Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

This is Sam Harris.

Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber

feed and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation.

In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe

at samharis.org.

There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with

other subscriber-only content.

We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support

of our subscribers.

So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

Today I'll be speaking with Ion, her, Siali.

Ion will be known to many of you, but for those who don't know her, she was born in Samalia

in 1969.

She was the daughter of a political opponent of the Somali dictatorship, and she lived

in exile, moving to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

And like 98% of Somali girls, she was subjected to FGM, euphemistically called female circumcision,

and came from a quite blinker context of Islamic oppression.

And then in a few short years, really just recapitulated the full enlightenment project

in her own life.

She escaped a forced marriage.

She was being sent to marry a distant cousin in Canada, and rather than do that, she got

...