How Our Silence Empowers Radical Islam

Below is the full transcript of my conversation with Yasmine Mohammed. You can search, share, or read along as you listen.

[00:00:00] Valentina: Hi, mamacita. Welcome to episode 234 of the Mamas Con Ganas podcast. Today's episode is so important that I'm taking an extended moment to lay out the context before we dive into my profound conversation with my guest, Yasmine Mohammed, author of Unveiled How the West Empowers Radical Muslims. Why does this episode matter so much to me?

[00:00:27] Valentina: Well, my mission with this podcast has always been very clear, women's empowerment, women's rights, and fearless truth telling, even when it makes us uncomfortable. This episode embodies that mission. It's for women committed to shadow work who understand that healing comes through wrestling with uncomfortable realities.

[00:00:44] Valentina: It's also for heart led men who support the rise of the feminine in truth and freedom. So who is my guest? Yasmine Mohammed. And why does her story matter so much? Yasmine is a Canadian ex-Muslim educator, activist, and founder of Free Heart's, free [00:01:00] Minds. She escaped a force and brutal marriage to an alqaeda operative, endured horrific abuses, rooted in literal interpretations of the Quran, and later chose to speak out at age 13 after showing a trusted teacher bruises from abuse.

[00:01:15] Valentina: The case went to court, but the judge ruled that the physical violence was acceptable under her Arab culture, sending her back to her family. She was forced to wear the hijab, nine in later than a cob, and eventually was forced into marrying a member of Al-Qaeda. At 19 years old, that marriage was abusive and she fled with her daughter to protect her from female genital mutilation and ideological control.

[00:01:40] Valentina: Yasmine's memoir Unveiled is not just a personal story, it's a wake up call. She exposes how western liberal societies often unwittingly empower radical Islamist ideology. One of the most dangerous myths she dismantles is the idea that the hijab is a symbol of female empowerment. In [00:02:00] reality, for millions of women, the hijab is a symbol of control and forced obedience.

[00:02:05] Valentina: In countries like Iran, authorities use AI surveillance to track women driving without modesty garments so that they can be detained and imprisoned and tortured. And yet the west major brands proudly place their logos on hijabs and promote them as empowering. This is insulting and it's incoherent. It ignores the millions of women punished or even killed for simply choosing to show their hair.

[00:02:30] Valentina: According to Yasmine, calling the hijab empowering while women are brutalized for refusing to wear it isn't just misleading. It's dangerous propaganda. A message from my Latina audience. Many of us, especially my American and Latina sisters, haven't had exposure to the realities faced by women under radical Islamic systems.

[00:02:52] Valentina: So before you hear from Yasmine, here are four critical facts I want you to sit with as you listen. This is happening right now in different parts of the world, [00:03:00] and it's often ignored by mainstream narrative number one in Afghanistan today. Women are banned from singing or even reading aloud, sometimes even inside their own homes.

[00:03:13] Valentina: Think about that. Not in public, not online, in the privacy of their own homes, women are silenced. They're also banned from going to school past a certain age, entering parks or walking without a male escort. That is the level of control women live under in one of the world's most oppressive regimes.

[00:03:32] Valentina: Number two. In countries like Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, and others, a horrific practice known as female genital mutilation or FGM is still being carried out. This involves cutting or completely removing the clitoris, the part of the female body with the most nerve endings, specifically to prevent women from experiencing sexual pleasure.

[00:03:52] Valentina: In more extreme cases, the labia are cut and the vaginal opening is sewn shut, leaving only a tiny hole for urination and menstruation. [00:04:00] This is done without anesthesia, often on girls as young as five, using razors, knives, or even chards of glass. The results is lifelong trauma, chronic pain, infections, childbirth complications, and of course emotional devastation.

[00:04:15] Valentina: This is not culture, it's torture, and it must be called out as such. Number three, you might not be aware, but in the United Kingdom in recent decades, thousands of girls, many underage and from working class backgrounds have fallen victim to what are known as grooming gangs. These were organized groups of men, primarily of Pakistani Muslim background, who lured girls with F flat gifts or attention only to later rape and traffic them.

[00:04:43] Valentina: What's even more disturbing is how institutions responded. For years, authorities ignored or minimized the abuse. Some even blamed the girls because they were afraid of being seen as racist or Islamophobic. Imagine being violated and then dismissed by the very people [00:05:00] meant to protect you. Number four, in certain neighborhoods, in Western democracies like France, the UK and Canada and formal Sharia based rule has taken root.

[00:05:11] Valentina: This means instead of the country's legal system being upheld equally for all local religious leaders or councils enforce Islamic law, pressuring women and families to follow religious rules instead of national ones. This can include rules about how a woman must dress. Who she's allowed to marry, whether she can leave the home or even whether she can report domestic abuse and or rape.

[00:05:36] Valentina: In many cases, police avoid intervening altogether. It's important to mention that when religious authority replaces democratic law, women and children become invisible to the justice system. They are not protected equally, even though they live in countries that claim to value freedom and human rights.

[00:05:54] Valentina: And here's where Yasmine's story comes full circle. She wasn't denied [00:06:00] protection in an Islamic country. She was denied it in Canada, where a judge allowed her abuser to keep custody on the basis of cultural sensitivity. This is why upholding the separation of religion and state matters so deeply as Yasmine makes clear the danger isn't that the Quran is being misinterpreted, it's that when its obstructions are followed, literally, they often justify oppression, abuse, and control.

[00:06:28] Valentina: And yet too often in the West, we excuse these outcomes as the result of cultural differences or religious misunderstanding. That kind of moral confusion is what allows Sharia inspired ideologies to take root in places where freedom is supposed to be guaranteed. Unfortunately, Yasmine's story is not an isolated case.

[00:06:50] Valentina: It's part of a much larger pattern of systemic oppression that's allowed to persist even within Western democracies that claim to protect women's rights. [00:07:00] And we cannot talk about women's empowerment in the West while turning a blind eye to the abuse of women in these environments, especially when it happens within our own borders.

[00:07:11] Valentina: I wanna make it clear this episode is not about disparaging Muslims. It's about honoring women's sovereignty. Yasmine invites us to ask, how can Western feminism celebrate female rights while simultaneously promoting ideologies that deny them? Why share this episode? Now we're living in a time when speaking the truth, especially an uncomfortable one can get you canceled, labeled, or silenced.

[00:07:41] Valentina: We've become so afraid of offending others that many of us have stopped asking critical questions altogether. But when it comes to human rights, staying silent outta fear is not compassion. It is complicity. Yasmine brings attention to this exact issue. She points out that the western world [00:08:00] has built a double standard.

[00:08:02] Valentina: We have no problem openly criticizing Christianity, Judaism, or even secular systems, but when it comes to Islam, many of us walk on eggshells. She puts it bluntly. The Muslim world has been shielded from criticism for so long. How will progress ever happen if criticism is considered bigotry? This is where language becomes dangerous.

[00:08:26] Valentina: Take the word Islamophobia for example. It sounds like it's protecting Muslim individuals from discrimination, which is important, but in practice it's often used to shut down criticism and protect Islamic ideologies. Even those that are violently anti-woman, Yasmine's own case in Canada is proof of this.

[00:08:51] Valentina: When she showed evidence of abuse, a judge refused to intervene because quote, that's how things are in her culture. [00:09:00] That is what happens when cultural sensitivity overrides justice. I grew up between Venezuela, the US, and France. During my time in France, I saw firsthand how young Muslim girls in France struggled with strict gender roles and cultural restrictions, even while living in a progressive and secular society.

[00:09:23] Valentina: And while it's true that not all Muslim households are extreme, we can't ignore what's happening when immigrant communities bring with them beliefs that clash with the basic rights and freedoms that women are guaranteed in democratic countries. When those beliefs take root without challenge or integration, women in the west, especially those born into these communities, can lose the very protections our societies are built on.

[00:09:51] Valentina: For our democracies to truly thrive, there must be a shared commitment to core values like gender equality, personal freedom, and [00:10:00] upholding the separation of religion and state. That's why I stand with Yasmine, not just because I believe in women's rights, but because staying silent when those rights are being stripped away, even here in the west is not an option.

[00:10:14] Valentina: I hope you enjoy this episode, but more than that, I hope it touches your heartstrings and inspires you to read Yasmine's book unveiled, and that you help spread her message with others. This conversation is my way of building that bridge that she writes about in her book, Yasmine says, if only women were willing to link hands across borders, patriarchy would not stand a chance.

[00:10:39] Valentina: Patriarchy cannot exist without the active participation of women. This episode is dedicated to my Muslim and ex-Muslim sisters worldwide. Your voice is powerful, even if the world tries to muffle it. So now Mamasita, take a deep breath, prepare to witness a story of true [00:11:00] courage and lean into the discomfort.

[00:11:02] Valentina: Yasmine Mohammed is here to unveil truths. Let's rise together. Now here's my conversation with Yasmine Mohammed. On this episode of the Mamas Conez Podcast. I am interviewing Yam Mohamed, author and human rights activist. Welcome to the podcast, Yasmine.

[00:11:24] Yasmine: Thank you so much, Valentina. I really appreciate the invitation.

[00:11:27] Yasmine: I'm honored to be here.

[00:11:29] Valentina: I told you before the interview that I am beyond honored to have you, and that there's no one else that I could have sitting in front of me that I'd be happier to have than you. Honestly, your story is so moving. Your actions are so courageously aligned. I think you are a light and a north star for women.

[00:11:52] Valentina: I think this is probably the most important episode I have ever done, honestly.[00:12:00]

[00:12:01] Yasmine: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. You're way too kind, but I love it. I need it. I get enough hate that I will absolutely take all of this love that you're giving me and straight to my heart and let it just like fill me. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:12:18] Valentina: I will also, I don't think I have ever been so nervous to do an interview ever in my life.

[00:12:25] Valentina: I've never been so nervous. I, um, I couldn't sleep last night. I, I've been writing, I have, if I show you Yasmin, I have like

[00:12:35] Yasmine: mm-hmm.

[00:12:36] Valentina: Notes and notes and notes. I couldn't stop, I couldn't stop writing while I was reading. Um, or rather listening to your book. 'cause I actually listened to it on Audible, but I kept mm-hmm.

[00:12:48] Valentina: Pause writing notes, rewinding. I mean, I cried. Yeah. So many times when I was. Listening to your story, I [00:13:00] squealed. And, um,

[00:13:05] Valentina: when you would say something, some of the things you say are so powerful that I had to scream, literally scream and yell out. Like scream like, oh my gosh, this woman is like speaking truth with a capital T. And I would just like let out this scream. Um, it's just, first of all, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna tell my audience how I got to, to your story.

[00:13:36] Valentina: I listened to, uh, a podcast, uh, by Sam Harris called Making Sense. Um, it's interesting because. Sam Harris is not normally the type of person that I listen to for podcasts. Usually. I, I listen to more like spiritual podcasts or self-improvement podcasts. I mean, that's why my platform is, uh, self-improvement.[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] Valentina: But I've very drawn to him because he analyzes things from a very intellectual level, very, um, objective, rational level. And it's interesting because I live in a world where I feel like I love going back and forth between being very rational with my head, right? And just analyzing things from a very objective standpoint.

[00:14:27] Valentina: I think my mom and dad taught me that very well. But then I also go to, to another, um, part of my, myself and my body, which is my heart. So I, I tend to listen to a lot of spirituality and. Self-improvement things, right. Things to like make me a better. Mm-hmm. And when I heard your story on the Sam Harris podcast, I, I couldn't stop thinking about you.

[00:14:56] Valentina: I couldn't stop thinking about you. I couldn't stop praying for you. Like, it just [00:15:00] became sort of like this, a little bit of a, of, of a, of just like, I couldn't believe that somebody like you existed. I mean, I knew women like you existed, but I was just waiting for the, the one example that I could like, hold up as to like, look at this woman.

[00:15:16] Yasmine: Mm-hmm. Um,

[00:15:18] Valentina: I immediately looked you up on, like, looked at your, your website and you had, uh, this, um, how would I say it? Like, um, I think it was like a preview, a video where you talk about your story about, um, facing the Canadian loss. Mm-hmm. When you were 13 years old and you had the courage to speak about your extreme abuse, physical, although you were also abused mentally, spiritually, I mean in every single capacity, but [00:16:00] specifically your physical abuse should have been enough for you as a woman living in the west right.

[00:16:09] Valentina: In Canada, for you to have been protected by the system, by a system that always prides itself on protecting women, right? By a system that's always prides itself on being a, a sort of pedestal for women's rights country, right? And then when I'm listening to your story and I find out that the only reason that you weren't protected was because they deemed you unprotectable.

[00:16:40] Valentina: Because of the fact that you were, that, that it was part of your culture.

[00:16:48] Valentina: That was such a shock. I couldn't believe it. I said, how is it possible that a girl at 13 who has the [00:17:00] bravery to speak up, to speak up about the people that she's the most scared about? I get chills all over my body just thinking about you. And that thir that 13-year-old self on the stand. And I say she wasn't protected.

[00:17:19] Valentina: This is not, this is not okay. And we'll get to that. But, um, because I have so many, so many, so many questions, but that's how I became your biggest fan. And, um. When I wrote to you on Instagram asking you, 'cause I started following you on Instagram and I started seeing everything that you were, everything that you were sharing, your post.

[00:17:48] Valentina: You have to follow Mamasita, you have to follow Yasmin on Instagram, all the things that you're doing. And I would just daily see your posts. And daily, I was just like [00:18:00] daily sending out like this woman is just like the epitome of courage, courage, courage. I just see courage. Like this woman is just like, oh, and I, and I reached out to you and I said, would you consider being on my podcast when you said yes?

[00:18:15] Valentina: Honestly? I was like, there's no way. So again, that's why I'm so honored to have you here, and I know that anybody who takes their time, opens their heart and follows you and starts seeing the work that you're doing will feel exactly the same way that I feel about you.

[00:18:36] Yasmine: Yeah, no, it's my absolute honor. I always try to support women as much as I possibly can.

[00:18:44] Yasmine: And you know, as soon as I saw the name of your podcast, I was like, oh, I wanna be a part of this. You know, like, this is, these are definitely my women. Um, you know, there's so much about you, what you were describing about Sam Harris, how he, you were describing yourself [00:19:00] actually, where you were saying you go from being like super rational, intellectual, but then also spiritual.

[00:19:04] Yasmine: That is exactly Sam Harris as well. And I got to know him because of his rational intellectual side too. But then when I started going through, you know, I had a breakdown. I had like severe agoraphobia, I was suicidal. It was really horrible. Sam and his, you know. Walking me through meditation and teaching me so much about my body and my mind.

[00:19:31] Yasmine: And he really is an incredibly spiritual person too, and he is all about healing. And he was the person who, you know, he healed me on both intellectual and emotional level. You know, he's, he's been an incredible person in my life, like just a, an absolute angel. Um, you spoke about when I was 13 years old and when I went to the government, um, to talk to 'em about the abuse that was happening in [00:20:00] my home.

[00:20:00] Yasmine: Another angel in my life was Mr. Fau, who wrote the, the forward to my book. So he's the teacher who approached me when I was, um, clearly depressed and, you know, asked me what was going on. And he's the one who kind of got the ball rolling for me. And like you mentioned this. Toxic cultural relativism that we have in Canada and beyond Canada.

[00:20:23] Yasmine: Actually it's throughout North America and Europe. You can see it, um, this idea of like, well, it's their culture and it's their religion and they're okay like that. They're, they're fine with it. And I had never imagined that I would be so discarded and so dismissed and so diminished to that extent. 'cause as a child, as you described, like these are the people that are physically torturing me, emotionally torturing me, psychologically torturing me, you know, [00:21:00] sexual assault as well.

[00:21:01] Yasmine: And I'm able to. Speak up and speak up against them. It's as a child, you know? And then to have your government basically slam the door in your face and say, ah, you're the wrong skin color, or you're the wrong ethnicity, or you're the wrong religion, or you're the wrong culture, or whatever. So, you know, you have to just endure.

[00:21:23] Yasmine: That has been a pain that I've carried with me that, um, was, I didn't even realize how, how deeply that hurt me. And it, and it stayed with me. And growing up as a Muslim, you really, you the, it is a very strong us and them mentality. So there's like the good Muslims and then the bad non-Muslims. And the idea is that they're at war.

[00:21:45] Yasmine: We're always at war with each other. And the non-Muslims hate you and the non-Muslims want you dead. Right. It's projection. But when this happened to me, I believed them. I was like, okay, so it's true. This judge really does hate me. The Canadian [00:22:00] government hates me. You know, family services hates me. Child services hates me.

[00:22:04] Yasmine: Nobody wanted to protect me because they were like, we don't care about you, you don't matter. And that's why it was such a big deal for me when I watched a Ted Talk with Sam Harris in 2004. It was a long time ago where he did this Ted talk and he talked about girls in Afghanistan being covered in burkas and how we have the audacity to pretend that we don't know anything about the human spirit and that we say stupid things like, oh, it's their culture.

[00:22:41] Yasmine: And he compared that to like girls who are part of the Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints. Um, you know, the, the sort of the. The polygamy that was going on there, the pedophilia that was going on there with all these young girls, we didn't turn a blind eye and say, ah, it's their culture, [00:23:00] ah, it's their religion.

[00:23:01] Yasmine: Uh, it's, they're fine with it. It's, we protected those girls. Right? But when it comes to girls in some other geographic location, suddenly we act as if they're not human beings. Like suddenly we're like, they are of a different species and they're okay with it. Um, and when he was telling this story or when he was telling his Ted talk and making that comparison, um, he kind of got choked up and he, he, he got a tear in his eye and it had a lot to do with the fact that his daughter had just taken her first steps that day.

[00:23:40] Yasmine: And so when he was talking about this, he was thinking about his own daughter and, um, how devastating it would be. For all these girls to have been born in Afghanistan and thinking about how much he loves his daughter and how sad it would be if people were to turn a blind eye, if she were living in that [00:24:00] kind of an environment and say, ah, it's her culture.

[00:24:02] Yasmine: You know? And that was the first time since I was 13 years old that I had ever sort of allowed that pain to come out because the pain had nowhere to go. Like, what's the point? What's the point of being angry? There's, there's no sense. I have to move forward. I have to get my degrees, I have to get a job, I have to protect my daughter.

[00:24:28] Yasmine: I have to this, I have to that. And so you're just like in survival mode and you don't have time to sit there and like be sad about things that happened, you know, when you were a child. But he allowed me to sort of see that I matter for the first time and that these girls matter and that. Why are we being treated so differently?

[00:24:49] Yasmine: Like, I understand that we're treated differently in the Islamic context because they truly do see us as subhuman. Nothings right? Like you can see that now, especially speaking of [00:25:00] Afghanistan, all of these rules, um, that women have, they can't leave the house, they can't work, that girls can't go to school, they can't speak.

[00:25:09] Yasmine: Their voices are forbidden. They can't have windows in their houses lest somebody see them, like all of this, the barbaric, draconian control that they have over women, like I'm used to that over there. I'm, I understand that. You know what I mean? Girls can't ride bikes, girls can't swim, girls can't sing.

[00:25:27] Yasmine: Girl, everything is forbidden for girls. But when we're here in the west, you don't expect that. You expect that people here are gonna treat us like valuable human beings. Like we matter just like everybody else, right? But there was still that two-tiered system. It was like, well, you're not the right kind of girl.

[00:25:50] Yasmine: You know, you're a girl from that culture, or you're a girl from that religion, so you're not gonna be protected. You don't matter as much. And [00:26:00] um, yeah, that's, that's been a huge part of my,

[00:26:06] Yasmine: you know, my healing has been overcoming that, that situation.

[00:26:13] Valentina: It's a hypocrisy really. Um, I see it, it's, it's, but it, it's also marred with a lot of fear, I think. I think that's why we're pushed into fearing speaking out loud, uh, because it's so hypocritical. It's like saying that, for example, I, I, I guess in like in the Catholic church, it's like we can't, it's as if we were, we had to stay silent about the kids who were abused, sexually abused by priests.

[00:26:43] Valentina: Then say that, well, no, because that's cultural. That's, it's insane. It's basically insanity.

[00:26:52] Yasmine: Mm-hmm. To,

[00:26:53] Valentina: to make a defense and say, okay, well that, that belongs to them, you know, and we're able to [00:27:00] fight women's rights and here, and talk about how important it is to overcome the patriarchy. But then at the same time, not being able to speak up for our sisters in countries where they're really silenced.

[00:27:19] Valentina: And, and I wanna talk about the symbol of the burka, right. And the hijab, because

[00:27:23] Yasmine: mm-hmm.

[00:27:27] Valentina: It's very interesting. When I was reading your book, I think this is why one of the moments that I squealed and I screamed is when you said how, you know, we speak about. Women's rights in the, in the western world, but we put, we can put like the hijab on a Nike commercial and make it represent like, I don't know, something Correct.

[00:27:58] Valentina: Or like celebrate a hijab when it,

[00:27:59] Yasmine: [00:28:00] feminism empowerment,

[00:28:02] Valentina: a feminism and yeah. I remember in 2016, this was my first time, I, I actually have to say I got, mm-hmm. I got scared when I, you remember the female protests all over the world when, when Trump was elected?

[00:28:16] Yasmine: Yes, I do.

[00:28:17] Valentina: I remember being at one of the protests and being so angry that there were women holding up pictures of women wearing hijabs or wearing the, the, the, the, yeah.

[00:28:32] Valentina: The hijab. Yep. It infuriated me because I knew. That that was a sign of female oppression and how dare they be so stupid to use that as a sign of female empowerment. Like, I remember my stomach getting all in knots. And I, I remember thinking, I remember telling my husband, I remember telling everybody that [00:29:00] I knew around me, but I was like, how can people not see this?

[00:29:02] Valentina: How can they be so blind? And then, and, and, and you know what, Yasmine, it's more and more like now it's like you go on American Airlines and you sit watching a, a commercial about the credit card. They wanna sell you on the airplane. And you see a woman wearing a hijab, wearing a hijab surfing. And I'm like, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life.

[00:29:28] Valentina: I'm like, when would you ever see a woman wearing a hijab surfing? Are you freaking. Yeah. I'm like,

[00:29:34] Yasmine: don't

[00:29:35] Valentina: pass this. How can we have gotten so stupid? Mm-hmm.

[00:29:41] Yasmine: How numb, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's, oh, I hear you. Yeah. I'm, while there are women currently rotting in prison, while there have women that have been killed, that have gotten their, their faces maimed with acid being thrown in their faces where there's women that [00:30:00] have been raped to death, you know, women that have been beaten to death, women who have been, you know, decapitated over the hijab, you know, fathers and, and, and brothers killing their sisters and their daughters over hijab.

[00:30:15] Yasmine: That's currently happening. That's happening not just in Iran and in Pakistan and Iraq and Libya. It's happening in America. It's happening in Canada. It's happening in France. It's happening in Italy. It's happening in the uk. And we're gonna pretend that this is some symbol of female empowerment. Like we're not even talking about history, we're talking about right now.

[00:30:38] Yasmine: Right now the women of Iran are out there in the streets burning their hijabs and fighting against the morality police that are imprisoning them if they're not wearing their hijabs properly or beating them to death for not wearing their hijabs properly. This is a fight that we are currently fighting.

[00:30:55] Yasmine: The betrayal. The betrayal. Valentina, I cannot tell [00:31:00] you that feeling you were describing of like your, your stomach. Like I felt all of that. I was so angry. I was so shocked, and I was so amazed that women could be fooled to this extent because how could you, you know better when it comes to. You know, Baptist women being forced to dress a certain way, or Mormon women being forced to dress a certain way or, or even you just saying like, free the nipple or whatever, you know what I mean?

[00:31:33] Yasmine: Like, it doesn't even have to be from religion. Like women understand modesty culture. They understand purity culture, they understand rape culture. You know, these, these women are saying that they're all feminists that are lining the streets in 2016. So how could you not be able to get this most basic concept?

[00:31:52] Yasmine: It's impossible that you don't get it. You, you get it. You know, you know when you're holding that poster of a [00:32:00] woman with a hijab on, like, you have to know that, that, that women, you, you had to have heard of Malala use of Zai being shot in the head because she wanted to go to school. You know, you, you have to know that these women are.

[00:32:15] Yasmine: Being murdered and forced into hijab all over the world. You have to know this. Like, how can you pretend suddenly and just like act as if it is the exact opposite of what it truly is. It is a tool of misogyny that is used to control women. And you're taking this and you're contorting it, and you're perverting it and you're pretending that it's a tool of, of a symbol, of mis of, of empowerment and feminism.

[00:32:46] Yasmine: Like, I don't even, I don't even know what to say. Like, I felt so betrayed because I felt like there's no way that you don't know, you're not that stupid. You know, there, there this has to be [00:33:00] on purpose 'cause you just don't care.

[00:33:04] Valentina: How

[00:33:04] Yasmine: does, how

[00:33:05] Valentina: does this, how did we get to the point? How did we get to the point where.

[00:33:12] Valentina: Feminism doesn't really, how, how do I say, it doesn't even protect women in a way. Like how did we get to the point where we're so scared

[00:33:26] Yasmine: mm-hmm. To speak

[00:33:26] Valentina: the truth?

[00:33:28] Yasmine: You know, part of the, and you touched on it before. Yeah. Like,

[00:33:32] Valentina: because we're, you know, we're, we're scared. Listen, this, I'm the most excited to do this episode, but I'll be honest with you a hundred percent.

[00:33:40] Valentina: It's also the episode that scares me the most. Mm-hmm. Because for the first time in my life, I'm saying something that's so that it shouldn't be controversial. It should not be controversial, but it, I don't know why they always make it so controversial.

[00:33:59] Yasmine: [00:34:00] Please. Why?

[00:34:01] Valentina: Why? Like, it's like, we're not allowed to say that there's antisemitism going on.

[00:34:06] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:08] Valentina: I have Jewish friends, I see that there's antisemitism going on. All you have to do is open your eyes. And like you said in the book, all you have to do, there's no, there's no excuse for ignorance in this world anymore.

[00:34:20] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:21] Valentina: With all the information that we have.

[00:34:23] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:25] Valentina: You know, people can't say anything bad about any, anything regarding Islam because it's considered Islamophobic.

[00:34:32] Valentina: Are, are you serious? So I can't talk about Yeah. Anything bad about Christianity or the Catholic church because it would be considered Christian phobic or whatever. Come on.

[00:34:44] Yasmine: Yeah.

[00:34:44] Valentina: It doesn't

[00:34:44] Yasmine: make it, yeah.

[00:34:46] Valentina: You know, we need to collective, we need to wake up, like wake up with our eyes open, see past the veil.

[00:34:57] Yasmine: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:34:58] Valentina: And it's interesting [00:35:00] because Yasmine's book is called Unveiled, but it's mm-hmm. Not just. Unveiling and the taking off, in my opinion, of a garment that we need to do in society. It's, it's beyond that. The more spiritual unveiling that we need to do is wake up as a society and see things for how they really are, and then stand up for our brothers and sisters no matter what ethnic, racial, you know, country they come from.

[00:35:34] Valentina: When something is right, it's right. And when we defend something, somebody for, you know, we have to defend somebody 'cause they're being abused. Not say to ourselves, wait a minute, okay, before we defend this person that's being abused, what culture are they from? What race are they? Yeah. Are they, what language do they speak?

[00:35:52] Valentina: No. See them for the human being that they are and then defend them. [00:36:00] That's real human rights.

[00:36:04] Yasmine: Beautiful. Beautifully said. Perfect. Exactly. Thank you. Um, I'm, I'm try, that's the message of my whole book is I'm just really trying to get people to see that we are all human beings and that we are all deserving of dignity and human rights, and we, we all have value. But, you know, you touched on it before Valentina, when you talked about the fear, right?

[00:36:33] Yasmine: Um, and then you also talked about this world, uh, this word is Islamophobia. And I'm gonna give you a little bit of a history lesson here. But, um, basically this fear of speaking up against Islam, of criticizing Islam has been, you know, the bludgeon, the tool that's used to control people is this word Islamophobia.

[00:36:58] Yasmine: So Islamaphobes and, you know, [00:37:00] all of the. Different variations of that word. That word was created by Islamists. So Islamists are political Muslims. So think of like Islamic regime of Iran. Think of the Islamic regime of Afghanistan, Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah, you know, these are Islam, Al-Qaeda, isis, right? So these are people who believe that there should be a global caliphate and everybody should be Muslim and they work in tandem.

[00:37:29] Yasmine: Obviously there's, they are terrorists as well. And there's violence in there as well. And terrorism is very successful. It works, right? If you wanna, um, keep people silent, then you. You know, run a truck through a, a Christmas parade or a, or a Christmas market or at an Ariana Grande concert, you know, drop a bomb there or stab people randomly on the London Bridge.

[00:37:54] Yasmine: Like this will keep people in line. This will scare people from speaking up [00:38:00] against you because they're afraid of you because you are violent. And they created this word, those people created this word, Islamophobia, as a means to silence people. So it's a nonviolent means of silencing people, of controlling people from criticizing Islam.

[00:38:23] Yasmine: So you gotta remember that in a Muslim majority country, you can be imprisoned, executed for criticizing the religion for even the most minor things. They can't do that in the West, they can't do that in Europe. They can't do that in America. So how will they silence people? How will they control people?

[00:38:42] Yasmine: You know, America, you've got free speech. How are they gonna make people give up their own rights to free speech and free expression? Well, it's through using this word Islamophobia and getting useful idiots to propagate the word and to use the word to [00:39:00] control other people. So they're very smart and they made it sound similar to homophobia, xenophobia.

[00:39:08] Yasmine: The idea was that it would sound similar to these progressive, positive, good words, you know? And so then they thought, well then it will encourage people to think, well, it's a good thing to use this word. It's a good thing to silence people from criticizing Islam.

[00:39:27] Valentina: Yeah. And it's been, and

[00:39:28] Yasmine: that's what ended up

[00:39:28] Valentina: happening.

[00:39:29] Valentina: It's been so well done too, like oh, so insidious that even, even the community, like some people in the LGBT community will, you know, will be defending things that are unef defendable. Yeah. You know, when they hear it, they're like, oh, they're doing the same thing they did to us. And the interesting thing when you, when you talked about when, in, at the end of your, of your book when you were saying how [00:40:00] ex-Muslims have a lot in common or feel a lot of comradery with the L-G-B-T-Q community because mm-hmm.

[00:40:09] Valentina: You feel like you're all, you're all feeling like you're living in a closet that you have to come out of and it's very scary to do so.

[00:40:16] Yasmine: And we could be killed. Both sets, both groups of people could be killed for. For their beliefs or for who they are.

[00:40:23] Valentina: And so to have these people that would be killed in, in, in Islamic countries, right.

[00:40:28] Valentina: Countries run by Sharia law. I know I'm pronouncing that word wrong.

[00:40:32] Yasmine: No, that was perfect. Yeah.

[00:40:35] Valentina: Those people that would be killed under Islamic Sharia law defend. Yeah. What's defendable is is when you realize just how well it's actually worked, the lie. Right.

[00:40:52] Yasmine: Oh. Such, such powerful and such effective propaganda.

[00:40:57] Yasmine: Absolutely.

[00:40:58] Valentina: This is what we need to wake up from deffinitely. [00:41:00] Definitely. You know, it's interesting. It reminds me Yasmine, of how good also the, uh, the propaganda has been in, in Latin American countries with regards to Yeah. Word socialism when behind. Yeah. Socialism. They're not talking about the socialism that that exists in, in, in Europe when people in Latin America, you know, postulating to become president through democratic means, talk about socialism.

[00:41:34] Valentina: People who come from Cuba and Venezuela, oh, we know very well that they don't mean socialism in a good way. They mean dictatorship and they mean communism.

[00:41:47] Yasmine: Mm-hmm. Yep. Soviets and Arabs have that very similar propaganda to what you're describing there. Like it's just an incredibly [00:42:00] um. Well-oiled machinery.

[00:42:03] Yasmine: Big, huge monstrous. And I have to tell you, social media has not helped, you know, social media has made it so much easier for them to propagate their, um, their bullshit basically. And in little bite-sized memes, little videos and um, you know, little tiktoks or whatever. And it just, it's like polluting people's minds, possessing people's minds.

[00:42:36] Valentina: And social media has also censored a lot of people actually speaking the truth.

[00:42:41] Yasmine: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:42:43] Valentina: So that's, you know, they get canceled and then people get scared. They don't wanna be canceled, so they stop talking. But that's exactly what you said. They know you got it. The tactics to silence people in countries where we actually have a voice.

[00:42:57] Valentina: And that's why I feel so strongly about. [00:43:00] Opening our eyes and, and then speaking the truth and, and passing that forward.

[00:43:04] Yasmine: I was just gonna say that it got to the point of the, the rape gangs that have been going on in the UK for so many years, um, thousands of girls over decades, over so many different cities, all across the UK were involved in these rape gangs, essentially by Pakistani Muslim men.

[00:43:25] Yasmine: And if there were any politicians or police or journalists or, you know, social services or anybody tried to help these girls and tried to say, Hey, there's these rape gangs that are basically kidnapping our daughters and drugging them and sadistically raping them like 20 men in a day. These women are being locked up in homes and, and tied up in rooms.

[00:43:54] Yasmine: These girls, sorry, not, not, not women. And it's the people that were the [00:44:00] whistleblowers, the people who tried to protect these girls. They were the ones who were demonized. They were the ones who were told, oh, you're being racist and Islamophobic for saying this. And they were the ones who were being canceled.

[00:44:14] Yasmine: And there's been a few documentaries out about it. Like all of the truth is now coming out, of course, all these years later. And some of these girls, the survivors, some of the survivors have been courageous enough to speak up and tell their stories, and it's absolutely atrocious. And it all stems from what you just described there, which is this fear of speaking the truth and.

[00:44:39] Yasmine: The reason why people had so much fear over speaking the truth was because people truly were being canceled. They were losing their jobs, they were losing their reputations, right? People were calling them conspiracy theorists and islamaphobes and bigots and racists. And so we were so concerned [00:45:00] about, you know, race relations or, or protecting these Pakistani Muslim rapists that we left our daughters, our sisters, you know, all of these girls to continually be raped for years.

[00:45:17] Yasmine: And it was like they were alter, they were, they were sacrificed at the altar of Islamophobia.

[00:45:28] Valentina: That's un just unfathomable, honestly. Um, you know what, the other thing, one of the other things that comes to mind is like. People didn't speak out about the atrocities that happened to the Jewish women on October 7th.

[00:45:47] Valentina: Exactly. Mm-hmm. When, you know, the rapes, the, the most horrific rapes. I mean, I remember reading about it and I felt like throwing up. I literally [00:46:00] couldn't eat that morning. I just felt, I felt so nauseous and I was like, and then I thought to myself, the next thought is like, everybody's gonna be talking about this on social media.

[00:46:11] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:12] Valentina: Everybody's gonna be talking about this on social media. It's gonna be like, you know, more than like, even like the Holocaust. Everyone will be talking about what happened to these Jewish women and silent

[00:46:27] Yasmine: denied it.

[00:46:28] Valentina: Like it's, and like you said, denial. And, and, and, and, and I, you know, and, and I was, I was listening to podcasts where these women were saying like, where are our sisters?

[00:46:41] Valentina: Where are our sisters when we need them to speak up for us? And, and one of the things also that, like the last chapter, I think it's the one that was titled Hope, where you talk about how the reality is that [00:47:00] western women are looking for a fight. Mm-hmm. Meaning they're ready to like, stand up with all arms and talk about, you know, trying to really eradicate, you know, the patriarchy in the sense that they're trying, they, they really want this a new world to come.

[00:47:22] Valentina: Right. The world that Susan B. Anthony dreamt of mm-hmm. A world where we'd finally be considered equal women to men. So the Western women, let's get ready for the fight. And then there's these women in the east just praying and hoping and needing fighters to be alongside them, people to speak up for them.

[00:47:47] Valentina: And it would be like a match. You said it what? A match made in sisterhood, heaven, or something like that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And how all we have to do is just reach out [00:48:00] and see them and not ignore

[00:48:03] Yasmine: them. Yeah. Yeah. And if only it was just ignoring them because it's more than more than ignoring them. It's, it's actively silencing them too.

[00:48:19] Yasmine: And it, and it's exactly because they have the wrong oppressors. So whether it's Muslim women in the Muslim world, or whether it's. Jewish women in Israel, or whether it's British girls all across the uk, they all have the wrong oppressor. They have the wrong perpetrator. That's the key. So all women, regardless, Hindu girls in Pakistan, Christian girls in Nigeria, doesn't matter.

[00:48:54] Yasmine: Nobody's gonna talk about any of these women or any of these girls. None of them are gonna be protected. [00:49:00] So it's not just against Muslim girls, it's against any kind of girl from anywhere in the world. If her oppressor is a Muslim man, then she, as the victim, becomes ignored, becomes silenced, and all of the effort goes into deflecting and protecting her abuser, her perpetrator, her rapist.

[00:49:28] Yasmine: Her oppressor.

[00:49:31] Valentina: That's incredible how the victimhood thing gets thrown around, where the victim being ends up become being seen as the bad one and the oppressor mm-hmm. Gets to wear this badge of victimhood on his shirt.

[00:49:52] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:54] Valentina: It's such good manipulation

[00:49:58] Yasmine: mm-hmm.

[00:49:59] Valentina: To wake up. [00:50:00] Absolutely. You know, it says, I, I love what you said also about how patriarchy can not exist.

[00:50:09] Yasmine: Yep.

[00:50:09] Valentina: About the cooperation of women.

[00:50:12] Yasmine: Absolutely.

[00:50:13] Valentina: That this line that just broke my heart to the core, you said it's men prefer women to be cut, meaning. Being generally mutilated, but it is a woman who holds down her daughter for another woman to cut off her clitoris.

[00:50:37] Yasmine: Yeah. And I, I mean, absolutely true. And that can just be extrapolated over and over and over and over again. I mean, we all saw Shanny Luke on the back of that truck tangled up. We saw her [00:51:00] body mutilated. We know what happened to her. You know, that was, that was like a nine 11 for so many of us. Just seeing that image was just like, uh, we, we know the moment and like our lives changed after seeing that and people.

[00:51:24] Yasmine: Have some moral confusion over who is the victim and who is the oppressor in this scenario. And going back to what you said about women, the United Nations women UN women, how long did it take UN women to speak up and to condemn all of these women and girls who have been raped on October 7th and [00:52:00] beyond?

[00:52:01] Yasmine: All of these girls that have been taken as hostages and continually raped, and now all of the truth of the most atrocious things are coming out like rape is like just the tip of the iceberg, you know? It took them, they're un women. Like where else? How much further up can you go expecting support of women?

[00:52:27] Yasmine: And they couldn't bring themselves to even condemn terrorists for sexually assaulting innocent women out of music, music festival. It took them almost a year to finally be able to get the words out of their throat. That's what women do to each other. You know, if we stood up for each other and if we, if, if our sisterhood was real and if our bond was, was [00:53:00] pure, these men would have no, not a snowballs chance in hell.

[00:53:05] Yasmine: They would not be able to control us without our active participation. And unfortunately, there are so many women that just feel like. They want the power that comes with supporting the patriarchy and supporting the demonization and the persecution of their sisters.

[00:53:30] Valentina: Yeah. You know, if anybody's listening to this and doesn't really understand, because it might, you know, you know, I know that most of my listeners are Latinas, so you might be very not like at all, um, familiar, um, with any of these countries that are run, uh, that are, you know, that have that, that are Muslim majority.

[00:53:57] Valentina: And so I invite you to listen [00:54:00] to her book and to read her book Unveiled to Yasmine's book because it is so crystal clear when you read her book, how women If, if Women didn't. Support the patriarchy. It would not exist. It simply wouldn't exist. And I, and I wanna say something, Yasmine, because I've read and heard many stories of, let's say, mothers that are less than ideal or even like evil mothers.

[00:54:37] Valentina: But I think

[00:54:41] Valentina: just listening to your story, I, I just couldn't, it never ceased to amaze me how your mother always tended to like level it up. Like, just like what? Just when you thought she couldn't do anything worse to you, [00:55:00] she did. Just when you thought, listening to your book that she couldn't say anything more hurtful to her daughter, she says something that's even worse.

[00:55:15] Valentina: I wanna ask you how, because this is like one of the questions that was burning like in my heart that I wanted to ask you throughout the entire book. I think it was like the question that just kept popping up over and over and over. It's like, how did you turn out different? Like, how did you not swallow the poison and then eject poison out?

[00:55:43] Valentina: Because it's, it's so easy. And listening to what you heard, I mean, your mom knew that you were molested. She saw you being beaten to the pulp at one point. You know, you're hanging upside down after being Oh my, and you describe yourself being like a, [00:56:00] like a dead lamb upside down, tied, and how, for a moment they thought you were dead and instead of your mom screaming about maybe you being dead, how she was more concerned about like what she was gonna do now with.

[00:56:12] Valentina: It's so horrific. And, and how did you stay, like, good. How did you steal time after time? I think that's what, honestly, when I, when I went to bed last night, I said to myself, this is like, to me, when I was growing up listening to like, stories of saints and like, things that they would go through and like the martyrs like in, in my, in where I grew up, right?

[00:56:43] Valentina: Like in Catholicism and the things that they would go through and still, like, they were, you hear stories like, you know, Joe Navar and, and, and, and, and, and people being good. Even, even when people were being so evil. And I'm just like, how did,[00:57:00]

[00:57:00] Valentina: how do you still have a heart? Like, I don't know if you can answer that question, but

[00:57:05] Yasmine: please try to, well, I think

[00:57:06] Valentina: it.

[00:57:07] Yasmine: One of my friends once said to me like, we should be serial killers. I was like, we should, you know, like, because you can go one way or the other, you know, it's one, you either go right to the darkness or you are so repelled by the darkness and I give all.

[00:57:33] Yasmine: Gratitude and credit to my daughter because up until I had her and I held her in my arms for the first time, I didn't understand any of this. I didn't know any of this. I thought I was the problem. I thought my mom couldn't love me because I was broken. Because I wasn't good, because I wasn't Muslim enough.

[00:57:55] Yasmine: Because I wasn't obedient enough. Because I wasn't subservient enough. Like I [00:58:00] always thought I could do something more like I married the Al-Qaeda terrorist that you are forced, that you forced me to marry. I warn Al head to toe in black, covering my face, wearing black gloves, wearing black socks. I was like a, like a dementor walking around.

[00:58:20] Yasmine: I was imprisoned in the home. I allowed this man to beat me and to rape me because you told me that that's what. My religion demanded of me. I did everything for you. And all I wanted in return was to feel her love. I just wanted her to love me and I wanted to be good enough to, to be deserving of her love.

[00:58:49] Yasmine: And when I had my daughter and I looked at her for the first time, and that's when I felt love. I didn't know what love [00:59:00] felt like until that moment. And it was this epiphany where I realized she was just born, like she just got here. She didn't do anything to earn this love that I have for her. This desire to, to protect her and to make sure that she feels nothing but joy and safety.

[00:59:28] Yasmine: She didn't do anything. She didn't have to be a certain way. Just her being her essence, her being my daughter, like just being born. And I already felt this unbelievable amount of inex, like unfathomable love that I didn't even know existed beforehand. And then I realized my mom never felt [01:00:00] this way. She never had this love for me.

[01:00:05] Yasmine: And so I was like a fucking monkey or a clown, or just doing whatever I could to try and earn her love. And I realized it was a black hole. It was an empty vessel. Like it was never about me when I was a baby, if she had loved me the way I loved my daughter. Then it would've been a, you know, a, a completely different experience.

[01:00:31] Yasmine: And so it wasn't, it wasn't a flaw in me. It wasn't my fault, you know? And then I, from that moment on, put all of my time and energy and effort into being the opposite mother of my mom. So I didn't know how to be a mom because I had the worst example possible, but I knew how not to be a mom. [01:01:00] So I just did everything the opposite of what she did, which she would advise me, like when my daughter would cry in her crib, she'd say, just leave her.

[01:01:09] Yasmine: That's what babies do. They cry. That's what they're, that's what they do. What are you worried about? You don't need to go pick her up. You don't need to. You just leave her. And I was like, well, I will always pick her up. I will never leave her to cry. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I just always did the opposite of whatever she said because I, I knew that whatever advice she had, what I should do, the polar opposite.

[01:01:35] Yasmine: And that was my initial navigation through motherhood until I was able to get away from this man that they'd made me marry and get away from her and go to university and start taking child psychology courses. And then I could start, you know, learning about, um, actually how to, how to be a mother. [01:02:00] Um, but uh, but yeah, it was my daughter that led me com.

[01:02:05] Yasmine: She was my Sherpa out of the darkness for sure.

[01:02:09] Valentina: I think this is really something, a message that could really help a lot of people who maybe have. Mothers and fathers that are less than ideal is exactly what you just said. Like what you have to do is like everything that you're, you didn't like do the opposite, right?

[01:02:33] Valentina: It's kind of so sim so profound and beyond like, you know, motivating one to wanna speak up the truth and get involved in like, human rights activism, right? Like, or like at least giving women like you more, um, more, uh, amplifying you, right? Beyond that, what I think struck [01:03:00] me the most beyond that was that precisely what you're talking about right now is like you entering into mothering for me, like when I saw.

[01:03:16] Valentina: You describe like how you rationalize. Okay. Like, I know my mom didn't did this, so I'm gonna do the opposite of what my mom did. And it's everything through love. Because I mean, you, you, you, you, I'm telling you, you read what, what Yasmine's mother did to her, and there's no other word except diabolic to describe it, everything about the way you were treated.

[01:03:43] Valentina: And so your arrows are, you know, you're receiving all of these like arrows of, of, of, of hatred, right? The op or whatever is the opposite of love. And you just literally take those arrows one by one and then like [01:04:00] point him in the direction of love. And I think what I needed to hear from the book in a personal note, was how I wanted to raise my kids.

[01:04:16] Valentina: Do everything I do for them in Love it. Literally, your book cracked open my heart in a very personal way. It made me want to be, I mean, I've always wanted to be the best mother that I could, but this was like, whew. Like, it literally like opened up my heart.

[01:04:38] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:39] Valentina: Because it's, you know, as, as women, we feel, we can feel lost sometimes in knowing how to raise our children.

[01:04:46] Valentina: And, and your book is very, it, it just, it's very, you get to the realization that you just do everything through, you know, through the filter of love, through the lens of [01:05:00] love.

[01:05:04] Valentina: All you need is love. Mm-hmm. Kind of like that cliche thing. So true. It's so true. It's always right in front of us, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[01:05:12] Yasmine: You can't over love your children,

[01:05:14] Valentina: over love your children, and even when you do something discipline with love, when you guide them. Mm-hmm. Love.

[01:05:21] Yasmine: Exactly.

[01:05:23] Valentina: Yeah. It's absolutely beautiful.

[01:05:26] Valentina: Um, mama Cita, I hope that you, uh, pick up Yasmine's book, unveiled Listen to it. I guarantee you it will just crack open your heart just as much as it opened mind and that you will be, um, lit up inside your heart. She'll let your heart on fire and, um, and motivate you to be the best version of yourself.

[01:05:54] Valentina: And also amplify the voice of other women who so desperately need us. [01:06:00] It's time for the, you know, you see things on, on the social media where it's, you know, that say the feminine is rising. The feminine is rising. I believe the feminine is rising, but it will only rise if all of us stand together as sisters.

[01:06:18] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:18] Valentina: And then also, you know, along with our male counterparts. I mean, I, I couldn't stop talking about you. I, I mean, I've been talking about you to my husband for a while, but I just, you know, I, I ran, I, we have to also educate our men. I also feel very strongly about that. I mean, I have, I, it's interesting and ironic how I always thought I was gonna have girls, and I wanted girls, but God gave me boys.

[01:06:41] Valentina: So I have boys, but then I know, and then I have a podcast about women empowerment, but I have boys, so I get ironic. But I know that then my obligation is to raise good men.

[01:06:53] Yasmine: Yeah.

[01:06:55] Valentina: Men who respect women.

[01:06:57] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:58] Valentina: And who know what it [01:07:00] feels like to be on the, on the receiving end. Right. Um,

[01:07:05] Yasmine: oh yeah. I, I think men have been.

[01:07:11] Yasmine: Yeah, they were supportive of my work before women were even, because men recognize other toxic men and they know, like, they know this isn't a, you know, even women, we don't recognize them as easily as other men do sometimes, right? Like, we can be fooled by his suit or his job or his charisma or his whatever.

[01:07:40] Yasmine: But, um, I think quite often, you know, men are, they, they were, they were more able to more, um, more able to recognize what I was talking about when I was writing my book initially, and I was [01:08:00] happy to see it. It was a lot of like, you know, there's a lot of ex-military men that were my supporters in the beginning because they'd been in Afghanistan, they'd been in Iraq.

[01:08:10] Yasmine: So they understood the context and they had this feeling of wanting to protect women and knowing that this was coming onto American Shores, coming into Europe, that you could see the changes already with no-go zones in Sweden and France. And they wanted to protect women, but those men had been silenced in the same way that everybody else was with like Islamophobia, bigotry, racism, blah, blah, blah.

[01:08:38] Yasmine: But, um, I was very, very grateful when other women would speak up. Like that's, that's what brought me joy. Like I was. It was at a different level. Women like you inviting me to their podcasts. You know, so many amazing [01:09:00] women's like radical feminists and different groups of feminists around the world being so supportive.

[01:09:06] Yasmine: And it's just like that feeling that we were talking about that like sisterhood and feeling like this is, this is such a, such a beautiful future that we could have if we continue down this path. I mean, my daughter works in in preschools and she was talking about how the girls and boys are like equally emotionally regulated.

[01:09:30] Yasmine: Like they can both do the, they can. If boys are socialized the same way girls are socialized, then they can also handle their emotions in the same way. You know? But I'm Gen X and boomers before that where boys were always raised to like. All emotions were off limits except for anger. You know, it was the only one they were allowed to have.

[01:09:55] Yasmine: And so I was saying to my daughters, like, the way we [01:10:00] talk about our grandmothers, like, oh, our grandmothers had to put up with men that were X, Y, and Z. Like, that's what our future girls are gonna be talking about us. They're gonna be saying like, our moms had to put up with men who weren't even emotionally regulated, who didn't even, you know, know how to.

[01:10:21] Yasmine: Yeah. I hope, I hope I can see that happening though, because moms like, you are raising boys like that. And so it's like, oh, it's gonna be such a beautiful future for those, you know, little girls that are now little girls are gonna grow up to be women and, and wanting to get into relationships with men.

[01:10:44] Yasmine: How wonderful for them to have all of these amazing men to choose from. You know, it's gonna be, it's a different world. I really feel like it's gonna be a different world.

[01:10:55] Valentina: Sure. Absolutely. Right. That is so funny. I'd never thought about that, but [01:11:00] it's so true. I mean, if, if, just like, even in my generation in Venezuela, the things that my grandmother tells me that they would, you know, they were also, I mean, told, they were told, I remember that my great-grandmother would tell her daughter that she, you know, when her husband had been cheating on her and cheating on and cheating on her, the, the mother would tell my grand or my grandmother's sister, marriage is a cross that you have to carry it until you die.

[01:11:29] Yasmine: Oh yeah.

[01:11:30] Valentina: And for us it sounds so ridiculous, right? Like Yeah,

[01:11:34] Yasmine: yeah.

[01:11:35] Valentina: We keep on

[01:11:35] Yasmine: improving. We're we keep on getting better and better. Yeah.

[01:11:40] Valentina: Seriously. Thanks. You know, thank goodness. And, and I mean, I think that's what it is. It's all about progress. And, and we have to look to, you know, I think to be able to, to know what we can do in our own life, right?

[01:11:53] Valentina: Because we can't control everything externally, we can, but what we can do is just live our lives better and, and honestly [01:12:00] live our lives the best way we can. And amplify the, amplify the voices of people who are actively out there, like you trying to raise awareness and trying to, um, to change things. I do have, you know, one question about the Canadian system, is that changing?

[01:12:15] Valentina: Like, are they gonna be more protected now? Are people actively trying to make it so that, you know, um, Muslim girls in Canada are protected and that the not the same thing happens to them? That happened to you?

[01:12:30] Yasmine: I wish I had a different answer for you, but the truth is, this cultural relativism is so toxic.

[01:12:37] Yasmine: It's not just in Canada, it's, it's in Australia. It's also really bad too. Um, in the UK and America, like story after story, after story of women telling me their situations, very similar cases to mine happened in Scotland, happened in England. You know, these are, this is not, um, unique [01:13:00] and it's that feeling of wanting to be culturally sensitive.

[01:13:06] Yasmine: They think that they're coming from a good place, but of course what they end up doing is being. Viciously racist towards these girls. In the end, you know, the, the, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? They have, it comes from good intentions. It comes from, oh, you see a girl from Pakistan, or a girl from Somalia.

[01:13:27] Yasmine: So then they think, oh, well we should get them a social worker who's Pakistani or who's Somali. But then what ends up happening is that Somali social worker starts shaming the girl and telling her, how dare you? You're bringing shame on your father and on your family. How could you, you need to put the hijab on and go back home.

[01:13:46] Yasmine: Right? Or the Pakistani social worker will tell the parents, and this has happened. A woman who spoke on my podcast told this story. The Pakistan social worker told her parents [01:14:00] in du so that the, um, the other social worker wouldn't understand. Your daughter is gonna be 16 soon and you're gonna have less control over her.

[01:14:10] Yasmine: So if you wanna make sure. That you continue to control her, then you need to take her to Pakistan and get her married off as soon as possible. And that's what they tried to do. They tried to take her to Pakistan and, and get her married off. So they think that it's being helpful, but it's not. It's not, it's not being helpful at all.

[01:14:29] Yasmine: We don't need cultural relativism. It's not, like you said earlier on, right is right, wrong is wrong. Depend. It's irrelevant where you are on the planet, you know, it makes no difference. Pedophilia is wrong here, pedophilia is wrong there. People say like, you know, girls are being sold into, into marriage in Afghanistan or in Yemen, and they say, ah, it's their culture, [01:15:00] right?

[01:15:00] Yasmine: It's pedophilia. You know, like you cannot just turn a blind eye to things and say, oh, it's their culture. It's still wrong. We didn't turn a blind eye to slavery in America or to the, you know, women in the sixties when, when it was all about the women's liberation, they didn't say, oh, well it's our culture.

[01:15:21] Yasmine: For us to never be able to get a credit card or never be able to get paid the same as men is just that there's American culture. No, they pushed back. That's progress, right? And so when you just dismiss these things and say, oh, that's culture, then you allow those things to fester, you're, you're, you're basically re resisting against any kind of progress.

[01:15:45] Yasmine: So yeah, Canada's still like that, and all around the world is still like that because they still think that it's a good thing to treat people differently based on their ethnicity or their religion or their cultural background, which is [01:16:00] in a nutshell, racism. That's what that's called.

[01:16:04] Valentina: Like real racism.

[01:16:05] Valentina: Yeah. Oh my gosh. You, you know, you said something. We see progress in society throughout the world, right? We've seen the progress of Europe, progress of the United States. And you, you said a sense that was like, is the Muslim world not entitled to enlightenment?

[01:16:22] Yasmine: Thank you.

[01:16:23] Valentina: Is the Muslim perfect? Is it, why do we have to keep justifying there errors and protecting and shielding where they go totally astray and you make your ar?

[01:16:38] Valentina: I think, you know, one of the arguments, and this is something that people argue, but your argument, I'm sorry, nobody, you argue this so well, you actually tie to, you give examples in the Quran, right? That's the book.

[01:16:57] Yasmine: Yeah.

[01:16:58] Valentina: You know what's considered the holy book where [01:17:00] it's so wrong in what it says and it's so explicit that you can't.

[01:17:07] Valentina: You can't evade the truth of the words that it says. You say, for example, that Mohammed, the, the person who's the most, you know, who's revered as the most holy man, uh, married a 6-year-old and then,

[01:17:23] Yasmine: and he was 53,

[01:17:25] Valentina: 53, and he consummated the marriage when she was nine. I mean, that's pedophilia right there.

[01:17:32] Yasmine: Absolutely. Well, like you said, he is the best example for all humanity, for all time according to the Quran. And so when there are feminists or when there are people trying to change those laws or trying to progress these Muslim majority countries, they always come up against that scripture, which at the end of the day [01:18:00] validates, um, it justifies.

[01:18:05] Yasmine: Pedophilia. And so men will use these, this, these religious edicts as, um, evidence for why they can continue their pedophilia. And even in countries like Iraq, where the ma age of marriage was 18, they are now trying to claw back to nine years old. What? Yep. Islamic. Islamic, uh, politicians are trying to bring the age of marriage down to nine years old because they say that's Islamic.

[01:18:51] Valentina: It's so like flabbergasting. How, like if we were able to, the west western world was able to [01:19:00] separate church and state because we were open up our eyes. And under us and understand that that was a more enlightened way of being, right? That that was a better way of doing things. That you could believe, whatever you chose to believe.

[01:19:17] Valentina: But at the end of the day, the individual, right, or the religious, what is it the, you said, you said it, the religious theology couldn't seed the individual, right?

[01:19:30] Yasmine: Mm-hmm.

[01:19:32] Valentina: So well said like, how can we not see, like, how can we not want the Muslim world to progress where they are also like they understand, right?

[01:19:45] Valentina: The fact that a child's right and a and a woman's right, or a man's right. Should never be like dominated by whatever religion dictates whatever idea [01:20:00] or, or, you know, idea, somebody chooses to believe, like how come it's so easy for us to understand here, but we're not trying to help them get to the same progress.

[01:20:11] Valentina: And if anything, you know, we're kind of being, we do

[01:20:15] Yasmine: it. Yeah. We do it the, we do it ourselves. So even in a, in a secular country, we allow people's religious laws to supersede our secular laws. We let that happen. Right. And so, you know, I know we've been talking for a while and we don't have much more time left, but like I could just get into like example after example of how.

[01:20:49] Yasmine: You know, like in my daughter's school, we couldn't say Christmas anymore. It had to be Red and Green Day. I mean, we couldn't even say Halloween anymore. It was Orange and [01:21:00] Black Day. Right. But everybody said Happy Ramadan. Right? I'm like, what? What is this planet? What is going on here? Right? And if you live in, in QA or Saudi Arabia or so many other Muslim majority countries, or even if you're visiting there, you could be arrested, you could be fined for drinking water during Ramadan, even in your car.

[01:21:25] Yasmine: And these are countries in the desert, right? So it's like over there, we have to follow their rules. And over here we follow their rules. You know, it's like we, they, they believe that they are superior. They believe that they are dominant, and we agree with them. Yeah. Right. Like we, we, we, we are also in that fantasy with

[01:21:53] Valentina: them.

[01:21:53] Valentina: We can't, we have to wake up to it now because in Europe, I mean, you could argue it's already too late. There are [01:22:00] places in France where Sharia law is actually what people abide by and where people can't protect the police, can't protect Muslim girls and Muslim women in France right now. So yeah, completely.

[01:22:13] Valentina: I know we've run out of time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I could speak to you on and on and on. Um, Maita, if you have any questions, comments, please share this episode. You know, if you've gotten here so far, how important this message is. Honestly,

[01:22:29] Yasmine: comment. I wanted to show your listeners that I've got my book in Spanish and in English.

[01:22:35] Valentina: Oh my God. I love it. I love it.

[01:22:41] Valentina: Um, I'm gonna let you say some final words here, but if you, you know, comments and, and, um, questions on mamaconganaspodcast.com/234. mamasconganaspodcast.com/234. Yasmine, I'll give the mic to you 'cause I know, um, it's gotten a little [01:23:00] late and I know that, uh,

[01:23:03] Yasmine: yeah, no, I'm, I'm very, very grateful to you, Valentina.

[01:23:06] Yasmine: Thank you so much for having me on. Um, I really do hope your listeners do the same that you did, which is to, to listen to the audio book because I think that that's where, you know, because it's, I'm the one who's narrating it and so they really get to, to hear my story and to hear me and, um, you know, I think it's important for people to remember that we are all.

[01:23:35] Yasmine: Human beings fighting different battles and to open our hearts to each other. And you know, this silencing that we do of each other is so vicious and so demoralizing, and I can't tell you how much it hurts to see that when other women are [01:24:00] overcoming the obstacles that they've overcome and they freed themselves from all sorts of different experiences, I am there to champion those women and support those women.

[01:24:11] Yasmine: And I'm so grateful to have so many women around me who championed me and support me as well. But that feeling of being silenced, being demonized, being told that my story is not politically correct, that my life. You know, my traumas are Islamophobic or unacceptable or whatever is, is so hurtful, so mean.

[01:24:42] Yasmine: And I really want people to understand that this isn't just my story. My story is not unique. There are millions and millions and millions of other women like me, but they just are in circumstances where they cannot [01:25:00] be heard. I bring as many of them as possible on my podcast, the Yasmine Mohammed podcast, and I share their stories.

[01:25:08] Yasmine: I recently just spoke with a girl in Afghanistan. She was in her second year of medical school, and then the Taliban decided that girls were no longer allowed to be doctors. And so she was pulled out of, um, uh, pulled out of school and. To be able to like speak to somebody who is currently in Afghanistan suffering under these totalitarian laws, you know, for her voice to just be heard is so meaningful.

[01:25:43] Yasmine: And it's so important for us to show up for each other and support each other. And I have also got my organization, free Heart's, free Minds, which supports Free Thinkers and the LGBT who are living in Muslim majority countries or [01:26:00] in Muslim communities across the globe who are suffering because of what they believe or because of who they are.

[01:26:07] Yasmine: And I have to tell you that the three top countries that contact us, number one is Egypt. Number two is Pakistan, and number three is the United States of America. People think, oh, this is happening over there, and that's not our business. No, it's in your backyard and it is absolutely your right to speak up against it because this matters to you.

[01:26:33] Yasmine: It matters to your family. It matters to your neighbors. It matters to your community, and it matters to your future. So do not allow people to silence you. Speak your truth. Even if your voice quivers, speak your truth. Be brave. Take a page out of the book of Iranian women. Be brave.

[01:26:52] Valentina: Oh, amen. Be brave. I'm gonna put all of Yasmine's link on the link that I just sent you, [01:27:00] mamasconganaspodcast.com/234.

[01:27:02] Valentina: Go and donate to her beautiful organization. Share her messages, read her book. And again, Yasmine, you are a light in this world. Thank you so much for what you do.

[01:27:15] Yasmine: Thank you so much, Valentina.

[01:27:18] Valentina: Hey, it's Valentina Izarra. I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. Thank you so much for liking, sharing, and subscribing to our motivational channel.

[01:27:26] Valentina: If you have any questions or comments, visit our website www.mamasconganaspodcast.com or follow me on social media @mamasconganas. And remember, don't be a mama

[01:27:37] Yasmine: con drama.

[01:27:38] Valentina: Let's be Mamas Con Ganas!.