Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali bigraphy, stories - Dutch feminist, author

Ayaan Hirsi Ali : biography

13 November 1969 –

Ayaan Hirsi Ali ( full name: Ayaan Hirsi Magan Isse Guleid Ali Wai’ays Muhammad Ali Umar Osman Mahamud; ; / ALA-LC: Ayān Ḥirsī ‘Alī) (born 13 November 1969) is a Somali-Dutch-American feminist and atheist activist, writer and politician who is known for her views critical of female genital mutilation and Islam. She wrote the screenplay for Theo van Gogh’s movie Submission, after which she and the director both received death threats, and the director was murdered. The daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse, she is a founder of the women’s rights organisation the AHA Foundation.http://www.theahafoundation.org

When she was eight, Hirsi Ali’s family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the centre of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006.

In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She has also received several awards, including a free speech award from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Swedish Liberal Party’s Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship. In 2006 she published a memoir. The English translation in 2007 is titled Infidel. Hirsi Ali is a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a member of the The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center, and lives in the United States. She is married to British historian and public commentator Niall Ferguson. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States on April 25, 2013.

Awards

  • awarded the Freedom Prize of Denmark’s Liberal Party (20 November 2004). the country’s largest party and opponent leader, "for her work to further freedom of speech and the rights of women". Due to threats from Islamic fundamentalists she was not at the time able to receive it personally; however a year later, 18 November 2005, she traveled to Denmark to thank Prime Minister and party leader Anders Fogh Rasmussen for the prize, and made an unannounced attendance at Liberal Party’s 2006 convention to thank party members. In 2010 she spoke at the Danish People’s Party convention, a national conservative party which has been accused of racism and being islamophobic. She was praised by the party leader, Pia Kjærsgaard for her stance against shariah lawhttp://avisen.dk/pia-k-til-ayaan-hirsi-ali-du-er-mit-idol_133966.aspx
    Voted European of the Year for 2006 by the European editors of Reader’s Digest magazine. At a ceremony in The Hague on 23 January, Hirsi Ali accepted this award from EU Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes.
    awarded the Prize of Liberty by Nova Civitas, a classical liberal think tank in the Low Countries (January 2004).
    given the civilian prize Glas der Vernunft Kassel, Germany. The organisation rewarded her with this prize for her courage in criticising Islam (1 October 2006). Other laureates have included Leah Rabin, the wife of former Israeli prime-minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany.
    given the Harriet Freezerring Emancipation Prize by Cisca Dresselhuys, editor of the feminist magazine Opzij (25 February 2005).
    awarded the annual European Bellwether Prize by the Norwegian think tank Human Rights Service. According to HRS, Hirsi Ali is “beyond a doubt, the leading European politician in the field of integration. (She is) a master at the art of mediating the most difficult issues with insurmountable courage, wisdom, reflectiveness, and clarity" (June 2005).Diplom fra HRS til Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Human Rights Service , Human Rights Service, 23 June 2005
    awarded the annual Democracy Prize of the Swedish Liberal People’s Party "for her courageous work for democracy, human rights and women’s rights." She received the prize at a ceremony at the Swedish Riksdag from the party leader Lars Leijonborg (29 August 2005). , Liberal People’s Party
    listed by American Time Magazine amongst the 100 Most Influential Persons of the World. She was put in the category "Leaders & Revolutionaries" (18 April 2005).
    awarded the Tolerance Prize of Madrid (7 March 2005). Photo showing the moment at which the president of the Region of Madrid gives the award to Hirsi Ali.
    accepted the Moral Courage Award from the American Jewish Committee (4 May 2006). American Jewish Committee, 4 May 2006
    given the Goldwater Award for 2007 from the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, at a dinner attended by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), Rep. John Shadegg (R-Arizona), and Steve Forbes (7 December 2007).
    presented with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for nonfiction for her book for Infidel. Due to security concerns because of the death threats, the award was not announced in advance, but was a surprise presentation at the award ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio, presided over by Rita Dove (11 September 2008)."An Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali," Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer; 11 September 2008 accessed Thursday 11 September 2008 The Anisfield-Wolf awards recognize "recent books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture."
    Won the Richard Dawkins Prize (2008), by the Atheist Alliance International.