TRIGGERnometry - Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Women Are Paying the Price for Political Correctness

Episode Date: February 21, 2021

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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. It does not get better than the guest we have for you this week. She's an author, activist and scholar. Ian Hershey Lee, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much for having me on. Ian, it's a great pleasure for us to have you on the show.

Listen, we were talking just before the show started about the fact that there's now a whole generation of young people who may not even be familiar with the entirety of your journey. They might be familiar with your later work, but not with the whole journey that you've had through life. So for those people, give everybody an overview of how are you where you are sitting here talking to us? So, well, my name is Ayan Hersey Ali, and I was born in Somalia. I'm a very old woman.

I think if you hit 50, then that's when age sort of comes after you. I was born in 1969. My father was a politician, and we left Somalia when I was about seven or eight years old, and we moved around. I lived in Saudi Arabia. I lived in Ethiopia. I lived in Kenya. And in 1992, when I was 22 years old, my father decided that it was time for me to get married. And he picked a husband for me.

I didn't agree with that arrangement. but I also have to make it very clear that that's just how it works in our culture. He was trying to do what's best for his daughter, and I think he had a sense of guilt because he had been gone for 10 years. So he left when I was about 11 years old and came back when I was 22 years old. And at that time, I thought he had no business arranging anything for me, aside from me not liking the man that he selected for me, I was then sent to Germany to stay with the relative who was going to help us figure out the immigration process from Germany to Canada.

The man that my father married me off to was a Canadian Somali. But instead of going to Canada, I slipped into the Netherlands and I asked for asylum and I lived there for 10 happy years and then 9-11, 2001 happened. And I took a position in that debate that was not popular. And that sort of launched me into, you know, one day I was a complete unknown. I had just graduated and started my first job at a think tank. And a few weeks later, I was the sensation of the nation. And you talk to some people and they would say famous and some people will say infamous. And then fast forward, I went into politics.

I served in the Dutch parliament for about three years. And then I made comments that were considered blasphemous by Muslims, including my family and my relatives and the wider Muslim community. and that led to the Dutch government deciding to put me in a security scheme where I was, you know, I had guards 24-7. And because I had guards 24-7, I didn't end up the way my friend Theo Fungo ended, who was killed by an Islamist

who thought that he blasphemed Theo and four, Theopongo and I made a small film together where we were trying to show that the awful, horrible treatment of women in Islam is not just, you know, it's not just incidental, that there is a whole ideology behind it and that it's sanctioned by the Quran and that was offensive enough to this young man called Muhammad Biyeri. that he plotted to kill both of us, but he was able to get to Theo because Theo didn't have the same security or sort of 24-7 bubble that I was in. And that kept me safe, of course, and I'm grateful for that.

But in short, that's my background. And then you moved to America where I believe you still have to have bodyguards. So tell everybody, Iyan, what are these great crimes that you've committed? What are the words that you've said or the things that you've done that make you, as you said, infamous? Well, I think the first, and I would say the crime that, for instance, my family think is unforgivable, is that I said, I'm no longer a Muslim.

I just don't believe in Allah or Muhammad. And then I took it one step farther. And instead of just saying, I don't believe in the moral superiority of Muhammad, I started to describe things that he said and did. And to this day, people do and say it's justified in the name of religion because they follow in the footsteps of Muhammad. And so I judged Muhammad by the moral standards of our day. And that put me in even more trouble.

And then when in the Netherlands, like right after 9-11, we weren't just having conversations about terrorism in the Netherlands. We were also having conversations about the failure to integrate Muslim minorities, not just the first generation, but the second generation, and sometimes even going down to the grandchildren. And I looked into it and I came to the conclusion that if we allow Muslim communities to continue treating girls and women the way they do, they will continue to lag behind. And integration is just not going to happen. I was talking about such features as female genital mutilation. I was talking about pulling little girls out of school and marrying them off, abducting them sometimes, taking them. to the country of origin, forcing them into marriages that they didn't want to, or importing young men from very remote parts of Morocco and Turkey in other places, and then having these

girls who were born and raised in Holland, and they would be married off, and there was something transactional about that and inhuman, and I wasn't supposed to talk about that stuff, but my conclusion was, if you want integration to succeed, emancipate these young women. And then as the conversations about terrorism continued because terrorist acts continued, most of our prominent leaders were saying, Islam is a religion of peace. And I thought that it was nonsense. I didn't just think that. I also said it. I thought about it. I tried to demonstrate that it's very difficult to maintain this. notion that political Islam is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about Muslims here,

who are just peaceful people and identify as Muslim. I'm talking about the people who organize and raise money and preach and develop a narrative and then act on that narrative and wage jihad or holy war. And I just thought it was very strange to say that it's a religion of peace when in fact we were seeing acts of violence from like the beheading of Theo van Gogh all the way to attempts to blow up innocent people in going about their business in recreational areas. And so I lived through the time when the hotels in Bombay were attacked. But also when Boko Haram, the leader of whom studied in Saudi Arabia, and, you know, he imbibed the ins and outs of Sharia law in Mecca and Medina

and then went back to Nigeria and then established an organization called Boko Haram and then started terrorizing the population. So it goes in terms of scale, it goes from, you know, attacks against individuals all the way to the upsetting of countries. And then obviously we saw the phenomenon of ISIS, where these outfits that call themselves the Islamic states of Iraq and Syria invaded and occupied large swathes of Iraq and Syria

and subjected the people of Iraq and Syria to not only a theocracy that they justified in the name of Islam, but that we were seeing in real time because this is the kind of world we live in now, where those perpetrators were saying, we're acting in this way, say, against Yazidi women, because this is what the Quran tells us, this is exactly what Muhammad did, And so we're trying to replicate these things. And so I think voicing these things, linking them to Islam,

famous with a group of people, infamous with others. So, Ayam, why do you think that we're not able to have a sensible, rational discussion about Islam, not about Muslims, but about the religion and the ideas behind it? Well, here are some, I'm just going to run you through, some of the reasons that I hear to answer that particular question. There are a lot of stories about when you say we

assuming Western society. Yes, absolutely. That we have to atone for all the things that Western civilization has done wrong. Slavery, colonization, the occupation of our the countries, waging wars, the First World War, the Second World War, the way the Jewish people

were treated. So I think there is this, and I hear that, I acknowledge all of that history, but we end up just telling one side of the story. We only tell the story of all the terrible things that Western leaders over the centuries have done. We don't tell the other. side of the story. We don't tell the story of it was the British who took the initiative in ending slavery. The Arabs didn't end it, the Chinese didn't end it, other civilizations didn't end it. We don't tell that story. We had a war in America, a civil war that almost ripped the country apart, and that was about ending slavery. We had subsequent conflicts. about not just ending slavery, but ending segregation.

We had the whole story of civil rights. We don't tell these stories. We also don't tell the stories of what other civilizations have done wrong. And so we are in this. We've got to atone for the past by, I would say just talking about what we did wrong, and we're pushed into a place where the only way we are told in the age of identity politics,

is the only way to atone for it is to look away from, in my view, injustices perpetrated by people of color and non-Christian, so in this case, the religion of Islam. And I don't agree with that approach. we're just being told, be quiet and let's sit tight and suffer. Let's the victims of those ideologies suffer. Let's be patient.

And then one day, I suppose, we'll wake up and what? So, Yon, what would you say to those people who say that having these conversations, putting forward these types of arguments, is emboldening the far right? Well, there are extreme rights groups, just like there are extreme left-wing groups, but let me focus now on the extreme rights and the populists. And they are the only ones in town right now who are talking about these issues.

And if you want to empower them, I think the way to do it is to censor and to self-censor rational people who are in the middle. People who are not hostile to immigrants, who are not necessarily hostile to Islam, who are not hostile to women, who are not hostile to immigration in general, center-left, center-right, established and establishment,

parties and elites, when they say, we're not going to talk about these issues, then you leave the door wide open for these fringe groups to come in and take control of the narrative of some of these big issues of our time. And that's unfortunate. And you talked earlier about being infamous. And I can totally see with some of the arguments that you're putting forward why someone who's a Muslim or even frankly an Islamist, like the sort of people you're criticizing, would be angry with you. What I understand a lot less, and I mean a lot less, is how somebody who grew up in the West is a product of this sort of culture who's not in any way affected by the words that you're saying.

why are they so angry with you? Because, look, you might be completely wrong, but you have a right to express these ideas, surely. Exactly. And I mean, it's all, everybody's welcome to dislike me, to challenge my assertions. I think that's enriching. I think it's empowering.

I think it's a good thing. But I think we, and I know you've done a number of shows on this, But we live in this age where, I mean, here in America, we call it the culture wars. Don't worry, Ayan. We import everything you guys produce over there a couple of years later. So thank you very much. We've got our own culture war. We're very grateful for it.

I know. I know we produce here in America a lot of good things that go across the world. And then we also produce really bad things, like identity politics. and that also, unfortunately, goes across the world. And here we are. But there is, we live, it's a crazy context because we live in, and you really describe that very well. So people actually, sane people, rational, well-educated people,

will make statements like, I don't like so-and-so. And then you say, but why did you like so? And you've never met so-and-so. You've really engaged with so-and-so. So why don't you like them? And it's just that because they think that belong in that camp. Now, when I discuss, and that's what I was doing in the past couple of decades, Islam or when some of my friends talk about Christianity or Judaism,

you see people organized along religious lines and say, I belong to this particular religious camp. and people who belong in that other camp, I don't like them. I don't think that their approach to God or morality or sanity or society is a good thing. But I think we understood it. The framework was always religion. And then we were trying, the rest of us, either moderately religious, agnostic or atheists, we would say, well, we've got to compel them to moderate.

Now we're faced with this, and it's really amazing. This pseudo-religious, a secular movement, born out of these post-modernists web of ideas and thoughts. And it's, you know, it's a mishmash of things. But it has now coalesced into, again, in America, we call it cancel culture. We call it woke. It's got all sorts of different names. But they, the people who adhere to these post-modernist ideas, they say they have the last word on justice. They have the last word on equality.

They have the last word on anything concerning race, gender. And these people are not going to like me or people like me because I just have the same attitude to them as I do to the Islam. which is, I don't really care what arguments you make to shut down free inquiry, free discussion, free debates. The fact that you're doing it is wrong. And here's why you are wrong. And those people are not going to like me. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world,

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Hey, Constantine, are you feeling fragile? Of course, I'm a full-blooded, toxic, straight white male. Then I have the perfect book for you. It's called Woke Fragility. What's it about? It's a satirical takedown of the woke, movement, poking funer all the nonsense and the ridiculous arguments were forced to endure day after day.

Ah, so it's a parody of Robin DiAngelo's white fragility, a favourite of middle-class white gimps everywhere. There is nothing wrong with being a lower middle-class white gimp. Anyway, the great thing about the book is that it's not gratuitous or incendiary. It's a light-hearted and playful book written by someone on the left who's as incredulous at this idiocy as we are. I'm guessing he hasn't been able to find a publisher because, well, for the reasons that we all know.

So where do I get a copy for my one remaining woke friend? Search woke fragility on Amazon or just hit the link in the description. All right, well, what happens if I don't read it? I'll buy you a copy of white fragility instead. Get me a copy of woke fragility stat. Finally, I've figured out what it takes to make him behave. Francis, do you enjoy social media?

Of course. I love spending my days being called a fat bigot by strangers. And do you think the woke bias on social media is getting ridiculous? Yeah, what happened to pilot was a travesty for freedom of speech online. What if I told you there was a brand new social media platform that encouraged free speech? That's brilliant. Will it be able to show off my sick abs on it as well? Hopefully not. The new platform is called retalk and it is absolutely exploding right now. They have discussion forums around any topic, from gardening to ancient history all the way to

current politics. That sounds great, but a lot of these free speech platforms just attract all the worst people from both sides. Or as we call them here, trigonometry fans. Correct. Joking aside, what makes retalk different is it's moderated to keep away extremists, but instead of being Uber woke, they take a balanced view to moderation. Wow, how do they find so many moderators who don't have pink hair? I don't know, maybe they hire people from all over the political Spectrum. Great joke, mate. No big tech company would ever do that. Retalk insists on civility and they're particularly keen to foster conversations for people in the centre and on the centre right. You can even go on there and discuss trigonometry and your favourite episodes. So all I need to do to

access this great site is click on the link and it will take me straight there. Yep. And if you're a listener, go to retalk.com. That's R-E-T-A-L-K dot com and start having intelligent conversations. You know there'll be intelligent conversations because Francis hasn't worked out how to join yet. I haven't. And so what I don't understand, right, is the people we're talking about, they would claim that they are all about protecting women, all about protecting sexual minorities. And you're criticizing what you call political Islam, which let's be, you know, let's put it with British understatement. It's an ideology that doesn't exactly have the best record on those issues. Shouldn't they be your allies on this?

you would think that when they say they actually are engaged in speaking for and giving a voice to minorities, groups that didn't have a voice. The transgender community, women, blacks, people of color, any group that they identified as having been victimized in. the past. So, you know, in the fast, naive moment, that's what you think they're doing. And then you dig deeper into the ideology and the logic of their ideology and the way they express themselves and the way they use language. And these matrices that they've made to heterosexual male is at the top, he's the oppressor, guilty of toxic masculinity, and then you calm down the ladder, people of color, etc. If you look into all of this, what you're going to discover is

that, in fact, they are not interested in protecting the rights of women or the rights of any of the other minorities that they have categorized them in this matrix of victims. They're just not interested in it. But they're really interested in it. Aside from virtue signaling and showing the world that they're morally superior, what they're really interested in is acquiring power and money. And not doing or getting to these things the way the rest of us are expected to,

which is through hard work and distinguishing yourself. because you've put 10,000 hours into being accomplished or something, but by guilt-tripping people into saying, if you don't give me that particular position of power or this period or that promotion, you're a racist, you're sexist, you're this, that and the other. And it's just, or that, I would say, say in terms of intellectual accomplishments, a lot of these people are inferior and they're just

masking that inferiority with this type of narratives and storytelling. We're now being told, working hard, getting up in the morning, having a goal, trying to achieve all of that is whiteness. There you go, mate, you're not as white as you thought. Delighted. Absolutely. So moving on to your latest book, Pray, which I'm going to be honest for you, is a brilliant book, but incredibly, incredibly difficult to read. It's very, very challenging. It deals with the issue of first-generation refugees coming to the West and then the crimes that they commit against women in these countries. Why did you feel that this was such an important topic to tackle? First of all, it's a big problem that affects women.

It's a problem that I know people don't want, like we talked about earlier, people don't want to talk about Islam, they don't want to talk about immigration. All of these issues have been declared too sensitive to touch. But the scale of immigration is growing, and it will continue to grow. Before I got on a show, I was reading United Nations reports that were saying because of COVID-19, very frail economies will be disrupted that will lead to food shortages, that is going to lead to conflicts, that is then going to lead to an exodus of young people, mainly young men from Africa, Middle East, South Asia, any number of the countries where many, of these immigrants come from, and they will be heading to Europe and other wealthy nations. And many of them will not make it, and some of them will make it. Now, just let's say, keep that in your mind. And then you move on to the minorities from those

particular places, first generation, second generation, in Europe. And we were having great difficulty assimilating them into the value system of the host societies. So we have this problem of assimilating people who have been coming since the 1960s, 70s, again, not all of them, but a large enough group that is causing social cohesion problems. Now we are having this. We had the waves of 2015, and according to the prognosis, there'll be even more. That sort of, I would say, large-scale human movement always creates disruptions.

The subject of this book is it's affecting women in negative ways. And for years I wrote about immigrant women themselves. I told you, Muslim women was subjected to female genital mutilation, subjected to child marriage, subjected to what we call, It's an umbrella name called Honor Violence, where it's basically the men in your family who tells you what you can and count to do. And so the freedoms and rights of immigrant women were constrained. We decided that was taboo.

We weren't going to say much about it. There have been conversations about it. There have been a lot of activism, but we've really been dealing with the problem the way we should have. Now the problem is spilling over, and this is the subject of prey, into the public space, and it's affecting all women, immigrant and local or native or white or whatever you want to call them. And it's affecting mostly. And here I think it's easier to talk to British people because you understand class. It's affecting working class women more than anyone else.

So we had the Me Too movement that started here, again, that came to your shores and beyond. I thought it was a good thing. That movement was about addressing the workplace as the workplace has to be a safe place for women. And it wasn't. And that erupted. It was a good thing. But it didn't trickle down to the masses and masses of working class women who are, in fact, victims of sexual misconduct. And what I focus on in the book is sexual misconduct perpetrated by some immigrant men, many of them from Muslim majority countries who were born and raised in places where the attitude to women is radically different from the Western countries that they're coming to.

It's a taboo to link Islam, immigration, and the erosion of women's rights, but it has to be done. I know you had a gruesome debate in the United Kingdom about the Pakistani gangs targeting working class vulnerable children. I want to call them children because that's exactly what they were, right? They were under 18, most of them. And it took what decades. for British society to come out and protect these gulls.

They were betrayed in every way possible, all because the people who were supposed to protect them didn't want to be called racist, xenophobic or bigoted. They made a trade-off, and the trade-off was, I'm just going to have this, I'll ignore the abuse and betrayal of these children because I don't want to be called her racist. and this problem that I address in the book, same thing.

Everyone, every official that I have spoken to starts by saying, I really am not a racist. It's even racism to raise a subject. Or some of them will admit that there is a problem, but they don't want their name because it's going to affect their political careers. some of them will say you know we acknowledge

yes it's a problem it's a big problem it's a growing problem but hey I am what are we going to do about I've heard the phrase you take some of these young men you send them to prison for

perpetrating all sorts of sexual offences and they go like this well they're going as a rapist and they come out as a terrorist So it isn't only that there is a taboo, but when you cut across the censorship and people open up, there is a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness and resignation. These are terrible problems, but what can we do?

And that frustrates me. Yeah, it frustrates all of us. As you know, we've had Dr. Ella Hill on the show, who's a survivor of one of these gangs. And, you know, it's obviously a tragic situation. But the problem with it, we found, is that, you know, the moment you start talking about these issues, people start calling you names, they start questioning your motives, they start, you know, putting you in political groups in which you don't belong. And, you know, you said it yourself right now, quote unquote, it's only the far right

talking about it. But really what happens is anyone who talks about it becomes far right in people's eyes, right? So how do we break that deadlock? How do you undo that? I think you unmask that the labeling, the accusations, bigotry, and so on, it's a cover-up for incompetence. It's a cover-up for the fact that these people who have made their way to government or, you know, positions of where they're elected, positions of power, are basically saying, shut up because they don't have an answer and they don't want to seek an answer. So there is, I mean, I've seen it as a cover up for incompetence.

I've seen it up close. It's not that these people are bad people. It's that very often they're focused on their careers. And the issues of immigration, Islam, women's rights, that sort of thing. It's not a career enhancing. Yeah, you're very good at British. the statement, Ayyan. Yeah.

The career-breaking issues. I've spoken to one of the British members of Parliament for Labour as champion, and she was punished when she spoke about these. So then she was demoted

and now she had to go back and we tried to talk to her again and she said, I'm really sorry. I think, you know, male aggression is universal and she mumbled something about all men being bad.

and it's just the attitude was please leave me alone and I understand that because she suffered but she isn't the only one I spoke to a German minister who said please don't use my name I see these problems but what am I going to do I think we need to then get to that next step of then what are we going to do and let me give you why

I'll just tell you one thing why I'm a little hopeful for the last year, all of us have been locked down. I would have been in your studio because I love coming to the UK and I think you're in London. London is one of my favourite cities in the world. We would be sitting together now, having this conversation instead of having to do it virtually.

We're not doing that because our governments have said we are making the decision that locking down the economy, locking you down is going to save lives. So the thing is, it can be done. If you see protecting women and children as a priority, the government can do it, and they can do it very quickly. instead of having us, you know, muddle through these data that is not really data. It's a tool.

It's just, it's really a tool for obfuscation. It is possible to gather the data of, you know, there's an increase in sexual violence against women. Who are the perpetrators? We're going to note down not only the names and the dates of birth, but also their skin color, their religion, their background, etc. It can be done. I know that Denmark is having a conversation about whether to do it or whether not to do it. I see all the cons, but I also see the pros. But to be honest with you, it can be done. And if you do it and you have this kind of data, that then can open the door to assimilation programs that will be tailor-made to. If you're from Syria or Tunisia or Pakistan, you've come from an end.

environment that has shaped you. And so in order to assimilate you, we're going to say, ah, so this is your background, just like we have health background checks. This is what you need to know. If you come from India, it's going to be something different. If you come from China, it's going to be something different. If you are from Poland, it's going to be something different. But this attitude that all cultures and all religions are the same, and we really should not see these cultural references, that is what's what has led to, in my view, this sense of what can we do?

We can't do anything about it. And Ayyan, what responsibilities does the West have to take in refugees, number one, and number two, how do we? integrate them once they arrive in our shores? I think it just depends on how you define the word responsibility. I came to Holland as a refugee and I'm really grateful forever for the Dutch taking me in and giving me the pathway to the life that I now lead. and did I see that as their responsibility?

No, I saw it as a gesture and expression of compassion. And in that sense, as fellow human beings, and I believe in universal, human rights, universal human connections. So I would say that gesture of compassion And it is really a fantastic thing. Do you want to call it responsibility? You can.

But I don't want responsibility to mean then that you can express the compassion. And then just let things be because, let me put it differently. We live in nation states. We elect our governments in West. society, we pay taxes. And so your primary responsibility as a government is to the people who pay those taxes and who votes you in government. And if women in the United Kingdom,

France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark are feeling unsafe in the public space because of this, you know, immigration or that gesture of compassion. And I think I would use the word responsibility in terms of protecting the rule of law, protecting those women, protecting the freedom of speech, and so on. Now, in terms of how we interact and react to the dispossessed outside of our borders, I don't think the time, the accurate time is a responsibility. I think the accurate time maybe would be compassion. It would be a rightly understood self-interest.

If we build the economies in Africa and the Middle East and so on, maybe we wouldn't have these large waves of immigration in our borders. In that case, yes, it's a responsibility, but you're still talking about a responsibility to your own people. And a good outcome of that is that millions of other people are helped. It's like the way we're discussing the virus. It doesn't help to just develop a vaccine only for the rich West. By vaccinating people in the South in poor areas,

that's an act of generosity. But it's also an act of. rightly understood self-interest. And so I think we should be having all of these conversations about what can we do about this mass exodus of people from continents like Africa, Middle East, South Asia. I mean, you can't absorb all of them. You can't. You just can't.

It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming the asylum system. I tried to address in the book how the immigration and asylum system that was established in 1951. just doesn't, that framework is not an answer to the reality of today, which is about millions and millions and millions of people. That framework was established for individuals. That's a good point, IAN.

So imagine for a second, and I know it will be a horrible thing to imagine, that Francis and I are in charge of the British government, and you've got an opportunity to talk to us. What would you say Western governments should do vis-a-vis the current immigration population, the current immigrant population, the refugee population, the future immigration, all of those things? What would be the policy recommendations that you would have for a Western government in that sort of position? So if you start with the populations that are already inside Europe, you have obviously those immigrants who have successfully adapted and are just doing perfectly fine.

say listen to them and it does pay to see what is it that they did that made them so successful. And then you have the other groups who have just failed at integration or assimilation, whatever it is that you call it in the UK, I would make it a top priority to try and assimilate those groups. You're going to end up with a group that are just, they somehow, they just won't do it. And I think there you have to start talking about repatriation, just offer them. And I know some of these programs exist where it is, you know, you live in London. You've been on welfare for what, 20-something years. Would you like to go to your country of origin?

And we will give you some resources to start life there and to be around your family. I've seen that happen. I have seen success stories there. That is the integration question. Now, there's a subset of people that are saying they completely understand the norms and the values, but they don't want to integrate. They're the fanatics, the Islamists. And those I would literally give them the choice to say, we're not. And here's where I think integration becomes a conversation about values.

And the government would then have to say the prevailing values are British values. this is who we are. This is our national identity, our values, our norms, our laws, and you don't like it, you get out. So in terms of integration, you will always have that, the carrot and the stick, where you incentivize people to integrate and if they fail, there are always looking at it. When it comes to what we are looking, this isn't. immigration, because I think immigration is just a cover-up word for the displacement of large numbers of people because of conflicts, famine, drought, all sorts of things. And that is, I would

say, it's a foreign policy issue combined with the Defense Department, combined with align with other countries to say, how can we help these economies and these other societies, keep it together so that, you know, people don't just go out causing instability. This is not COVID. Bless you. Yeah, I think it's the onset of spring. But I think that big picture conversation about push factors, pull factors, which was only in the realm of academics

who study migration cycles and migration numbers, I think this now really has to come into the government. And I understand that the time is not right with the pandemic, with Brexit, with all sorts of, you know, whatever is going on in China right now. Now I think China is on everyone's mind at the moment. But still, again, reading those UN reports, the number of people on their way who are attempting is getting ever bigger, ever younger. And most of them, sometimes up to 70% of them unaccompanied young man. Now, that's not going to end well.

You can anticipate that as a government. You can have maybe a minister or I don't know, a department, look at it and say, oh gosh, this is coming at us. What should we do? Unfortunately, most governments just think, well, why don't we just close the borders? And then discover there is such a thing as porous borders. Ayon, what would you say to these people who say that these Islamists

are a tiny percentage of the refugees. population. And actually, most refugees, all they want is to come to this country or another country and have a better life for themselves and their children. Well, the people who say that, if they said that in the 70s and 80s and 90s, those people was, you know, that particular point was interesting. But right now, it's a distracting. It's not, it's just a euphemism for saying, I have no idea what to do. And neither should you. And so let's just lie back and just let things fall apart.

And I think, again, that's where we are getting into competence issues. Because if you say that, you come across, you want to come across, as being virtuous and moral and reasonable. But in fact, voters just see right through it and think, what an idiot. IANAN, do you think that this is the only way that this can happen if basically people feel strongly enough about this that they start putting pressure on politicians? Is that the only way that this gets addressed? People looking at some of the things you're covering in the book, some of the things that frankly have already happened. And, you know, there's enough of a concern in the public that that starts to put a pressure on politicians.

Is that the only way that this ever gets addressed? Yes, I think the only way to focus a politician's mind is the threat of losing votes. And what we're seeing now in several European countries who took large numbers of immigrants, mainly from Muslim majority countries, is that there are parties emerging out of nowhere. Some of them extreme rights and far rights, some of them populists. But in any case, taking on these topics. And it's not just immigration. they're taking on also the issue of how much of our freedoms and laws and rights and national identity

should we outsource to Brussels. And when politicians find that, oh, God, they're losing votes, that focuses the mind. And then they start to address the issues. But then you're getting to these cycles where I remember Angela Merkel saying, Oh, multiculturalism has failed in an election year, and she won the election. But then when she got re-elected, that whole issue of immigration and integration was put to the lowest part of the priority list. But now this party, I think it's called the AFD or something. The AFD has emerged, and it's getting ever bigger and it's getting more voters.

And I think that's frightening the establishment parties in Germany. You see the same development in France. Marie Le Pen keeps, you know, she's France's nightmare. If you look at Sweden, and I think Sweden is really the basket case when it comes to the failure of integration, you know, nurturing all of these taboos and censorship and pretending that all is well. They call themselves, and this is really funny,

they call themselves a moral superpower. And so while they're trying to be a moral superpower, on the ground, all these problems are getting out of control, and they have the Swedish Democratic Party. I don't know. Is that party far right or populist or a bit of both? But in any case, it's now focusing the minds of the Swedish politicians into saying, okay, okay, okay, now we have a problem.

Now what? And as a result of this, do you think that we're going to see Western democracies in crisis? They are already in crisis. Western democracies are already in a crisis. I think the answer is, sorry, the real question is how do we respond to the crisis? And I think it will have to start with the crisis of addressing the values. What is it that makes Britain unique? What are British values?

what are Dutch values, what are French values, you know, the Republic, what are American values? And I think we, once, you know, we have this movement, this postmodernist movement, with all of it, and it's where we started with the selective telling of the history of how we were all awful in the atonement thing. But if you carry on doing lights, if you, you know, if you maintain, you know, well, There's nothing unique about Britain or Britishness. First that, nothing unique, nothing special about any of our values. And then we were just really these bad people. We were colonizing and we were enslaving and we were raping.

The only story you can tell is we were just awful people. Why do you, I mean, it's really, it's mind-boggling. Why wouldn't someone who actually comes from a country where it's ingrained and inculcated into them that the Islamic identity is superior. Why would they adopt your identity when you yourself say, we're actually nothing, our values mean nothing?

So I think we'll have to have that conversation about values and national identity versus identity politics. What matters and what doesn't matter? That's a really good point. I'm frankly music to my ears. You know, I'm an immigrant first generation in this country myself. Francis is from an immigrant background as well. And it never made any sense to me that we have these conversations where it's like, you know, people are embarrassed to admit that there's such a

thing as British identity, you know. And as you say, it's a really good point. If someone already has a strong identity, why on earth would they adopt some kind of wishy, washy, evil, bad history identity when, frankly, they've got better options. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't, I know that this is a comedy show, and we need to add a little bit of fun into it. But I watch someone like Hugh Brandt, and maybe I'm from Afghanistan or Iraq or Pakistan, and I'm male, and I think, what the?

I wouldn't be like that. And I think that that is the culture, that it's the attitude of it's, You know, I remember the Dutch had the same thing. What is Dutch mess? And very quickly then say, I don't know, eating mashed potatoes. I don't think that's a big sell. I don't think many grown-ups want to eat mashed potatoes.

And also, these are not the things that make the West unique. I mean, there are things that have made the West as successful as it's been, you know, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, the scientific method, rationality. you can go down the list. These are the things that have made the West as successful as it is. But, you know, it's for some reason it's only people like us that are allowed to talk about it. If a British-born British person was to say these things, they'd be called racist. And it doesn't make any sense.

I've raised these questions. So I'll say to the Germans, just for the fun of it, I mean, what is really unique about in German, they just shake their heads and saying, oh, eating sausages and drinking beer. and the French will say, we'll talk about frogs and wine. Well, to be honest with you, I, Ann, the last time the Germans tried nationalism, it didn't end well, did it? That is true. Or you found out the hard way.

But now they want to atone for that passed by saying, okay, immigrant men, when they misbehave and fail to integrate, well, tough luck for their victims, because our pastor is so bad that, you know what, we're now morally frozen. That's exactly, that's literally what they say. They just talk about, we can't do this because, remember, the Holocaust. And he isn't an irony. So the Jewish minorities in many of these European countries are now being subjected to a renewed anti-Semitism, where the far right is coming out of the woodwork, because it's okay now to be anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic. But it's now hidden in this because the Islamists are coming in, declaring that the Palestinians are victims of Jewish hatred, And so suddenly it's okay to victimize the Jewish minorities. But you see where that atonement mentality goes?

So the Jewish minority in Germany for whom we're atoning, because we massacre their ancestors, and we said never again, are now leaving Germany, they're leaving France, they're leaving Sweden to come here to the United States or go to Israel because we're in the throes of course. atonement. That's the logic I don't understand. So going back to the theme of responsibility, Ion, what responsibility does the West have to the Middle East when you can make a very, very simple and effective argument to say that a lot of the

problems that we now see in the Middle East were caused by the West, drawing these arbitrary lines on a map, creating countries which are fundamentally unstable and can really only be held together by dictatorships or oppressive regimes? I think nudging through diplomacy, through economic relationships, maybe even through development aid. And I would say there is also a place for defense. But there are these big issues where I think you seek alliances, you hold on to those alliances, and you try and mitigate the problems locally in the Middle East and elsewhere. not because you are turning for your past,

but because it is the rational thing to do, because the unintended consequences of mass movements of broken countries is going to destabilize your own country. That's a good point, IAN, and I'm aware of the time. We're very, very grateful for the time that you've already given us. It will be a great pleasure for us to have you in the studio, of course, whenever we're all allowed to be in the same space. So we'll see you in 2027.

But until then, I thoroughly recommend the book, Prey. And of course, you've got a new podcast out as well, haven't you? It's the Ayan Hersey-Ali podcast, and we just launched the Ayan Hersey-Ali website. Fantastic. And with that, we have one more question for you, which is, of course, what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

I think we're not talking enough about what is happening to the Uyghur minority in China, to the women who are being systematically raped, to the women who are being systematically and forcibly sterilized, to the so-called education, which is really brainwashing internments and the genocide that China is carrying out on its Uyghur community of roughly about 10 million people. I am amazed at the silence from Muslim leaders in Muslim countries and even Islamists, you know, the political Islamists who would rant and rave about the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad are now really silent, eerily silent when their fellow Muslims are being subjected to genocide, to internment,

to sterilization, to mass rape, that I think is a subject we're not talking enough about. Iain Hirsi Ali, thank you so much for coming on the show. We absolutely love this conversation. And we're certain that our audience will as well. If you want to catch a trigonometry episode or a live stream, they always go out at 7pm UK time. See you soon, guys.