Unveiling the Truth on How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam: EP 05 with Yasmine Mohammed, Human Rights Activist

Humanity POV Episode 05 with Human Rights Activist Yasmine Mohammed:

In this gripping episode of the Humanity POV podcast, we delve into the riveting life journey of Yasmine Mohammed, shedding light on her tumultuous upbringing and harrowing escape from the clutches of radical Islamism.

Born to a father from Gaza and Egyptian mother, Yasmine's life took a dark turn when her parents divorced, leading to her mother's radicalization as the second wife of a radical Islamist.

Forced into marriage with an Al Qaeda operative, Yasmine endured years of abuse and oppression before summoning the courage to break free.

Join us as Yasmine shares her incredible story of resilience, survival, and empowerment, as well as her mission to aid those endangered by radical Islamism today. From advocating for the persecuted to offering support to victims facing persecution or execution due to their beliefs or relationships, Yasmine's organization Free Hearts Free Minds is the only such organization on the planet.

Her voice is a beacon of hope and freedom, and for positive change in a world often overshadowed by fear and intolerance.

To learn more about Yasmine, her organization Free Hearts Free Minds, her podcast, and to connect with her on social media, visit her website:

https://www.yasminemohammed.com/

Subscribe here on our HumanityPOV podcast where we explore the human experience through diverse perspectives and strive to inspire empathy, understanding, and positive change.

This project was produced by HumanityPOV, a grassroots movement uniting a diverse coalition of voices speaking up about the global issues that affect all of humanity. Building a more free and connected world, one conversation, one act at a time.

Visit HumanityPOV on Instagram:   / humanitypov 

To connect with your host, Dr. Azi Jankovic, visit www.drazi.co

Connect with us on Social:



Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/humanitypov

X: https://twitter.com/humanity_POV

Tik tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@humanity_pov

Support HumanityPOV by visiting https://tinyurl.com/humanitypovmovement

Transcript

Shure MV7-12: 0:05

Welcome to the humanity POV podcast. You're going to hear from a diverse array of morally courageous voices who understand that true humanitarianism is not selective. Together, we can amplify these voices for progress and shed light. On solutions to the issues. That affect all of us. Thank you so much for being here now, let's get started. My name is Dr. Ozzie Jankovic. I'm an educator. And I'll be hosting the first series of episodes.

Yasmine Raw Part 1: 0:50

I am so grateful and excited to be here today with Yasmine Mohammed. She is a Canadian university instructor, a human rights activist, and an author. She's the author of Unveiled, which is an incredible story of her own life. And how she got into the activism that she's doing today. She actually escaped from a forced abusive marriage to an Al Qaeda operative. We're going to get into all of this today and how Yasmine became an advocate for women's rights through her nonprofit organization, Free Hearts, Free Minds, the only charity on the planet, focusing on former Muslims at risk. Of persecution or execution for what they think or who they love. It is such an honor to be talking to you today. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much. So much for having me. Ozzy. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. I love the work you do and I'm really grateful to be a part of it. Thank you. So I would love to start with you, your story, and also how did you start speaking out recently? You've been so brave. Thank you. I think that your comments about, October 7th and how things were so not just shocking and horrific. And devastating to everybody in Israel, but across the world, we felt the ripple effect of it. And especially those of us who have a experience or an understanding, regarding extremist, terrorist, Islam, Islamists political Islam for those of us who have an intimate knowledge, it, hit us. I think. Differently, because for a lot of people there, there was a lot of confusion. You mentioned how things went so awry here in the West. There was a lot of confusion about who Hamas really are. They were being referred to as freedom fighters and revolutionaries. And people were really perverting and skewing and obscuring the truth. And, it was very frustrating. To be somebody who, the reality the truth, you've, lived this your whole life. And then to see such blatant lies being propagated and the propaganda being just like consumed so easily. It got so crazy to the point that, on TikTok, there was, so I'm sure you must've heard of a whole bunch of. Young people discovering the letter from Osama bin Laden, reading it and thinking like, wow, this is such poignant writing like they're, reading the ravings of a, terrorist who murdered thousands of innocent Americans and they are impressed. They're impressed by his words, and it just got so deranged you had like strippers for Gaza, queers for Palestine, like it was just like, do you people not even understand what it is that you're supporting you will, you would be on the front lines they would not hesitate they would, be happy to slit all your throats. There's, videos of it. A man in, Gaza who was discovered to be a homosexual and they tied him at the back of one of their motorcycles and dragged him across the city. So It's, it is so important to hear from someone like yourself who understands the inside of that society. Tell us a little bit about your childhood. Your father's from Gaza. You've spent time in Egypt, in Canada. Yeah. My dad was born and raised in Gaza and he was there when it was under, Egyptian occupation. And so he was allowed to go to university in Egypt for free. And so that's what he did. So he went to university in Egypt, and that's where he met my mom and the two of them, I'm going to digress for a little bit here because I think this is important context. A lot of people don't know. This is just like some insider information. Palestinians are treated. They are regarded very negatively in the Arab and Muslim world. People tend to think that there is this huge support for Palestinians, huge support for Gaza, but it's actually, support for the caliphate and hate for Jewish people and hate for Israel. That's what's the unifying factor. The Palestinians are not regarded well. No, they are not. They are considered the beggars of the Middle East is the term that is used to describe them. And when my mom told her family that she wanted to marry this Palestinian man. And my dad was well off his parents at that point were working in Saudi Arabia like it was a, affluent family, but it, but still they said to her, we would rather if you married an Egyptian garbage man, rather than marry any Palestinian man, even the richest of all Palestinian men. But she did it anyway. She defied them and she married him and they moved to San Francisco and they started their life together there. And that's where they had my sister. And this was the sixties, the peace, love and hippie era, actually it was early seventies by then. And they wanted something a bit more quiet, a bit more residential, and so they moved to Vancouver, Canada, and that's where my brother and I were, born. But by the time I was born, my parents relationship had pretty much dissolved. It wasn't, by the time I was two years old, their divorce was final. So my memories of my dad are mostly just like visitations, like going to the aquarium together or this and that, but it was never really having him in the home as a dad, which is unfortunate because my, mom and my dad are two very different. They, took two very different paths in life. So both of them were in. Living in very secular homes my mom went to, Catholic schools growing up because her parents wanted her to learn French and her best friend was a Christian. It was, there was none, of these like religious lines. My dad, even when he speaks about This was, in Egypt, your, when your mom was growing up in Egypt. This was in Egypt. Yep. And so there was complete peace, good relationships between Muslims, Christians, you had secular Muslims. Yep. Yeah, there was, it wasn't, Islam wasn't even a thing like you wouldn't even, the only time you'd ever see anybody reading Quran or a woman wearing hijab was out in the village. They were like uneducated people, if you were of the educated class or the upper class of society, which my mom's family was, then you wouldn't ever be. Religion was like this embarrassing part of their past. Do you know what I mean? It was not something that, that they, engaged with every day. But what ended up happening in 1979, when the. Iranian revolution happened and the Islamic regime was powerful there. It started this ripple effect of what we now call Islamists. And those are political Muslims. So those are people who inspired by the Islamic regime of Iran. They're like, Oh, we want to have our own Islamic regime. These are Shias. Let's try and have a Sunni Islamic. And that's the caliphate I was referring to. So that's. ISIS. They also were trying to create a caliphate. So it's this, desire to spread Islam. And then to have as many Muslims, as much of the planet as possible. They, the goal is to have everybody on the planet, praying to Allah. So that all happened after my parents got a divorce. And my dad moved away, got remarried, started his life all over again on the other side of Canada, and my mom was left with three kids on her own as a single mom. And so she did A natural thing, which was to go to the mosque looking for community, looking for support, looking for friendship, looking for maybe possibly other Arabic speaking women. She was not a religious person. She wasn't looking for religion, but because this whole Islamist surge was happening at that time in the early 80s. All across the world at this point, and you might remember this. This was a time when suddenly mosques were being built. Saudi Arabia was throwing money for free Quran translated Quran, to be dropped off everywhere. There was, like, this, just this sudden surge of, political Islam. And my mom got caught up in that wave because the man that she met at the mosque was an Egyptian man who was already married, already had three children but he took my mom on as his second wife because in Islam a man can have up to four wives. So I went from having this perfectly normal childhood, To when my mom got with this man, it was like, my life completely changed. So I was around six years old at this time. And it was like, no more riding your bike. That's haram. Haram means forbidden. You're no longer allowed to ride your bike anymore. You're no longer allowed to go swimming. You're no longer allowed to go to birthday parties. You're no longer allowed to play with your friends. I, we lived in an apartment building and my best friends, Chelsea and Lindsay were just down the hall and grabbing my Barbies and going down the hall and playing with them was like. every day after school or going outside and playing on the playground. None of that. Couldn't do any of that anymore. Couldn't listen to music anymore. My mom used to love listening to records. We have, she loved country music. We always had it playing in the house. So he was like breaking all her records and handing them to us and telling us to break her records too. And that was the most defining moment for me. I think when I was sitting there on the carpet, like looking up at my mom and him standing there and he's like breaking her records and handing the shards to us and saying here break them and i remember feeling so angry for my mom like how could you break my mom's stuff i wanted to defend her but it was so shocking how she didn't even defend herself she just stood there and she's like looking down at her toes and not even I was like, if my brother walked into my room and started breaking my Barbies I would be livid, but he's just breaking her stuff and encouraging us to break her stuff. He's disrespecting her and encouraging us to disrespect her, and she's not even responding. She's not even reacting. And so I thought this is it a new sheriff's in town. And it just got worse from there. The abuse that you had to go through as a child is just so inhumane and the fact that you have survived and the fact that you've turned your pain into purpose, how did you do it? You went through a living hell. With that man. Yeah, we, I did. And when I went to the authorities, it went through not just the police, but child services, the family court system. And in the end, they told me this is your, this is the, this is your culture. This is how they choose to discipline you. So there's nothing we can do to help you. So that was such a heartbreaking, breaking moment when you went to your teacher in middle school and then you were finally able to bring your abuse case, which was, it's absolute grave. What you went through is extreme abuse, extreme child abuse. And then the court wrote that off, that was somehow appropriate because it was your culture. Is this happening in the, across the Western world? What is going on? In these Islamist families that is going on and a blind eye is being turned because it's their culture, right? It's all being it's all being ignored under the guise of cultural relativism under this moral relativism. And so you can see that playing out. Even more tragically with families that mutilate their daughters. FGM is a very common practice among Muslim families in Egypt and Somalia. There's like over close to 90%, if not over 90 percent of girls have had this done to them. And what's very common is that they'll, even if the girl is like born and raised in America, Canada, UK, whatever, they'll take her back to the homeland. Get this done to her and then bring her back home again. And when the authority is usually it's the doctor that notices it complications obviously arise because these this is not being done above board in Egypt. Thankfully, it's recently been criminalized. And so what happens is it now goes. underground. And so it's just people with their unsanitary conditions using razor blades to slice off the clitoris of little girls. And when it's discovered that they've done this to their children, the response is like an education pamphlet to inform them. This isn't good. You shouldn't do this to your kid. That's it. That's what happens and that's what happens in the West. It doesn't matter like even how extreme the abuse is across the spectrum. This moral relativism allows them to ignore what's happening to these girls because it's considered religious freedom. It's considered Cultural freedom. So it doesn't matter if she's whatever it is that's happening to her. As long as you are treating people differently based on their ethnicity or based on their religion, like you're not applying the law equally to everybody in your country, as long as you're doing that, you're going to end up with people being victimized like I was and like these girls are that I'm speaking about. Thinking about that happening in the States or thinking about Canada, it, how is that going under the radar? It's like when the Rotherham rape gangs were happening in the UK for like over a decade girls as young as seven and eight were being basically abducted and. Forced into these gangs where they're being drugged and they're being used as sex slaves, essentially. And it went on for so long because if a journalist or, anyone in law enforcement or any politicians or anyone tried to speak up against it, they were being called Islamophobes, they were being called racist. They were being called intolerant because the men who were doing this to these little girls. were Pakistani Muslim men. And so there's this constant desire to defend. Those men. Basically, they're defending the oppressors. They're defending the perpetrators of these crimes. And because they have such a desire to defend these men, they are leaving the women to continually be victimized, even when it's their own daughters. This isn't even a case of dehumanizing Muslim women. So not caring about them or dehumanizing Israeli women after October 7th when they would It's the same scenario. You had the exact same thing here that when you talked about what Hamas did to these Israeli women, it's like you're the, bad person now because how dare you say these things about these Muslim men. You are an Islamophobe. You are racist. You're a xenophobe. You're intolerant. Basically. It is so hard to fathom that this is happening in the year 2024 and that this has been happening. So let's break this down for a minute. 1979 is the revolution in Iran. We have an Islamist government that comes in the regime that is still now in power. And because of that, Saudi Arabia also, they created an updated Quran, the Noble Quran, is that right? And then started exporting that all over the world. And then this political Islam grew. And this is the one we're talking about where the abuse gets justified, where you're allowed to abuse your wife. Correct. Oh, yeah. But, I just want to clarify before we continue. They did not write a new Quran. It's the exact same Quran in Arabic, but it was just the English version that they had translated it so that it fit more towards their Wahhabi ideology. So was it made more extreme in the late 70s so the translation was more. I want to say more honest, the translation was because the Wahhabis, what they believed they believed in, or they believe in, and the Salafis, it's all about practicing the religion closer to the way Muhammad did. So they wanted to go back to the authentic way of how Islam was practiced. And so initially the English translations were really whitewashed, so when it came to the verse about beating your wife, for example, they wouldn't use the word beat. They would say strike lightly as if that was better. But like they were trying to find ways. Yeah, but in Arabic you read it in Arabic like I'm Arabic is my first language and I always read it in Arabic and so it really didn't make a difference to me. But we have to remember that. 75 to 80 percent of Muslims don't speak Arabic. So having the translation to be more direct did have an effect because it made people start to follow the edicts that were clearly written in the Quran, but that had previously been watered down for them in the translation. So we're talking early 80s, this dangerous. This version of Islam, this political Islam was exported from the East to the West. And how exactly did it come to be that abuse has become so normalized in that culture and yet ignored and, by Westerners who were so afraid to be pigeonholed. As Islam a phobes. That's exactly it. They're so afraid to be pigeonholed as Islam a phobes that they're willing to ignore any kind of abuse or any victims that are screaming rather than put themselves in the position where somebody might. Call them an islamophobe. Now, I think this is a good time to talk about the word islamophobia and where it came from, who coined it. It was coined by the islamic regime in Iran. It was a term, as you'll notice mirrors homophobia, transphobia. It mirrors what we would consider progressive language. And so the idea was to play that role of Oh, look, In order to be a progressive, you should be using this term and what they were doing with that term Islamophobia is they were trying to stop criticism of Islam and they can't do it in the West the way they could do it in Iran and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and everywhere else where people are imprisoned or even killed. So what they couldn't have a top down law enforcement, blasphemy laws, they couldn't create those, even though they tried in the UN many, times. So instead, what they came up with was a bottom up approach. And that's when they coined the term Islamophobia. And I thought with this term, will encourage people to shut each other up. If anybody starts to speak about Islam, and they'll feel like a good virtue signaling progressive person doing it. Because it mirrors the language of the left now. This is important because that strategy of co opting or hijacking the left like that is something that Iran has done in the past. And it's happened everywhere, right? It's happening in Gaza right now. We are watching this co opting that I'm about to talk about. But, what's especially poignant about Iran is how cleanly it was laid out. So prior to 1975, during the revolution, the Islamic, the Islamists had allied very closely with the leftists, the progressives, the socialists, the communists, they were all working together to defeat the Shah. And when they succeeded, The first thing the Islamists did was get rid of All of leftists, the communists, the socialists, whether they were imprisoned, whether they were killed, whether they disappeared, they got rid of all of their leaders. So essentially that was a ploy to overthrow the Shah. The radical Islamists conned the liberal left into believing that they were on the same team, which is what is happening around the world right now. There's some foreshadowing. And then that was the end. Broke the ties. I would imagine they executed several in the process. That's exactly what happened. And that's exactly what we're seeing happening again. Who are you seeing out there with their flags screaming from the river to the sea or gas, the Jews are all of these horrific chance that we're hearing. We're hearing them from. The progressives from the left wing from the people who don't understand who it is that they're supporting because they're being used as useful idiots. It worked for Iran before, and it's working for them again. They're the ones who funded Hamas to create this. That destruction that they did in Israel. So yeah, they're playing the same game again and it's working like a charm yet again. It's incredibly frustrating to watch things play out because for people like me who've seen this you see it in, you've seen it in Syria, you've seen it in Lebanon, you've seen it in Algeria, you've seen it in Iraq, you've seen it everywhere. Tunisia like everywhere we've seen this happen, but people who are like under 25 who are watching TikTok videos have not seen it before. They're not familiar with it. They don't understand how they're being treated as pawns in this Islamist game. And that's why the subtitle of my book is how Western liberals empower radical Islam, is because they don't understand that through being used as useful idiots, they are the ones who are empowering these guys to continue. If you look at what's happening in Gaza right now, you'll see that the Palestinian people, the Gazan people are screaming up against Hamas. They are talking about how Hamas are billionaires and they're, living in comfort in, in, in Turkey or in Qatar, and they've got their private jets and they've got their this and that, and we're the ones that are suffering. It's our children that are being bombed, that are we're the ones that are starving to death and they keep on screaming for Hamas to Relief the hostages and to stop this because the people are like, there's they're, just being, the, whole area of Gaza is now just in rubble and everybody is suffering there. And they're, the ones that are screaming to Hamas and cursing Hamas. Yet over here in New York and LA and Sydney, Australia, and all over every major city in Canada, you have them. screaming the exact opposite. Like you don't know what's happening. Stop talking. And not only that, you don't care. Let's be perfectly honest. You're going to go home to your warm house and your warm meal, and this isn't going to affect you. But here you are screaming and overpowering the voices of the people from Gaza, really. Because you think that this makes you a good person, but you are just an idiot, and you're being used as an idiot and, you're, you are empowering these terrorists while the people in Gaza continue to suffer, and in fact are suffering more and more because of the fact that you're empowering them. It means so much coming from you because you understand the culture. You understand the language. You have lived in that world. You broke free from that world and you help people in that world. And let's be honest too the recruits that Hamas has made from within Gaza, these babies. are from the time they're in the cradle. They have the wrap around their head from whatever terrorist group that they're in. And, they take a photo with a knife or a gun as a baby, as a preschooler, they're raised on this culture of violence at any cost. Child abuse. It is child abuse and it's not Only Hamas and it's not only in Gaza. You will find that exact same thing happening in Afghanistan with the Taliban. You'll find the exact same thing happening in Iran with the Islamic regime. They will encourage kids like you pledge allegiance to the flag in America. In Iran, you have to be like death to America, death to Israel. This is how they start off their day. This is the chance that they have to recite. So this kind of yeah. Instilling hate in the minds of babies is a common phenomenon, unfortunately, across the over 50 Muslim majority countries, with people who really believe in political Islam, they really believe in spreading Islam, and they really see the death of their children as martyrs, to be the most honorable thing that honorable way that their child could use their life. And in fact, it's most honorable for them that they brought this child into the world to be killed for Sabina and that it's like you, you've seen it you, they share sweets and they're giving out candies and they're making all sorts of sounds of joy when somebody dies, after they've stabbed a Jewish person I wonder you're a mom. I'm a mom. I, wonder this all the time. What do you think? is actually going on in that mother's mind. Do you think she's, lost? She's so far gone. What is that like for these women who have been trained to sacrifice their children? I can explain it from the perspective of my mom, because I was one of those Kids, when, I took off my hijab, my mom said to me in the most straightforward manner. She was, of course, very angry, but it was to her. It was very clear that. Now I needed to be killed because if I took off my hijab the next step would be that I would leave Islam And so in order to prevent me from being an infidel She needed to kill me first and it was like this very rational thing for her because she felt if she brought an infidel child into this world, then she was the one who would suffer for eternity. Allah would punish her in hell because she didn't raise me properly. What's important to remember is that from the very beginning, as a kid in these homes, you know that Allah comes first and then Muhammad and then you are like as the, allegiance or the love or the loyalty is to the ideology, not to you as the kid. You're not valued in this scenario anywhere near what Allah is. It goes back to the story of Abraham, which they tell it differently than the way it's told in, in Jewish scripture or in Christian scripture. But the way it's looked at as a Muslim is that You have to be such a pious person. You have to be such a good person that you are willing to easily sacrifice your child for a law. If your child dies to Sabina love your child dies as a martyr for a law, that is something to celebrate. That's not they're not looking at it like, Oh, my kid is dead they're not mourning the death of their child. They're looking at it like, Oh, how proud Allah is going to be of me that I sacrificed my child for him. What a, virtuous, pious person I am. And so now you'll deserve heaven and your kid is going to go to heaven too, as far as they're concerned. I'm sure you remember the quote from Osama bin Laden when he said, You can never defeat us because you love life and we love death. And that's really it in a nutshell. That is exactly it. As a Muslim, you are raised to love death because you want to get to heaven. And this earth is nothing but a stepping stone, a just a blink of an eye, and it's irrelevant and unimportant. And so life is regarded in the same way, even the life of your own child is regarded in the same way as just like this fleeting irrelevant thing, but your child's going to go to heaven and that's what matters. It is so hard to fathom. And is this, when we talk about numbers, sheer numbers, how many families in the world, I know that people always love to go back to the old, it's just a small percentage, but we are talking about 2 billion people. So when you're talking about 2 billion people, even a small percentage is millions of people this, these are terrifying numbers that we're dealing with here. So the majority of people know this, they cognitively know this. But how many people would actually risk their lives to go and try and stab a Jewish person or stab anybody in the streets of London or Paris or like the way it's been happening all over the world? Those are gonna be a smaller percentage. Of course. Like that Afghani guy that shot up a Pulse nightclub. The stories are endless, right? The Charlie Abdo journalists who were all killed, Samuel Petit, a teacher in France who was beheaded we have enough stories to let us know that this is a global problem and. Even in a country where you have a small percentage of Muslims, there's going to be within that percentage, there will be people who hold these beliefs and within that, there will be people who are willing to act on these beliefs. So as long as the doctrine is being preached as something that is. Political and that it's not being separate like there isn't that separation of church and state. If there isn't that separation of mosque and state, as long as they keep on mixing the two with Islamic law, which is called Sharia in Arabic, as long as they're separate. Trying to conflate the two, you will continue to have these problems because you're going to continue to have people wanting to create this Islamic caliphate, whether it's from the Shia side or whether it's from the Sunni side, and they'll work together as we can see here. Iran funding Hamas. We've got Shias funding, Sunnis because if the aim at the end of the day is to kill Jews, then the enemy of my enemy is my friend. They will work together when it's against the infidels. And I know we're talking a lot about Israel here, but I need to express and I need for people to understand that this is that yes. Israel and Jews, they are the tip of the spear right now with what is happening, but they are certainly not the full story. They look at Nigeria and how Christian people are being killed there. Look at what's happening to girls and millions of Christians. Yes they will not, it's not because people like to pretend that this is a land disagreement that this has something to do with, with Gaza and Israel. And, Gaza has been pretty much an independent state. Area of land since 2005 and they had the option at that point. And I understand it was a bloody coup. And I understand that it was not like it was a peaceful transition here, but. The devastating the sad part of this is that Hamas were the ones that took power a terrorist organization took power of your homeland, and then it was all downhill from there, but when people start to talk about this as a land dispute, they are. Failing to see the forest for the trees. This is not Hamas. This is not Gaza versus Israel. This is not Hamas versus, kids at a music festival. This is an Islamist plan that is across the world. No different than what ISIS was doing in Iraq and Syria. All of these You know the threads are all very clearly there like I mentioned Iran was the one funding Hamas You know you it's very clear that this is all part of that shared mindset that they have That they need to spread Islam across the world and even if Israel didn't exist 9 11 would happen, right? The rivers of blood flowing in France would happen, like all of, it would still happen. This situation right now on October 7th happened to happen in Israel, but to pretend that this is a land dispute and that it is just a very specific case is a failure to the truth because the truth is this is actually a global problem that we should all be paying attention to. And I think one of the best quotes I've ever heard was Sam Harris when he said, we are all in Israel now. It's just that some of us haven't noticed it yet. And he's absolutely correct. We are all in Israel. It's just that some of us haven't noticed it yet. That is really, powerful. My eyes were certainly opened that day. The first question was, how did this happen? And then I started listening to you and some other women who've been in the culture speaking and it was like, wait a second. This type of violence goes on within the culture. Yes. And so you're working in this space. Are you seeing progress in terms of, minds being changed? Because here you are again with firsthand experience. You understand the story, you understand the bigger picture, and you, like you said, the West, many people in the West, have been turned into useful idiots. Are you seeing people wake up? Absolutely, 100 percent without a doubt, yes. There is a surge of enlightenment happening all across the Muslim world. What is really helping this to progress is podcasts like this, right? The YouTube videos, the podcasts, the, just the internet, just getting access to information that you never had before. Because you have to remember, these are countries that are I'm not just predominantly Muslim, but like sometimes over 90%, sometimes 100 percent Muslim. And when I talked about sharia with the Islamic law being part of the government, it's part of the government, it's part of the law enforcement, it's part of the education, it's part of the media. You cannot escape it. So all you're ever hearing is this one narrative. And so when you get access to the internet, and of course we're only talking about a certain percentage of people who even do have access to the internet and who do understand English because a lot of these videos and things are in English, although there is a lot happening all over Egypt, Libya, Algeria, you name it. Minds are opening all over the place. Tunisia is another one I should have mentioned. So, they're creating their own content in Arabic as well. I'm about to do an interview with a humanist group in Libya, actually, and I've been invited to do quite a few interviews in Arabic. And it's really wonderful to see. And, you won't really get a true and honest reading because it's, Like my organization, free hearts, free minds. We support people who are people who have renounced the religion, but more often than not, they have to live a double life because if they're living in a Muslim majority country where they could be executed for their beliefs. The only safe space they have is free hearts, free minds. It's the only community where they can express themselves and share how they're feeling. They can't talk to their family or their friends or their coworkers or their schoolmates because that's incredibly dangerous. It's not just the government. It's not just law enforcement that will. persecute you or that will execute you. There's countless stories of people like Mishal Khan in Pakistan, who in his university classroom started to ask questions about the religion. And on the, in the quad on his way back to his dorm, he was attacked by His classmates and they beat him up and they murdered him right there in the middle of the school and his mom was saying that when she went to go to, identify his body, she said, I picked up his hand to kiss his hand and every Bone in every one of his fingers was broken. That's how viciously the mob attacked this young man. And so when I say you have to be careful, you have to be very, careful. So we're not going to know how many bright minds there are out there, how many open minds there are out there because it's too dangerous for them to speak. But trust me. It's overwhelming. It's really positive to hear that you're seeing this change happen. This enlightenment happened and you're working, your organization, free hearts, free minds is focused on helping former Muslims and some of these Muslims who are living double lives in over 23 countries. Now, what is it like for these Muslims, ex Muslims living under regimes like that? First of all, how common is it? How many countries are we talking about? So some of those regimes are Canada and America, and in Palestine too, we've had quite a few from there as well. Yeah, so we have people from all over the world contacting us. We, the majority of people actually are coming from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Those are our two largest demographic groups. Egypt, I think, because My family my mom's family is from Egypt and I do a lot of, speaking about Egypt and Egyptian media, but Saudi Arabia, like how beautiful is that to learn that and most people in Iran aren't Muslim. This we know as for a fact that most people in Iran have been so turned off by the religion that they are going back to their roots of Zoroastrianism or they're just atheists but what, or whatever it is. They are not choosing to follow this religion that has oppressed them their entire lives. So the way that they interact is generally through me. So how this started was when I wrote my book, I was absolutely inundated with people writing their stories to me, asking me for support, asking me for help, asking me for advice, and it absolutely. I just could not. I could not cope. I physically, mentally, I was broken. I was already feeling really raw because I had just written my book and I had opened up all of these wounds that had been left shut for so many years. And so I was already in a pretty fragile state mentally, but then to just get this sea of messages, I'll never forget this one situation that made me decide I needed to start Free Hearts Free Minds was this young woman in Somalia was Skyping me while I was at my daughter's soccer game. And I'm like trying to have friendly banter conversation with the moms and dads. And I'm getting this frantic call from a woman in Somalia telling me that The the local terrorists are aware of her being an atheist because her father told them, and now she has three days to repent. Or they're going to kill her and it was just like so disorienting and like I couldn't maintain this. And so that's when I decided I have to do something. And that's when I started free hearts, free minds. So essentially, they are a group of therapists who. We have devised an incredible program that supports people in this journey through this trauma of leaving Islam or religious trauma is an actual thing that happens to everybody when you renounce religion, because it's You know, you went from thinking this is reality to, whoop, it's actually this. It's like a Truman Show shocking experience. But it is extra difficult for people who are leaving Islam because of the threats that don't happen with, other religious groups. The fear that they can be persecuted, executed, excommunicated. Must be so frightening. Yeah. But you know what? We, I'm so grateful to be doing this work and to be working with such amazing people and to be able to make the kind of difference that we're making because as you mentioned, we are the only organization on the planet doing this work. So all of these people that we talked about who are. Basically carrying the flames of enlightenment throughout the Muslim majority world. They only have one place where they can feel safe, where they can have a community of like minded people that have been curated and vetted, where they can feel safe. Is just free hearts, free minds. There's nowhere else to go. You can have an anonymous account and post some things online. But if you're looking for actual group support and individual support and to actually go through, therapy that was designed specifically for people overcoming religious trauma from Islam, then this is the only place. And so I'm very proud that we're able to do this work. And I hope that, there will be other organizations hopefully that will start doing this. Because we are like, our waiting list is. We can never keep up and this is why I'm telling you that the numbers should really give you hope at any given time. We can only serve about 30 percent of the people on our waiting list like we, and that's group therapy. We're going as fast as we can with as many people as we can, and we just can't keep up. So the demand is very high. But unfortunately it's as with every nonprofit, we're limited by our funding. The more funding we get, the more people we can support and the more we can help to spread enlightenment in these dark, areas. It's so important and it's so incredible that you're doing it and it's such an honor to speak with you thank you. Is there anything specific anywhere? That our listeners can go to find you. I know your website, but I want to hear all of the things my website is Yasminemuhammad. com and you can find me on Twitter and Instagram and on Facebook and I have my book as as we mentioned is Unveiled, How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam. My organization is Free Hearts, Free Minds so you can go to that website, freeheartsfreminds. com. As well, I host a podcast called the Yasmine Muhammad podcast, where I speak with all sorts of different people who inspire me, but they are mostly women like myself who have come out of, Islam or other fundamentalist religions or not even religions. Like one woman escaped communist Russia. Different ideologies, mind viruses having to overcome that, reprogram your mind is, an incredibly difficult journey and I like to be inspired by, encourage the women that have inspired me. Because it's so much harder for women for so many different reasons, but that we didn't even get into today That have done this and invite them to come tell their stories on my podcast What an honor to speak with you today. You can visit the show notes for Yasmine's website and all the social media links and it's Y A S M I N E Mohammed, M O H A M E D. com.

Shure MV7-14: 48:05

To learn more artist support our growing movement. You can visit tiny url.com. Backslash humanity, POV movement. That's tiny url.com. Backslash humanity, POV movement. Thank you so much for tuning in. And we'll see you on the next episode.