About the Author

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia, raised a Muslim, and spent her childhood and young adulthood in Africa and Saudi Arabia. In 1992 she went to the Netherlands as a refugee, escaping a forced marriage to a distant cousin she had never met. She learned Dutch and worked as an interpreter in abortion clinics and shelters for battered women. After earning her college degree in political science, she worked for the Labor Party. She denounced Islam after the September 11 terrorist attacks and became a member of the Dutch Parliament, fighting for the rights of Muslim women in Europe, the enlightenment of Islam, and security in the West. She went on to work for the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. She established the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation (www.theahafoundation.org), which aims to combat several types of crimes against women, including female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and honor violence, through education, outreach, and the dissemination of knowledge.

Her book Infidel has been a #1 bestseller in Europe, and she continues to receive honors from around the world. She was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2005, one of the Glamour Heroes of 2005, and was Reader’s Digest’s European of the Year. She has also received Norway’s Human Rights Service’s Bellwether of the Year Award, the Danish Freedom Prize, the Swedish Democracy Prize, the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Unsung Heroes Award.