Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lady Ferguson (Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; born Ayaan Hirsi Magan, 13 November 1969) is a Somali-born Dutch-American writer, activist, and former politician.

Hirsi Ali was born in the Somali Democratic Republic. At the age of five, Hirsi Ali underwent female genital mutilation organized by her grandmother. Her family moved across various countries in Africa and the Middle East, and at 23, she received political asylum in the Netherlands, gaining Dutch citizenship five years later. In her early 30s, Hirsi Ali renounced the religious beliefs of her childhood, began identifying as an atheist, and became involved in Dutch centre-right politics, joining the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

In 2003, Hirsi Ali was elected to the lower house of the States General of the Netherlands. While serving in parliament, she collaborated on a short film with Theo van Gogh, titled Submission, which depicted the oppression of women under fundamentalist Islamic law and was critical of the Muslim canon itself. The film led to death threats, and Van Gogh was murdered shortly after the film's release by Mohammed Bouyeri, driving Hirsi Ali into hiding. At this time, she became more outspoken as a critic of Islam. In 2005, Time magazine named Hirsi Ali as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Her outspoken criticism of Islam made her a controversial figure in Dutch politics.

Moving to the United States, Hirsi Ali joined the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank, where she established herself as a writer, activist, and public intellectual. Her books Infidel: My Life (2007),

Nomad: From Islam to America (2010) and Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015) became bestsellers.

Ali was a central figure in New Atheism from its beginnings. She announced her conversion to Christianity in 2023. Non-Western critics have accused Hirsi Ali of adhering to alleged ideologies of “Islamophobia” or “neo-orientalism” and have questioned her scholarly credentials "to speak authoritatively about Islam and the Arab world", saying she promotes the notion of a supposed Western "civilizing mission". Hirsi Ali is married to Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson. The couple are raising their sons in the United States, where she became a citizen on 25 April 2013.