is is ends up confining women and and frustrating men a young man leading to a natural you say i'm not sure which came first confining women to the home or sexually harassing them in public places there's clearly a relationship but don't between those two things well and i think again if we go back to you know how do you understand society and behavior and what do you do? What would be the best set of ideas?

It would be obviously what they had achieved in Europe for a brief period, which was to recognize human nature and civilize young men, make them into chivalrous, protective beings instead of giving in willy-nilly to their cravings and attacking women by dehumanizing women, and then creating an infrastructure that protects the weak from the strong. And that's now being thrown out of the window. And I really don't understand why they think this is going to go and how, you know, go to a good way, how they think this is going to end. Well, Amy, you argue.

And I do want to get to the end of because you give a bunch of, you give six different things that I think are important that for doing for, for trying to get around this descending circle of hell. the uh but you you one of but there are a few points that i think are really important to stress on the way one which was in in the muslim world in particular this notion which i hadn't really thought of i mean i see victimhood now and it and this notion that everyone's a victim for you know instead of just taking personal responsibility and saying grow up um but you point out that part of the part of it is cultural the sense that um that there's a that there's a group that instead of individual responsibility, there's group responsibility. So the group, so that, you know, the group is offended and the group and individuals are not, are not, you know, either take action or defended on an individual basis, but more as a group basis, which naturally leads to victimhood arguments.

So you want to talk about that a little bit? Because I found that quite insightful. So individual responsibility means that the individual is held a counter. for their actions, good or bad. And individual responsibility, I think it also entails that whole process of, you know, due process and you give the individuals a chance to explain themselves. And that, to me, would be true social justice, would be to give every individual the opportunity to say, this is my accuser slash the other.

Group, the whole group thing, what it does is it takes the individual out. of the equation. So there is no individual responsibility that you're not held accountable. If a member of your group does something bad to a member of another group, your whole group reacting, if you're a minority, you say we're being victimized. If you're a majority, you go ahead and victimize. And so that whole individual responsibility thing is not developed or not seen as valuable. And I'll give you, I'll give you a very, clear example. When I was doing the research and saying, I just need to see the numbers for who these perpetrators are surely it's easy to collect. The European officers were telling me we don't

do that anymore because during the 1930s and the 1940s, we held entire groups because of the race, or religion responsible for God knows what and started to eliminate them. So one of the lessons we learned was never to do that again. Okay. Okay. So that means you'll never, the statistics, I'm very bad with numbers, but also even getting the statistics, even if you're good at numbers, you won't get them because no one is skipping these records

because of something that happened in history. And because of something that happened in history, the new groups who are not a part of that history and who are coming to a completely different context, the individuals within them are figuring out, oh, wow, now I can go and rampage on an individual level. The corrective means within my group, which if you're within the culture,

Muslim culture, Somali culture, whatever, the way to keep individuals in line is to stigmatize their behavior. So those forces are not going to come into play. I can get away with it on that level. I wouldn't be held accountable as an individual by my own group. And when it comes to exploiting members of the other group, my group will come to my defense because we can all play the victim and say,

you are accusing all Muslims, all Iranians, all Afghans, all Somalis, all. Look at the group thing in there. And the other group is silenced. Yeah, they're just completely silenced by that. Victims, yeah. So you then get these warped and perverse ways in which men begin to understand here's an opportunity to resist, too irresistible to take. Well, you also point out to be fair, and just so make sure that we both get more hate mail,

that it's not just a matter of not being seen. by your group because they're not there. But in the Islamic world, there's not there in many cases in the case of assault, or sexual assault or abuse of women, there's no scrutiny, there's no scrutiny by the group or stigmatization by the group. In any case, it's the woman who's often held responsible as a cultural issue. That is true. And also as I describe in the book though, the logic, this is how it works.

There's a distinction, I call it the modesty doctrine. And the modest doctrine works in this way. There are good women and they're bad women. And these are very, the lines are very clear, right? And if you're a good woman, you stay at home, you obey, you cover yourself, you know how to avoid places where you can get into trouble. And if you are group, you're in group, if they have the capabilities, which is a lot of men.

Yeah. Anybody crosses all of that and still attacks you, well, you must feel sorry for that attacker because they're beaten up, they're castrated. They make a show. They'll start wars and feuds that last decades over something like that. But if you're a woman who breaks any of those laws, then you are a bad woman.

And what happened to you was coming to you because, you know, are living on the edge. So your group will not come and protect you, but if you then, if you also perceived as shaming your group, they will take care of you. That is the basis of honor killing and honor, right? Exactly. So that is, these are the differences. And obviously that doesn't apply anymore into modern Europe. Ancient Europe was different. Even 19th century Europe resembled Muslim world more. Yeah, sure. But I, I want to move forward to just where we had that conversation where you said, we were talking about holding individuals accountable and exploiting opportunities that come up. In the Bay Area,

there is now this phrase called smash and grab. And I want to talk to you about smash and grab, just to demonstrate that I'm not talking only about Muslim men or immigrant men. You don't have to be Muslim. You don't have to be immigrant, any of that. You have to be a young man who thinks, oh, I can get away with all this bad behavior. And even, you know, so when in San Francisco, or maybe it's the whole state of California, but I think it's San Francisco, they passed this stupid law that if you, if there was a crime of less than $950 or something like that, there would be, No arrests.

What? Four charges made. Okay, just ponder that. Yeah. So basically shoplifting then becomes leased. And groups of young men and I think also young women who work with them thought, wow. So I can go and take all of these products, sell them back on the internet. It's now become a huge problem.

So you see how it is not, it's just, it's just, it's. we go back to the common denominator, which is the human individual, and the human individual who thinks I can get away with certain things. Yeah. If it's sexual misconduct, if it's uplifting and selling it, whatever, you make the opening, they take it, then whose fault is it? Yeah, well, and it's often well-intentioned, but, but, you know, but good intentions, there's a famous saying about that, you know.

Yeah. So uphold the law for smash and grab. uphold the law against sexual misconduct, the outcome remains the same. You protect the victims. Exactly. And but, you know, I want to be clear, though, you do make a point of saying this is not an ethnic question. It's you really do come down and think to some extent, one of the real problem, you ask the question, why is an integration happened? Why are the societies in some sense moving backwards rather than forwards by trying to accommodate is a religious one?

You say, you know, another, you say an assumption was that the inherent superiority, of secular democratic pluralism would be so attractive that newcomers would soon embrace it. That is not what has happened. For a significant number of migrants from Muslim countries, as we shall see, the values have not rubbed off. This comes down to religious rather than ethnic differences. As religiously enforced attitudes about women inhibit employability for migrants and compel them to form parallel societies where antisocial behaviors such as honor violence and forced marriage, reinforce separate systems of laws. All of this combines to lessen the

chances that immigrants will successfully integrate into the surrounding liberal culture. And you say, you know, commentators tell Europe to be patient, but it's not happening. So you're basically saying, and you do say it's a clash, fundamentally a clash of cultures, and unless it's recognized as being that, in a realistic sense, it will be hard to deal with. Yeah, and what you just said is a manifestation of what I would call the Islamist solution. So the Islamists established themselves amongst minority communities, immigrant minority communities, and they want to impose Islamist norms through the mosque, the establishing of so-called Muslim schools and other ways.

And the Islamist leadership will talk to the local white established elites and political parties and say, leave the problem to us. are going to solve these problems. You don't want sexual misconduct anymore. Well, this is what we're going to do. Now, what exactly is it then that they're preaching? They're saying to the young man, do not drink alcohol, come to the mosque. I call it Dawa. They preach about how such a young man is supposed to behave himself. But leading him towards a direction where he starts to internal. analyze the modesty doctrine of good woman, bad woman. So that's not going to solve the problem. It's still victim blaming.

And what the Islamist is trying to sell to the native society is, then women should not be in places where they can be harmed by men. So change your society to resemble our religious vision. And I think that is very, Basically, what you're seeing in Europe is when the people at the center, center left, center rights and the leadership, when they decide these are problems that they want to avoid, then they create that void and the bad forces come in. The extreme rights, when people come in, the misinformation, the Russian misinformation people come in, and the Islamists come in. And it becomes ever more narrow. Well, and then you say it's compounded.

And by the way, we're getting near the end, so I'm actually getting to the one. And none of these three forces are good for women. Yeah, none of them are good for women. And, and you, but there's an additional force, which I mentioned earlier, and you have a whole chapter about called the integration industry and it's failure. And you talk about in Dutch parliament, for all the money spent, the country could not identify a single success story. Much of it has found its way into the balance sheet of slick consultants, worthy nonprofits, and ethnic community representatives. all promising utopian levels of integration, which never happened. So your point is that there's an industry that it's in their interest to ensure that that continues.

Absolutely. It's an industry. It is an army of consultants. They come into parliament. They tell members of parliament, you know, if you sign this into law, and if you sign into that, and if you allocate these resources, we're going to take care of the problem. And then these consultants network with one another, and they have got all kinds of different fancy names, and they placate politicians and the civil service by taking these constant surveys to say, but look, the German population, the Dutch population, the Swedish population, you're not anti-immigrant. So all these rising sexual misconduct, it's not leading to an anti-immigration.

Because we've just done these surveys. Yeah. And the surveys say this and the surveys say that. And then we pay money and they have their jobs and they have their infrastructure. And the problem gets bigger and the bigger the problem gets, the more they're needed. Well, and then the government becomes, I mean, a government, I always used to idolize Sweden when I was younger. seem to be the perfect sort of socialist kind of country and i mean i like sweden so let me make me that clear but but you give examples of a breakdown of the rule of law in sweden about about

you know that i think it's really shocking for a lot of people so i'd like mirror the this is what a rolling back of women's whites look like it's a brochure produced by the swedish government's national board of health um with the title information for for you who are married to a child you want to just talk about that for a second because it's shocking what do i what do i what do i have to say about that for sure that it is a shocking acceptance of child marriage in Sweden, not in Iran, not in Pakistan, not the Taliban of Afghanistan. No, it's in Sweden. And this is then that's sort of the implosion where we've looked at these problems, we can't do anything about it. We're left with nothing but to accept. And when you accept child rights on child

marriage because it's happening in your, between your ears to a small group of religious minorities. What if the local Swedans say, well, it's legal because they have pedophilia there. Yeah, yeah. Instead of hiding behind the internet, why can't I just marry her? Do you see this slippery slope of where things are going if you allow it for one group, or why will you not allow it for others? Yeah. And then, and then you also say at the same time, the irony is that, As a result of all this, European voters are well to the right of American voters on immigration issues.

So you've got this negative aspect. The right wins, the forces of regression win, women lose, and liberal values lose, which is, you know. And so I want to just spend the last few minutes because you have been indulging me. So I wanted to say to you, please, on the Sweden, the contrast Sweden with Denmark, its neighbor. Okay, you're right. And I'm glad I was going to, I had the example of Denmark, but I didn't want to take time. So why don't you take my time? But it's fascinating. No, it is. It is. Scandinavian and small and liberal. And they have this self-image of being, you know, my goodness. So to me, as an outsider, I look at Sweden and Denmark, and they look alike.

Yeah, they're even connected by a bridge. It's really. And yet, they have these different approaches where the Danes thought, well, these liberal philosophy and infrastructure and principles, they matter to us. We are going to protect that. And they were vilified. They were called all sorts of names. But they did it anyway. So things in Denmark, I would say Denmark today is more friendly towards immigrants than Sweden. In Sweden, they let it rip. And the result is they are now in a place where a majority of their population saying just close the borders. Yeah. So they went from being so pro-immigration, you don't need borders anymore, to being the most. Yeah, and that's the problem if you don't, if you don't, if, if, if, if you

recognize, if you actually do recognize that there are, there are dangers and concerns from not, I mean, from from from from from dealing with things realistically. Yeah. Honorary's people's rights and respecting them as individuals, but understanding the need to be able to, to have societies that function. And the last, the last chapter of your book is, is, is a series of proposals. So it's not just a book about problems. And I thought I'd spend a minute or two with each of each of them, if we could. And, and then end with the end of your book. Uh, you one, so this, you, let me just give you a chance for a minute for each, which is maybe not fair, but the first thing is repeal the existing asylum framework. When I, want to, uh, uh, uh, let me just. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, let me.

elaborate on that for a moment? Because it's unrealistic. There are a billion people in Africa. They live in failing or failed states. And most of them would want to make their way to Europe. And they would like to use the asylum system. Similar problem in South Asia, the Middle East, unsustainable. It's become a mockery of what it was. And you say it's clear that we need to change the artificial classification that differentiates between asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants. Because it's become an excuse for the left and for the so-called immigration and integration industry. It is not a solution to the problem.

It is a problem. It's making the problem bigger. Okay. And then you say address the push factors. Exactly. So rich countries, I think, have now an opportunity to try and figure out how to help poor countries that send refugees, asylum seekers into ways of making those economies work. rather than inviting them to welfare states

that are not going to hold out for very long. Okay, then you say, as well as the poll factors, and you talk about, in this case, you talk about changing two states that have, in your mind, have done a reasonable job of trying to make the welfare states less attractive in that sense, Austria and Denmark. And let me just quote you from Denmark here.

In Denmark, for example, in Denmark, the state provides housing, education, and health care as well as social assistance. By connecting the provision of these services to the behavior of recipients, the government is trying to break the social and cultural habits that have effectively locked so many Muslim immigrants out of the open society. Children and migrant neighborhoods must now be separated from their parents for 25 hours per week and learn Danish values, or their parents will have their welfare payments cut. In addition, curfews for under 18s are intended to minimize their involvement in the street gangs. this policy was later withdrawn for being too severe, but you point out as a potential way of dealing with these.

And I think none of those policies are severe enough. But there are beginning, there are stats. And of course, I know that we'll have that back and forth before. It's too severe. It's not severe enough. And then what I hate to see is to freeze in the middle of people to run away from it. But in truth, yes, you do have to deal with the pull factors, right? if you're advertising to the world, come and live here in Denmark and in Sweden and Germany

and Holland, you're going to have free everything without people really understanding where that money comes from, without demanding that you pay into it without, you know, where we go back to the responsibility and accountability, dynamic, it's not going to work. And that's what I mean. It's these welfare states unsustainable. And, okay, and reinstate the rule of law, namely the, The rule, you say beautifully, the rule of law without enforcement is merely misrule. Yes, it is. If you've lived in an anarchy, if you've lived in an autocracy, if you've lived in a theocracy,

you will come to really understand, appreciate the rule of law as it was understood and enforced in Europe, in America, and still in some places that happens. Justice, Lady Justice is blind. Enforce the rule of law. take all these racial and gender and all these things that they're trying to bring into it and have how wink at you Because you're black you can get away with it you're an immigrant you can get away wink wink Take all of that away make lady justice blind again and force the rule of law for everyone equally Then listen to successful immigrants and I think that's important and you're an example

I would say of a successful immigrant you say I'm in agreement with you talk about a variety of successful immigrants and you you say, I'm in agreement with each of these people and the necessary conditions for integrating Muslims into European societies. The core of their views and mine is that we must defend liberal values more robustly, that the rule of law must be enforced, and that individual responsibility is crucial, and that taboo on open discussion of these issues has only made them worse, especially for women. Yeah. So look at the immigrants who have come, understood, and appreciate the opportunities that they have figured out have come to love the countries that they have resettled themselves into

and then their advice. And I think the most, the best people I spoke to when I was doing the book, they were the immigrants. And I think I would say listen to them. And you don't have to, you know, you shouldn't take my word for gospel or anything like that. Heaven.

Bring them into the room. And when you give them a, and don't demonize them. And when you give them a voice, you see, decided I wanted to dedicate myself to these issues, but most of the immigrants, successful immigrants I see, they're not in the integration industry. These are engineers, they're scientists, they are running businesses. If you ask them for their time to come and help you out, don't waste their time, you know, let them help, let them do what they want to do. And all of them

are going to tell you the same thing, which is tough love is better than this fake love that the people on the left profess. A beautiful way of saying it. The last one is provide sex education to all children, which is namely, yeah, so you want to talk about that. I mean, that somehow. Nazia Afzal, who is a celebrated prosecutor in the UK. He prosecuted the grooming gangs, terrible, terrible gangs.

He says, maybe we should not call it sex education, because again, that has become controversial. Yeah. It is really an education in the, in the instance. integrity of the human body and the respect for men and women, girls and boys. It truly is about understanding sex and sexuality and sexual orientation and all the good stuff, all the positive sides of sex, but also all these negative things. And if you give individuals a proper understanding of what that is, then you can hold them accountable.

If you don't teach them that as young children and they misbehave, it's hard to hold them account. I've seen these young men really confused and thinking, what have I done wrong? You're accused of participating in a gang rape and they still don't understand what it is that they did wrong. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, well, I mean, education. Yeah, no, it's, well, I mean, I'm an educator. I'm an educator, so I'm a fan of education. But, but, but you saw it even in this case in the United States of, of the right. who didn't want sex education. You'd see the same kind of, you'd see the same kind of nonsense happening

where the kids just don't know. I mean, you know, education is the way out of ignorance and poverty and misbehavior when hopes. It's a real. Ignorance is not bliss. And the religious group say it is bliss. And then you have the parents who are neglectful. And then you end up with a large number of young men in that sexually aggressive age group who haven't been educated, who have no clue. You know, some of the grooming gang members, they had no clue that they were actually hearting a human being. Yeah. They didn't relate to her as a human being.

And so when I talked to people like Nazia Aftel, he is putting these men in prison. He wants them to get out and he wants justice for the victims. But he keeps pointing out to compassion for the perpetrators because they haven't learned and They haven't been taught anything. Yeah, it's a, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a disservice we do to, to so many people and it's, it's, it's a, you used to call it civilization. Yeah, yeah, we used to call civilizing, but we're not allowed to that anymore. But, but, um, in the last, in your conclusion, I was kind of amused in a way,

because you brought up my country woman, Margaret Atwood. And, but, um, uh, the, but the first line of that, I think is really important. Um, you say as much as we would wish it to be so, progress is not a given. And I'd say with due apologies to our joint friend, Steve Pinker, that the progress is not a given, that it can go backwards. And I think that's really important. And I, you know, you talk about the Handway Schell,

which I, it's kind of interesting because I remember reading at the time, and it was profoundly important because it was, I was concerned about right-wing Christianity. But it seems so out of date now, and so inappropriate, it's the exact opposite of, I mean, it's not the danger that I see. I don't see that as the chief danger to women's rights in even in the United States. It's this notion of victimization and and identity politics that I think is a much bigger problem. And you, but you do point out that how new this is.

And I want to quote you in the last two pages in our last two minutes, or last few minutes. We must not forget that the very concept that women are equal to men is a relatively new one. It emerged only in the West and despite its advancements from the right to vote to the protection from demonstration in the workplace, it has yet to achieve the complete equality to which feminists aspire. The mythical arc of history that progressives assume bends towards human progress is better described as a pendulum, at least when it comes to women's rights. It's one backward and forward extending and rescinding liberties to women, depending upon the prevailing ideology of the time. Want to comment on that?

I think a lot of what we're, so I'll speak for myself. When I was in, you know, with you and Christopher Hitchens and Steve Pinker and Samhavs, and I still am, you're still my family, you're still my, you know, lovely and we engage with one another. And I think there was the common thread was religion is the biggest source of irrationality, Christianity, Islam and so on. And I think in a way, one big mistake that we made is that we were too lazy, and maybe too focused on the challenges of religion, which is just the one we know, to understand that you can be irrational, unreasonable, an enemy of logic, and be open society with no religion at all. And that's what we're seeing. And so we, for me, I'm going to speak for

myself again. When I hear the word progressive, I always thought, we're moving forward we're going somewhere there's a sense of purpose and then i saw phrases like ancestral wisdom yeah and and i would look and then i would listen very carefully to what they were saying and think but that's not progress this isn't going anywhere and there's no religion involved in any of this yes but it's happening in all of the academic settings where i am where millennials and the younger generation they're proposing these things of there's something lovely and beautiful beautiful and wonderful about being savage, you know, who saw all of them. Yeah.

And I thought, but that's not progress. And it's just how we use language, the way we use the word science and progress and this and that. And I think people like you and me and Christopher passed away, and I think his legacy needs to be republished so everybody can see what it was. Sure. And Sam and Steve Finker, we need Sam Harris, Steve Finker. We need to get together and say, how can we.

figure out a way of fighting and pushing back against this obscurantism that is secular. It's secular religious. Yeah, it's a secular religion. And it's and, you know, this love of ancestral wisdom, and I think we even may have even talked about in your podcast, it's terrifying for me because I see it. And all of these well-meaning scientists are supporting this nonsense of having indigenous knowledge treated the same way. You just saw it in New Zealand. There's a, you know, they just... Ancestrian, indigenous wisdom.

Yeah, and that's somehow that it should be taught alongside physics as if it's, you know, equally valid science. And you may know that in New Zealand just last week, some scientists who wrote and said, hey, this, you know, we got to respect the Maori culture and everything it's done. And that's great. But we shouldn't teach the Maori, you know, physics along with, you know, or lack of physics, one should say, with, along with physics. And they've been ostracized and they've been, it's been suggesting. just they be removed from the New Zealand Royal Society of New Zealand. It's just, it's just disgusting.

And let me, let me read your last. It's more than it's crazy. It's crazy. And in fact, you actually, you actually say in that regard, I should say, in a related way, you say, today by contrast, feminists steeped in multicultural ideology, excuse the inequality imposed upon women across the Muslim world, including the peril of societies of Europe. They pointedly, quote, respect, quote, this misogynist,

culture rather than agitating for it to evolve. Western feminists have effectively relegated their Muslim sisters to the past. They are sleepwalking as their own rights begin to be eroded. It's a beautiful sentence. But again, it's respecting this ancient nonsense out of it's nonsense. Yeah. Well, it's ancient to you, but you know, if you are growing up with my grandmother, right? Yeah. My mother and in Africa. So it's not that ancient to me. When I was in all of these places that what you call native or indigenous ancestral, it's superstition. And if he wants to say, I'm going to teach superstition alongside physics, good luck. Well, it's bad luck is what's going to happen.

And let me read your last few sentences book because I love it. In writing this book, I've come to the conclusion that we need a new women's movement, one that views the world not in terms of multiculturalism and intersectionality, but in universal terms and that in the spirit of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill is prepared to stand up for the rights of all women. Women's safety from predatory men is the issue around which all true feminists must rally and coalesce. We women can and must be, must refuse to be relegated as we have been in the past, as I've been in my own lifetime, to the status of prey. I hope you will join me in this endeavor. All I can say is amen. Thank you. And remember that feminists

are not necessarily women. That's in fact the most powerful and effective feminists in our history have been men. And I will say that I'm happy that, I don't think I've ever said this in public, but when I was, my wife, who didn't like me originally, or I didn't think she would,

we didn't have a good meeting, but she, for some reason ended up reading a piece I wrote saying, educate women, save the world. And all I can say is it's worked out very well for me because we're now married. But it's a very important thing. It's something on which we both agree in a more, in a less facetious sense. It's a vitally important thing.

Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Educate women, liberate the world, educate women, educate women, make the world a more peaceful place and a healthier place. Educate women, educate girls, but also educate boys. And educate exactly. And there are fewer boys being educated. I'm a masculinist, whatever they have.

Yeah, in fact, as you know, we have fewer boys in college now than girls and it's a problem. Well, educating people, and you are the most beautiful, wonderful example of an educated person. One of the ones I know of every time I'm with you, I feel enlightened and raised. And thank you for taking more time than you'd planned to spend with me. Like I said, I will stay here until I get interrupted, but now I can hear the noise and I think all your guests will probably hear it. No, I can't hear them yet, but you may have heard my dog barking too. He agreed with you at one point. But thank you again, Ayan.

and it's always a pleasure to be with you. And I'm sure that you will have enlightened those who were lucky enough to listen to you today. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. I wish I could praise the way you do. I can't. Thank you so much. You're amazing.

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