(0:00 - 0:46) We think of radical Islam as something that happens in other countries, such as Hamas murdering innocent Israelis or stories of honor killings of women in countries like Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. We like to believe that these sorts of abuses could never happen in our country. But the truth is they do happen. Every day. In Canada today there are Muslim extremists who marry multiple wives under Sharia law and who treat those wives and their children by them like property. And when those women go to Canadian authorities for help, the vast majority of the time nothing is done because the authorities fear being labeled as Islamophobic. (0:48 - 1:17) Even our courts have upheld the right of extremists to beat their own children. Yasmine Mohammed is the author of the book Unveiled How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam. Her story is a brutally honest account of her childhood and young life under the extreme abuses of a radical Islamist stepfather and her forced marriage to an Al-Qaeda terrorist. (1:18 - 2:04) And these things didn't happen in a faraway country. They happened right here in Canada. And they are still happening. In fact, I would suspect as Canada continues to open its doors to Muslim extremists, they have become everyday occurrences. I will caution you that Yasmine's story is extremely disturbing. But I also want you to know that I believe this is one of the most important interviews I have ever done. Yasmine is trying very hard to help others like her. The abused and ignored victims of radical Islam who have or are trying to escape. And by watching and sharing this interview, you can help. (2:05 - 2:30) Because it doesn't matter how many brave victims like Yasmine speak out. Nothing will change until we, the people who have the power to influence our governments, add our voices to hers. Yasmine, thank you so much for taking the time for this interview. (2:32 - 3:31) It's my pleasure, Will. I'm looking forward to our conversation. It was my wife who put me onto your book, Unveiled. And I have to say that it is quite probably the most disturbing thing I have ever read in my life. Absolutely horrible. I would like you to tell your story. And I'd like to start at the beginning. But before we do, there's one term that's going to come up a lot. And I think I need to ask you to explain to our viewers, what does haram mean? Forbidden. It's Islamically forbidden. So something that's going to get you in hell, burning in hell for eternity. All right. I'd like to start with your mother and how it is that she came to be married to a radical Islamist, to Munir, your stepfather. Or sorry, yes, your stepfather. I usually call him the man who my mother married, which is much more of a mouthful. (3:31 - 3:47) But I don't like to even refer to him as any part of my family. That's perfectly understandable, given the way she treated you. So how did your mother come to be married to this man? Because she was not a radical Islamist. (3:48 - 4:52) No. No, she wasn't. She was born and raised in Egypt and had a perfectly normal secular childhood. Egypt was very open-minded in those days, like most of the Middle East. I mean, if you see the old pictures of even Libya and Afghanistan and Iran, you're going to find women in universities, women in miniskirts. It was like normal life, the same way it was around the rest of the world in those days. And my dad was born and raised in Gaza, and he went to university in Egypt, and that's where him and my mom met. And like, neither of them were practicing Muslims or anything. They came from Muslim families, but that was about it. And they moved to San Francisco, and they had my sister there. And then they moved to Vancouver, Canada, where they had my brother and I, and their marriage fell apart. And so my dad ended up moving to Montreal, and my mom was left in Vancouver with three kids on her own. (4:53 - 5:37) And so she went to the local mosque, just looking for community, just looking for support and friendship. She was not at all looking for anything religious at the time. It was just because she's from Egypt, and she's in a new city, and she doesn't know anyone, and she's, you know, alone. And so she thought she would go looking for, like, maybe other Arabic-speaking women or something. And she came upon this man that you mentioned, who was living in the mosque at the time. And this is in the early 80s, when the trajectory of Islamic extremism was just getting started, right? It was the regime in Iran had just taken power, the Islamic regime. (5:37 - 5:52) And there was, like, this influx of political Islam that was just, like, spreading all over the Middle East at that time. So it's, like, pro-Islamic, anti-West. Both were very hand in hand. (5:53 - 8:19) And so that's what this guy was, and that's what my mom got caught up in at that time. And so you may have heard of the Muslim Brotherhood, because they are the most popular of these groups. There are countless of these groups, and they all, you know, they all go by different names. And it's almost like a game of, like, cups, you know, where you're just trying to, they just change their name or change their, you know, but it's the same people, and they have the same goals. But as soon as, you know, one group gets identified as, like, extremist, then they just, you know, change course and continue on their way. So my mom got caught up in this, and she became a born-again Muslim, is what I call her. She just jumped in, you know, just completely became a zealot. She started going to al-Azhar University, taking courses from their master's degree in Islamic studies, which was the most, still is the most prestigious Sunni university in the world. And she just became so anti-West, and this guy just came into our lives, and suddenly, the word you mentioned, everything was haram, everything was forbidden, you know. Suddenly, my mom had to start covering her hair, and we weren't allowed to play with our non-Muslim friends anymore. Like, I didn't even have a concept. Like, my best friends were Chelsea and Lindsay, and I never thought of me being Muslim and them not being Muslim. Like, these words were never in our house before. And then suddenly, it was like, no, no, no, they are non-believers. You can't be friends with them. I can't go down the hallway and play Barbies with Chelsea and Lindsay anymore. Like, that's what I did every day after school. Suddenly, it was like, no, you can't, can't ride a bike, can't go swimming, can't listen to music. Like, everything was just forbidden, forbidden, forbidden. And the only thing that we could do was memorize Qur'an and pray five times a day. Like, if we didn't do those things, we would get beaten. And my sister and I were put in hijab. I'd like to jump in with two questions before you continue. First of all, how old were you at this point in time? And because we're going to find- I was about six years old. (8:20 - 9:09) Thank you. And because we're going to find some fairly nasty things about your mother later on in this story, I have to ask, what was she like as a mother before she met Munir, before she got involved in radical Islam? My memories of her before were like going to Dairy Queen, making pancakes for us, um, going to McDonald's, you know, like, it wasn't, you know, as a kid, you don't really have a, an understanding of like, is it a good mom? Like, do you have a neglectful mom? Do you have a good mom? You know what I mean? But it wasn't like, she wasn't as horrible as she became. I'll say that much, you know, it was with an adult view, I can recognize that she was depressed. (9:09 - 11:12) I remember, um, you know, a very common thing, which she'd sit and eat sunflower seeds and watch soap operas all day. And she'd have like the mound of sunflower seed shells. I would go to school and I'd come back and the mound would just be, you know, that much larger. And that was just like a daily thing. Um, and she always watched like the same soap operas right after each other. And we'd come in the door when, you know, when it was right in between all my children and general hospital, like it was, it was just like clockwork. And I think about it now and I realize, yeah, she must've been depressed. She must've been, um, you know, unhappy. And that's what, you know, that's what possessed her to go to the mosque in the first place was because she was just looking for some sort of support system. Please tell us about Free Hearts, Free Minds. Yes. Thanks. So Free Hearts, Free Minds is my, it's my joy. It's my rewarding place. So there's a lot of darkness that we talked about. And like I mentioned, there's so many other people like me all around the world. And we, you know, I had to go through this before social media. So it was very isolating and just, you know, you just feel such, you just feel so despondent. And so I started this organization, Free Hearts, Free Minds that, that supports people like me. It supports people who have renounced Islam and who believe in enlightenment, people who are free thinkers, people who will, you know, fight against Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hamas, you know, Taliban. We've had this young man, his story is on the website, who used to be a Talib in Afghanistan. (11:13 - 14:26) And now he's in university, you know, causing this ripple effect of enlightenment where he's like spreading the, you know, the truth about this religion and getting people to think. And it's, it's just so, it's just so rewarding to be, you know, to be able to reach out and help the most vulnerable people in our world. You know, these are people that are hunted down, not only, you know, by the governments that they live in, where in a lot of these countries, you could be executed for, um, for renouncing the religion, but by their friends and family as well. Like I could tell you so many stories of, of people who were, um, killed through just vigilante justice when they find out that these people don't believe in Muhammad or Allah anymore. And so it, it's really rewarding to be able to take such all of this darkness of my life and to do something good with it, you know, like to help others to, to reach, um, you know, the hearts and minds of all these people that I know are feeling so alone. And so we offer, um, individual support, we offer group support, and then we also have ongoing community support. And we are the only organization, the only nonprofit on the planet that is dedicated to supporting people who renounce Islam. Um, and you know, because we are a charity, the, it's very important that, you know, we are run by donations. And so that limits our work. You know, we were always, our wait list is always a lot longer than the people that we can support, which is good news in a way, because it lets you know that there are, there's a lot of light, you know, throughout the world, throughout the Muslim majority world, the Middle East and North Africa. But it is of course, you know, sad because we're only able to, at any given point, we're only able to serve about 30% of the people who contact us, um, because we are limited by our funding, but we're doing the best we can. And, um, you know, I, I encourage your listeners to go to freeheartsfreeminds.com and click on testimonials and read some stories of people who have gone through our program. They talk about, you know, before they entered the program and then after they've left it. Um, and as I say, even when they've left it, we still have an ongoing community. So nobody has ever left, but you know, they're finished the program. Um, and then just talk about like, you know, the, the differences in their life, how, how things have changed for them. It's, uh, it's beautiful. I love reading them and, and just feeling like, you know, there's always a way, there's always a way to do something good. There's always a way to, to find a silver lining, to, to turn a negative into a positive. Um, and I'm very grateful that I can do that with my organization.