For more than 10 years, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been a fierce critic of Islam. As a result, she’s also been the target of constant death threats.
Hirsi Ali was born a Muslim in Somalia, where she saw and experienced the brutal treatment of women and girls under fundamentalist Islam.
As a young woman, she escaped from an arranged marriage and sought asylum in The Netherlands. She became involved in politics and eventually was elected to the Dutch parliament, where she was an outspoken critic of Islam.
Today, Hirsi Ali lives in Washington, D.C., and is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. She continues to risk her life to expose Islam, a religion she says subjugates Muslim women to lives of slavery, suffering and submission.
Her latest book is called Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now. In it, she makes the powerful case that a religious reformation is the only way to end the terrorism, sectarian warfare, and repression of women and minorities that each year claim thousands of lives throughout the Muslim world.