Joel Whitney interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of the new book Infidel.

Q: In your book, you write: “When people say that the values of Islam are compassion and tolerance and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn’t so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically, for fear of being called racist. It fascinates them that I am not afraid to do so.”

A: Okay, I can support this assertion with facts. And it’s not only me—for four years now the Arab Human Development Report was being published year in and year out. And the Arab Human Development Report does not take into account research on non-Arab countries such as Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia. They only look at the twenty-two so-called Arab countries.

And the three deficits they point to in all of these states—including Iran—there is the lack of freedom, lack of knowledge, and the subjugation of women. And all of the [deficits], all are being supported in the name of Islam. Even an atheist like Saddam Hussein, who in the first decade of his reign was anti-religion, later on when the Americans came in, he put [Islamic phrases] on the flag, and he started to just continue oppressing his own people, but this time in the name of Islam.

I tried to explain in the book that I used to be a member of the [Muslim] Brotherhood movement. And listening to bin Laden, and listening to al-Qaeda, listening to all these [extremists], the only reason these people win from the moderates is because what they are saying is in the Quran and what the prophet wanted and how they are acting is all consistent.

So the only way to preserve Islam on the one hand and counter them as moderate Muslims is to say, “Well you guys are right. All this stuff is in the Quran. The Quran is written by human beings. And as human beings, endowed with reason, we can change this because we don’t think that it’s beneficial. Or even if we are not going to change it, we are going to believe that in its context, because the Quran was written in a different time, in a different context, in a different age. We’re going to move on; we’re going to take from the Quran those things that we think are compatible with human hearts.” But the minute you start doing that, that’s when hell comes in, and the radicals will say, “Oh, but then you are not a believer because you are refuting what God says.”

So that’s why I say in the book, “Okay, in that case, let’s review the individual relationship between God or the concept of God and the individual.” … If we only see God as an entity that we submit to, but like other religions—and I think Jews have done this, Christians have done this; certainly Protestants have done this—instead, see God as an entity that you can argue with, and that means propagating the idea that if you argue with God he won’t send you to hell.

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Q: True or false: there’s anger in your movement away from Islam?

A: Of course there is an anger. If people’s hands are cut off … this jihadi bullshit is like, “Let’s all go back to the seventh century.” Now I don’t want to go back to the seventh century. And I know that many others like me in Islam don’t want to go back. But all these people are blackmailed into the dogma that you don’t argue with God. So you have to take the Quran literally as the word of God forever, it never moves. You follow the example of the prophet as a moral guide, always.

Now the prophet has done a number of wonderful things and he has said a number of good things. But measured by the standards of today, the prophet has also done a number of very immoral things: violence, his attitude towards women, gays, and also not leaving some sort of organization to form and reform. The sexual morality, the tribal … Islam was founded in the Arab deserts in a tribal setting. In such a tribal setting the most important asset that you have are men [and] boys, because they defend the tribe. The larger you are the more important you are. The whole notion of polygamy and getting as many children as you can and women as you needed … you have to know that the child in your tribe is your child and not someone else’s child. So the notion of women being kept: that’s what the prophet kind of institutionalized in Islam.

Does it make me angry? Yes, it makes me angry, because we Muslims on 9/11—(that’s how I thought of it: we Muslims)—are now flying planes full of people into tall buildings and we are blaming outsiders for all our miseries. And maybe a lot of our miseries have been caused by outsiders. But, please, let’s take a pause and look at what we are doing wrong. And if I see all these fathers and mothers teaching their children to seek knowledge, but don’t go beyond what’s written in the Quran, then wondering why their children are ignorant; they fill their children with all sorts of notions of hell and how they are going to be punished, then saying my child is not creative enough in school—of course this is enraging.

And the way women are treated. What is enraging is not only the treatment but the way it’s so justified in the religion. I translated for women who in the Dutch liberal context are rescued from these situations of abuse who then go back to the argument, I can’t leave him. I have to bear with him because of the hereafter. It says in the Quran: he can beat me when I’m disobedient and I’ve been disobedient. And I’m going to behave myself now. It’s like, “How long are you going to behave yourself?” And she says, “Well, it’s God’s command.” I don’t know if you are not enraged about it. I am enraged about the evangelicals or the Christians here wanting to introduce creationism in the science classes.