Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Obama’s Strategy on Islamic Extremism ‘Has Failed’

HANNITY: “Joining us with reaction, author of the book ‘Heretic,’ human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is with us. Ayaan, welcome back. I want to explain what you went through as a woman where you grew up and tell everybody what happened.”
ALI: “Well, I’ve explained this in depth in my book ‘Infidel,’ but being a girl and a woman growing up in a Muslim household, you have to know your place. And I was growing up in the context before radical Islam. So such things as the female genital mutilation, that was, I would say about 98, even 100 percent, because you purify, you cut the genitals of your child if you can afford it, and you have to.”
HANNITY: “And how old were you?”
ALI: “I was five-years-old.”
HANNITY: “Unbelievable.”
ALI: “And my family lived in Saudi Arabia. I cannot describe to you what kind of a place Saudi Arabia is. There is apartheid, gender apartheid. It’s a place where using modern tools and modern money and money from oil they actually enforce seventh century rules. So then later on in my teens when Islamic extremism came into our neighborhood, I became part of that movement and I started to believe in the things. I was 15, 16. I lived in Nairobi, Kenya. There were people preaching in my school, in my neighborhood. And I joined up with them. So I’m always surprised to see people of authority here saying what we see, these terrorist acts, the subjugation of women, the hatred of Jews and Christians, it has nothing to do with Islam. I watch that with amazement. I obviously have come to understand that it is a strategic position that if we say these things maybe the Islamic extremists will not get their way, but it’s just not true.”
HANNITY: “Are you saying that it is far more pervasive, radical thought, ideology, in the Muslim world than anybody is recognizing, that we are being intimidated into saying that this is a very small percentage?”
ALI: “We are self-intimidating. I don’t think that we are being forced by outside powers. Our president is not being forced by outside powers to take the position that he’s taking. He has taken it after a lot of thought. He thinks it’s strategic. I just think it’s a strategy that’s failed. He’s not the only one who tried it. All western establishment leaders have insisted we are not at war with Islam. That’s absolutely true. We are not at war with Islam. We’re not waging war on Islam. That is absolutely true. But within Islam, and using Islamic theology, Islamic tradition, Islamic philosophy, we have hundreds of thousands of people who are at war with us. Now, we have to ultimately respond to that and not only to the latest thing. The Islamic State is less than two years old, but Islamic extremists want to destroy our way of life, our civilization and our belief system, that is started before this election cycle and is going to continue. And we have to come up together with a way of defending ourselves and defeating them, honestly.”
HANNITY: “Is this just the literal interpretation of the Quran, the Hadith? Is they a reflection of the warrior life of Mohammed?”
ALI: “This is the literal interpretation of the Hadith, of the Quran. It is a desire to emulate, to copy Mohammed, especially in the time he became a warrior and he introduced Sharia law and started to take large suites of land and thereafter. And there are a lot of Muslims, and I insist every I go there are millions of peace-loving Muslims who are not at war with us or anyone else, who don’t want war but want peace, that is true. But when you look at the Islamic theology that is being used by groups like the Islamic state, it is there. And the answer is not to lie in denial. The answer lies in an attempt to reform Islam, to change and abrogate and repudiate the violent, you know, aspects of Islam.”
HANNITY: “For example?”
ALI: “Sean, the good news is there are Muslims that are doing that and we are letting down.”
HANNITY: “Do you think that when our intelligence officials warn us that ISIS will infiltrate the refugee community from Syria and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are they naive or are they ignorant as to how radicalized many people are? And are they putting Americans at risk if they bring in those refugees and ISIS does infiltrate that population like they did in Paris?”
ALI: “The intelligence community is doing their job. They are paid to protect American people and American values, the homeland. And they’re trying to share with us and our leaders what they know. So when the intelligence community tries to make us prudent, put in place checks, they’re absolutely right and we need to heed them. But going beyond them, even for Muslims who are already here, people who are already here, there is an active Islamization project going on in the United States of America. We’ve been in denial about it for a very, very long time. It is time that we wake up and see who is behind this. Who are the agents? Where do the ideas come from, where do the resources come from? This is the kind of thing that denying that it has anything to do with Islam, that is what it covers up. And then the problem becomes so big, and then we find ourselves in a situation where France and Belgium and other countries in Europe with large Muslim numbers, they’ve been living in denial. It’s demonstrated to us that that doesn’t work. We need to heed and we need to learn from the mistakes about this. We don’t have to give up our civil liberties.”
HANNITY: “Appreciate your insight and sharing your story. Thank you, and I hope people listen.”