Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris.

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Today I'm speaking with Yasmin Muhammad. Yasmin is a human rights activist and a writer.

She's a very eloquent advocate for women living in Islamic majority countries and in the Muslim

community generally worldwide and a very effective critic of religious fundamentalism.

And her new book is unveiled how Western liberals empower radical Islam.

And I've been in Yasmin's corner for a little while when she was getting ready to write her book.

And it was at the proposal stage. I blurbed her. It is the blurb that appears on the book.

But this is a blurb really for her as a person before her book was even written.

I'll just read that here to give you some context. Women and free thinkers in traditional Muslim communities

inherit a double burden. If they want to live in the modern world they must confront not only the

the theocrats in their homes and schools but many secular liberals whose apathy, sanctimony and hallucinations

of quote racism throw yet another veil over their suffering. Yasmin Muhammad accepts this

challenge as courageously as anyone I've ever met putting the lie to the dangerous notion that

criticizing the doctrine of Islam is a form of bigotry. Let her wisdom and bravery inspire you.

And so you should. And here Yasmin and I talk about her background and indoctrination into conservative Islam

and the double standard that Western liberals use to think about women in the Muslim community.

We talk about feminism generally, the validity of criticizing other cultures and other related topics.

So now I bring you a very brave woman and one of my heroes, Yasmin Muhammad.

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