Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Irreconcilable Values: Islamism & the West

In the first Oakeshott (formerly Scruton) Lecture of 2024, writer and human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali will use the two major events of 9/11/2001 and 7/10/2023 to tell the story of the clash of civilisations between Islamism and the West in Israel, America, and Europe. Hirsi Ali will argue that Israel's leadership, facing a fight for Israel's very existence, is ahead of an American political elite that tends to see Islamism as more of a nuisance than an existential crisis, and a European leadership still investing its hopes in multiculturalism, diversity, and moral relativism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a writer, activist, and former politician. Born in Somalia and raised in various countries across Africa and the Middle East, she was granted asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, where she later became a member of the States General. A critic of forced marriage, child marriage, honour killing, and female genital mutilation, she became a close collaborator of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh before his M**der in 2004. Since relocating to the United States, Hirsi Ali has held positions at the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Kennedy School, and she is the author of four best-selling books: Infidel (2007), Nomad (2010), Heretic (2015), and Prey (2021).

Host or Publisher Roger Scruton Memorial Lectures