Gatay, humans. This is the safe space for dangerous ideas. This is uncomfortable conversations with me,

Josh Zips, and how do you introduce today's guest, Ion Herssey Ali? Well, maybe you start by

doing a potted history of who she is for anyone who either isn't quite across it or kind of vaguely knows the name and the

rough backstory but could do with a little bit of brushing up because one thing I didn't want to do

in a rare hour that I was granted with Ion was get her to rehash the same story that she's told

a bazillion different times. If you want to listen to it

elsewhere, you can find one of those bazillion times to listen to, or I can just give you a

potted history right here. She is a feminist, an activist, a writer, a scholar, former politician.

So she was born in Somalia. She's basically Dutch and American. She was born in Somalia.

And her dad was a revolutionary in the Somali civil war. He was in jail when she was very, very young.

And when she was five and her dad was in jail, her grandmother, against the wishes of her father,

thought it would be appropriate for her to do

what all good young Muslim Somali girls did at the time, which was to be genitally mutilated.

So her grandmother found a guy to do that.

Ayan has subsequently said that she was grateful that it was a man who did it because the

women were much more brutal at the time. Nonetheless, you get the impression, extremely conservative Muslim upbringing.

When her dad was released from jail, they fled and bounced around the Muslim world when she

was sort of, you know, 8 to 12. They lived in Saudi Arabia. They went to Ethiopia.

They settled in Nairobi in Kenya in 1980. And Ayan was quite a conservative, a good Muslim

girl. She sympathized with the views of the Muslim Brotherhood. She wore a hijab with her school

uniform. She recalls agreeing with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

So well and truly ensconced in that worldview.

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