Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born into a strict Mus­lim tribe in Soma­lia. When her father tried to marry her against her will, she escaped to the Nether­lands, where she was even­tu­ally elected to Par­lia­ment. After mak­ing a film con­demn­ing Islamic rad­i­cal­ism, her co-producer, film­maker Theo Van Gogh, was murdered—and the killer left a note on the body warn­ing Ali she was next. She now lives in hid­ing and works for the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute. —Jay Dixit

How did your trau­matic early expe­ri­ences affect how you look at the world?

I had no idea they were trau­matic. Every­one around me was cir­cum­cised. We were all beaten. Arranged forced mar­riage is the Somali tribal cul­ture and tra­di­tion. I knew no bet­ter. I had not acquired the abil­ity to stand out­side the com­mu­nity and judge the com­mu­nity and my place within it. Like every­one else within a group cul­ture, I just did what comes auto­mat­i­cally, which is just to sur­vive.

How does it feel to go from that to hav­ing so much more free­dom now?

When I first came to the Nether­lands, once a week or month you have to write down how much you spend on what, what is my income. The assump­tion is that you’re going to have an income every month over and over again! And that you save and you get insur­ance, and you think of your life 10, 20, 30 years ahead. Peo­ple from the third world, we just live with the day, in the present. So I find liv­ing in free­dom becomes very chal­leng­ing, to then map out a life of what do I want to do, when, how.

In a way, it’s always just eas­ier if you’re just told what to do. When I was grow­ing up no one ever expected me to get an income and divide it up in pieces. You are never going to be con­sulted as to whom you’re going to marry, and then you’re handed over to your hus­band. And he tells you what to do, and you just live life accord­ing to these roles. And now I have to decide every­thing myself, I have to make my own choices.

This is why when some of the Mus­lim women send me let­ters they say life in Amer­ica or in Europe is much more dif­fi­cult than when they were with their fam­ily. And I under­stand why because when you are in a con­strained sit­u­a­tion, you think, if only I get out – then you don’t think about once you get out what you’re going to do and how you’re going to cope.

When my sis­ter came to Nether­lands and there was noth­ing to rebel against, she cracked. She couldn’t deal with the sit­u­a­tion of freedom.

How does it feel to live in hiding?

For peo­ple from a clan soci­ety, sur­vival as a way of life comes nat­u­rally. When it gets pre­dictable, that’s when ques­tions pop up.

I’ve learned to sup­press my emo­tions, and rea­son myself out of what could pos­si­bly become a depres­sion. And say hey, it’s not as bad as when I couldn’t go out the door.

Are you afraid for your life?

Yes, but it’s get­ting less and less. If I give into the fear, then they get what they want, which is to frighten in you into not speak­ing out, into keep­ing quiet.

How have your feel­ings about an appro­pri­ate role for a woman changed?

I was brought up to believe that the role of a woman is exclu­sively that of wife and mother and the years before, you’re only groomed to get to that point. I started to put ques­tion marks on that as I become a teenager. I could observe my mother’s life, I could see the other young girls of my age who were mar­ried off and the way they lived. It seemed to me very sad and full of despair. They were depen­dent for life. My view of that changed as I grew up, and very much when I came to the Nether­lands. A life of one’s own choice is the best approach.

What’s your advice to young women about how to go after what they want in life?

In the West the law is such that you can’t be forced into mar­riage, you can’t be forced into some­thing you don’t want to, at least the author­i­ties will pro­tect you. A life of free­dom is in a way more dif­fi­cult than when choices are made for you. But at least it’s your own free­dom and when you do things good you feel proud and grate­ful and when you make mis­takes you have the dig­nity of learn­ing from those mis­takes yourself.

You went from a Mus­lim to an anti-Islamist. What was it like to change so drastically?

It was thrilling and fright­en­ing and exhil­a­rat­ing and every time I have to pinch myself to think this is not all a dream and it’s really true and it’s all pos­si­ble. It also came at a high cost. I wouldn’t change any­thing, except the death of Theo van Gogh.

Do you have survivor’s guilt about that?

Yeah. Every time I think about it it’s like I knew and Theo knew it, and the peo­ple at the pro­duc­tion com­pany, we all knew it was tense and there was an abstract threat. We just didn’t know exactly what it was going to look like. I regret that we under­es­ti­mated that it would come in the form of a young Mus­lim fanatic. None of us could believe that such a thing could happen.

Is it eas­ier to bear now that sev­eral years have elapsed?

Really it just won’t go away. It affects every­thing I do.

Did you think that your per­son­al­ity changed?

I’ve become more patient, I’ve become more accept­ing that some things just won’t change. That’s not because peo­ple are Mus­lims but because peo­ple are human beings.

What sur­prises peo­ple most about you?

Peo­ple come to me and say, you are very dif­fer­ent from the fire-spewing fem­i­nist we expected. They describe me as soft-spoken and hesitant.

After 9/11, you lost your faith in Islam. What was going through your mind?

I was shocked into it. I watched the planes and what hap­pened. For me the per­sonal impli­ca­tion was this was done in the name of Islam. It wasn’t some­thing I could for­get or push to the back of my mind and get on with my life.

In the West we like to believe female gen­i­tal muti­la­tion and honor killings are being done to women by men. But it’s women who pass down these traditions.

In the tribal Islamic order, every­one is caught in the sys­tem. Even though my father pro­hib­ited my mother from cir­cum­cis­ing us, it was my grand­mother who did it behind his back, because from her per­spec­tive, the idea of her grand­daugh­ters remain­ing unmar­ried or being ridiculed as filthy and impure was more unbear­able than the pain she inflicted on us.

What does it feel like to be hated?

That’s awful. In a way that’s even worse than the death threats. Some peo­ple just hate me because some­one has told them I say about the prophet this and about the Qu’ran that. The man who killed Theo van Gogh did not know him, had never inter­acted with him and never met him.