Yasmine Mohammed Podcast

Elica Le Bon is a British-born attorney, artist, activist, and speaker. She was born and raised in London and moved to Los Angeles to go to law school. Since then, she has worked foremost as a criminal defense attorney while developing a second career in activism, initially focused primarily on bringing light to issues surrounding human rights in Iran and the wider Middle East. Since starting, her unique voice has reached millions across various audiences and platforms around the world as a v...

Gad Saad is a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada - one of the cities that has seen the biggest eruption of antisemitism since Oct 7th. Gad was born in Beirut, Lebanon to a Jewish family with roots in Syria. As a child, the antisemitism his family encountered is one of the reasons why they fled from Lebanon to Canada. And now in Canada, he has to hear professors telling students to “go back to Poland” in reference to Auschwitz and the Holocaust where millions of Jewish peopl...

Golsa Golestaneh is an Iranian-Canadian woman whose main passion is challenging misinformation, bias, and propaganda. Having a background in both Iranian and Canadian activist circles has helped her in analyzing sociopolitical issues factually and independently, rather than by relying on the mainstream narrative. Golsa will be joining us to talk about how she has been forced to attend diversity and inclusion reprogramming at her job because speaking up against the regime she escaped is social...

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is an American writer and analyst who grew up in Gaza City which he left in 2005 as a teenage exchange student. He writes extensively on Gaza’s political and humanitarian affairs and has been an outspoken critic of Hamas and a promoter of coexistence and peace as the only path forward between Palestinians and Israelis. Alkhatib has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a Master’s in intelligence and national security studies. His writing has been published in...

Sam Harris has a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He is the author of five New York Times best sellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance. He also hosts the Making Sense Podcast, which was selected by Apple as one of the “iTunes Best” and has won a Webby Award for best podcast in the Science & Education category. As wel...

Unlike my regular interviews, this podcast is a discussion between myself and my friend Jay Shapiro. Jay grew up as a Zionist and I grew up as an Islamist. We will be discussing October 7th and the aftermath... and you are welcome to join us. Jay Shapiro is a writer and documentary filmmaker with a focus on philosophy and intellectually challenging subjects. He wrote and directed the film adaptation of the collaboration between philosopher Sam Harris and former imprisoned Muslim extremis...

Deepti joins us to speak about the organization she runs with a dedicated group of volunteers called CHINGARI. The organization aims to bring awareness to the world about the Hindu girls who are kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam, forcefully married, and who face countless other atrocities in Sindh, Pakistan each day. Through informative advocacy, CHINGARI seeks to make local U.S. representatives aware of the unstable religious situation in Pakistan. Join us to speak to Deepti about her wo...

Siavash Safavi is a translator, former student activist, and political prisoner from Iran. He was sentenced to prison and lashing and had to escape the country in 2011. He arrived in Canada as a refugee in 2013 and in January 2017, he was labeled by the IRGC as one of the 30 traitors to the Islamic Republic for his opposition to the nuclear deal (JCPOA).

Madiha grew up in Pakistan before moving to the US. She will join us to share what life in like for girls and women in Pakistan and to tell us about her personal experiences and journey out of Islam and into becoming a free woman, a physician, a wife, a mother and the host of a YouTube page that explores the intersection of faith and modernity and dissecting ethical dilemmas. In her page she aims to spark meaningful conversations that transcend boundaries. Connect with Madiha on her You...

In this very special Yasmine Mohammed Podcast, I will interview an incredibly brave woman named Dalia Ziada: Dalia is one of the most famous political analysts in the Arab world. She had to flee her country in fear for her life because she publicly told the truth about Hamas terrorists. In our conversation, she will explain why the Islamists are the enemy and why Europe and North America should be careful.Contact Dalia:dalia@egyldi.orgFacebook.com/daliaziadaTwitter @daliaziadaDalia's book: ht...

Anna was born in USSR to a Jewish family who, due to antisemitism, immigrated to Israel when she was two years old. Anna grew up in Israel in a Jewish family who survived the Holocaust. When she was about 10 years old, her mother married a Muslim man and converted to Islam. To escape the enforced religion, and living with a man who celebrated 9/11, Anna left home when she was a teenager. She eventually left Israel and moved to the USA all by herself to start a new life. Anna now holds an MBA ...

Yasmeena was born in Afghanistan and moved to the UK when she was nine. At 19, she met her now husband, David. Because David was Jewish, he was threatened by her family with death threats and vile statements like " Too bad Hitler didn't finish you all off". When she informed the Met police, they told her it is a family matter. Yasmeena is now a model and an activist who uses her body as a canvas to tell provocative and empowering stories. Through her work, she challenges traditional and relig...

Iffath is a former member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, a messianic sect of Islam considered heretical by most mainstream Muslims. Growing up in the USA in the state of Tennessee, she struggled with the multitude of restrictions placed on her, especially since she was female.The inner conflict she experienced led to decades of depression and self-loathing. A series of events beginning with the market crash of 2008 led her to deep inner work including personal development, meditation, and...

Xehra is a professional fire performer, artist and activist who started her journey of independence by faking a marriage to return home to America after her family forcibly moved her to the Middle East. She now strives to inspire women to deprogram the oppression of shame culture through free movement, embracing their sexuality, and dancing with the fire that she was told to fear.

Sarah Edmondson has been a working actor for 25+ years, but she is most well-known for her real-life role in the downfall of the notorious NXIVM cult.In 2019, Sarah published Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult that Bound My Life, an acclaimed memoir chronicling her harrowing experience. Her story as a whistleblower has also been featured in the CBC podcast “Uncover: Escaping NXIVM” and “The Vow”, the critically-acclaimed HBO documentary series.In 2021, Sarah launched the...

Elise Evans is a Women’s Rights Activist. She has been called the Katniss Everdeen of Saudi Arabia. Her passion and work highlight the draconian laws which keep women in a system that declares them minors until they die. Raised by a Saudi stepdad as a Saudi included molestation, prolonged confinement, physical & mental abuse, and more. She was subjected to the Male Guardianship Law, which stripped her of every right that she was born with as an American Citizen.She works diligently to hig...

Sara was born in a (mostly) secular family in an extremely religious country. She left Iran when realized she would never see her 30th birthday if she stayed any longer. Since last September, and the start of the revolution in Iran, she has started talking to her therapist more about her experiences in Iran, which led her therapist to diagnose Sara with PTSD, severe anxiety, minor depression and panic disorder, realizing how severely she was affected and how she barely survived the Islamic Re...

Collin May has a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard, a political philosophy degree from the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris, and a law degree from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. While at Harvard, he studied the falisifa with the world’s foremost expert on medieval Islamic philosophy, Dr. Muhsin Mahdi.On May 25, 2022, the Alberta government appointed him as the first openly gay man to serve as Chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission and Tribu...

Jasmine grew up following the Jain religion in India. The religion has a very small following of 6 million worldwide and comprises little more than .5% of the population in India. She had questions about Jainism from a very young age. She was different from others - she noticed that early on: where others accepted the beliefs and status quo, she wanted to know why. Her curious mind always had questions and wanted answers that made sense to her. Today she is a rational egoist and does not beli...

Lois grew up in a Nazarene family in Kansas City, Missouri, going to four church services each Sunday and one on Wednesday. By the time she was 17 at a Nazarene College, she was going to chapel every day. But despite all this constant connection with her faith, she still had doubts. She had doubts ever since she was a young child. She still had doubts even while she was a professor at a Christian college. It wasn’t until she found herself in a marriage with an alcoholic, sociopathic, ex-convi...

Elnaz is an Iranian American women’s rights activist born and raised in Iran where she graduated as an engineer and was a business owner. She moved to the US in 2008 and worked in Tech companies including Google for more than a decade. After a decade in America, she decided to become vocal about the treatment of women by the Islamic Republic of Iran: she produced a weekly podcast with Women for Sustainable Freedom & Equality, held workshops on creating content for Iranian activists and wo...

For this very special episode of Forgotten Feminists, I will be speaking with a woman who certainly is not, and never can be, forgotten: Asra Nomani. Asra is a journalist, author, activist and one of my personal heroines and mentors. Asra is a woman of tiny stature who takes on the most goliath of fights against Islamic extremism and secular extremism as manifested today in what is referred to as "woke". Asra will talk to us about her life, her close encounters with terrorists, her activism, ...

Anne was raised by a Palestinian father and American convert mother. However, unlike most American girls, she was homeschooled and forced into hijab. Her suffocating home life pushed her to attempt suicide at 17. When she was hospitalized, it was the first time in her life that she’d spent the night free from the grip of her family. “I came away from that experience with a single conclusion: I was going to leave this house in a body bag if I didn’t find a way out”. Join me and Anne to hear ab...

When Deb was 19, she escaped the cult her mother had joined when she was 11. After eight years trapped in a cult, she was alone. She had zero life skills, no money, and no place to live. She was terrified, but she was free. She knew she would make it; she just didn’t know how! Eventually she married a Muslim man and had a son. Her son is a conservative Muslim living in the UAE where his wife and daughter are required to wear hijab. Join me to talk with Deb on her very tumultuous life and what...

Dorothea grew up in the UK to a Pakistani family. Her independent spirit and determination was always a hinderance to her family and community around her. But yet, she persisted. Today Dorothea is able to let her authentic self shine in her life without restrictions. She uses her negative past experiences to inform her important work as as a healthy relationship and harmful traditional practices consultant. She has over a decades practice experience working with victims of domestic abus...

Nada, author of Gaslight Avenue: Based on a True Hummus Story, upset the town when she swam against the tide. Now this Palestinian-born Canadian writer and womanist is addicted to helping other women reckon with the same patriarchal world she escaped from to live their best lives with full bodily autonomy, free of religious toxicity, misogyny, and conformity.

Lina grew up a minority Christian in Cairo, Egypt. Frustrated with the sexist society around her, she moved to Canada in her 20s. Here she discovered that, in the name of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, people in the West fail to realize that within every cultural community, there are some unique minds and souls that think differently, and they deserve an equal opportunity to be heard and to express their views. In order to try and correct this egregious wrong, she published a book called "...

Ellaf came to America as a refugee from Iraq when she was just a baby. When she was 14 years old, she was sent back to Iraq to get married. After years of sexual, mental, and physical abuse, she found the courage to escape. Join me as we listen to Ellaf tell her story of not only surviving a child marriage but of thriving as a graduate student, an entrepreneur and the proud mother of three children who she saved from the generational trauma that repeated itself unhindered until it was met wit...

Jaleh is the author of 'Public Secrets of Islam'. She was born in Iran under this current Islamic regime. She has always been a fierce supporter of women and against the brutality of political Islam. Her public criticisms have meant that she can no longer return to her homeland. In 2015 she survived an attack by an ISIS supporter at a free speech event that she had organized. Jaleh will tell us all about growing up in Iran, the terrorist attack that she survived, we will talk about her book a...

In some ways Anya and I are total opposites and in other ways, we lived parallel lives. While I was tyrannized by a far right ideology, her experience was that of tyranny from the far left. Anya is from the Soviet Union. As everybody else there, she was heavily brainwashed into the communist ideology. While she didn't have to wear a hijab, there was plenty she was forced to do, think, and say - whether she liked it or not. She is of Jewish descent and, due to systemic antisemitism, her option...

Hanna was born and raised in America with two Moroccan immigrants as parents. Her morals developed through immersion in a society that treasures individual liberties and the simultaneous exposure to the pitfalls of collectivistic culture within Islamic societies. Today, as a gay ex-Muslim, Hanna is an adamant defender of human rights and, more specifically, freedom of speech. As a Critical Thinking Fellow at the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation, Hanna has hosted several events with prominent human ...

Leorah is native Sudanese but was born and raised in Saudi Arabia where, along with her brother, started to learn Quran and Islamic Studies as soon as she could speak. From there, their lives took very different paths- After enduring many years of abuse, as well as being buried under a niqab and being subjugated under Islamic laws, Leorah is now married to the man of her dreams. She is married to a Canadian Buddhist man who supports her in living the free life she was deprived of growin...

Samira is half Arab, half Danish, however growing up the cultural and religious values of her father were way stronger thank her Danish side. When she became a teenager, the conflict between her two cultures caused a lot of turmoil and confusion for many years. She eventually felt the only way to free herself from the dichotomy was to leave Islam. But the break was a painful one. Her family disowned her for her choice to liberate herself and she missed her dad and her siblings. After a tragic...

Iman escaped Saudi Arabia where she was treated like property in 2003. She graduated medical school and escaped to Canada where she now is witnessing the erosion of freedoms and is sounding the alarm through her podcast "One Godless Woman". For her unapologetic and fierce activism, she being sued by a Muslim Brotherhood entity in Canada. Iman will tell us all about her journey from muzzled Muslim girl covered head to toe in black living under Sharia to freethinking woman wearing whatever she ...

Aisha is my first cousin 🤍 Her dad was my favorite uncle. Aisha grew up in New Jersey with her mother and sister when her parents divorced. In college she met a man and fell in love, the only problem was- he was Jewish. Her mother disowned her when she decided to marry him. To protect her younger sister from being "tainted" by Aisha's influence, she took her and left for Egypt without even telling Aisha. After many years of trauma and healing, Aisha now works as a faith leader supporting othe...

Rabyaah grew up in Yemen before coming to the US at the age of six. She is the founder of Arab Women’s Voice and she co-founded the Yemeni American Coalition for Change to support grassroots movements in the Middle East during the Arab Spring. Rabyaah was also chosen as a national Bernie surrogate in the 2020 Presidential race. Rabyaah began to question the extremists in her community and the Islamists in US government around the Arab Spring. Her criticisms caused so much backlash, but it did...

Elizabeth was born in the UK to a British-Italian family and grew up as a (semi/non-practicing) Christian. Following her own spiritual journey alongside a cultural exploration of Arabic language and culture, she later converted to Islam in her early 20s. Having since left Orthodox Islam, she is an advocate for liberalism in Islam. An award-winning activist, passionate about protecting human rights, promoting peace, and strengthening intercultural and interfaith cohesion, Elizabeth's main inte...

Weam Namou was born in Baghdad, to an ancient lineage called the Chaldeans (Neo-Babylonians who still speak Aramaic), and came to the U.S. at age ten. She is an Eric Hoffer award winning author of 14 books, a two-time international award-winning documentary filmmaker, a poet, journalist, and the founder and president of Unique Voices in Films, a nonprofit organization. She is currently working on her first feature narrative film, Pomegranate [in post-production]. The script of Pomegranate was...

Nada grew up in Bahrain where she was forced into hijab as a young child, she struggled to live within the tiny framework that was afforded to her. And then one day, a picture on Facebook, where she proudly shared that she learned how to use chopsticks, blew up her whole life. Her family threatened to kill her and there was no looking back. Now, free from any familial demands, Nada lives in California working as a Medical Interpreter.

Dalal grew up in the US and Saudi Arabia and now lives in Ireland. At 18, she was forced into a marriage with a man she describes as having “more rights over my body than I did”. Dalal speaks openly and honestly about what it was like enduring years of abuse by her parents and what it took to leave her abusers and start anew. In the years since, she has grown mentally and physically (competing in powerlifting competitions!). She now lives in Ireland with her Belgian partner. Dalal’s personal ...

Though she was born and raised in Saudi, Meshair’s parents are from Somalia. She travelled for the first time when she was twenty-five years old and continued travelling ever since. Traveling the world made her mind and heart expand. It filled her with love and left no room for hate and regret. She is now married to the man of her dreams, François- a French Pastry Chef who fills her heart with love and their home with sweet smell of freshly baked cookies and lavish decorations of petit fours!

Wafa is a Tamazight Tunisian Ex-Muslim, holder of a Ph.D. degree in Linguistics from The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, and a university educator. She currently serves as the director of the Translations Project, a program of the Center for Inquiry and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. She is also a board member of Inara, the Tunisian Association of Irreligious and Free Thinkers. She is human rights and civil liberties activist, an advocate of the Ex-Mu...

Wasila grew up back and forth in between Yemen and Austria- experiencing culture shock over and over throughout. She lived in this confused state until she decided to drop everything and choose her own happiness! Wasila is now married to the love of her life, a German man, and they have two daughters together. She has a successful career in a university as an administrator for international students. She is also co-founder of www.healingoasiskids.com where she teaches children yoga acco...

Born in South Africa, Ayesha is a Cape Malay woman who grew up in Australia. Despite her Western upbringing, Ayesha's story features the familiar battle for independence and freedom that many women from Muslim backgrounds experience all over the world. In the process of finding herself, Ayesha faced many losses and hardships - including losing the love and acceptance of her family. Now living happily with her partner of 8 years, Ayesha has found a new family who accepts her unconditionally fo...

Raised in a traditional Omani home, Reem always found herself battling being true to herself or being aligned with her culture's traditions. The journey to being true to herself was not a easy one; from leaving her home country, to disentangling herself from a difficult divorce and being estranged from family, to finding strength in other like-minded women and meeting a partner who helped her spread her wings and fly. Reem is on her way to become a pediatric surgeon and is very passionate abo...

Born and raised in Saudi Arabia, she came to Canada, 24 years old and covered from head to toe. After an entire shift of her worldview, a TEDx Talk, backlash and death threats from her community and family members, Amal continues to live her life standing for her rights. Today, she supports others to reclaim their power from religious, societal, and political oppression through her organization I’m All Courage.

As her family slept, Saudi born Ghada quietly escaped from the house and eventually out of the patriarchal society she was born into. She had to lose everything in order to gain her freedom. Now, after seeking asylum in the US, she- along with her two black dogs- is about to start a new chapter of her life with her Texan groom Jim.

Somali refugee, orphan, and survivor of FGM, Sara is the most earnest US patriot you will ever meet. At 17, when she arrived in the US, she didn’t even know how to write her own name. Now, thanks to the support of her new great country, she not only learned how to read and write, she is an educator.

Raised Mennonite, Deb met a charismatic Muslim man who was lecturing and debating in a local university. She was swept off her feet and soon found herself the mother of four children and in a polygamous marriage with a member of the Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir. She is now embroiled in a custody battle to protect her children- including her openly LGBT teenager with a father who believes they are an abomination.

Though Aliya was raised in the US, at 17 she was forced to marry her 25 yr old cousin in Pakistan. Despite all odds being stacked against her, pregnant with her second child, she decided to fight for her freedom- and ultimately, freedom for her children. Her story is truly inspiring and motivating for every person stuck in an impossible situation who cannot see a way out. She is a testament to human resilience. Her example shows us all that anything worth having is worth fighting for an...