Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Dutch: [ɑˈjaːn ˈɦirsi ˈaːli] ( When she was eight, Hirsi Ali's family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the centre of a political controversy. Life and work[edit] Youth[edit] Hirsi Ali's father had studied abroad and was opposed to female genital mutilation, but while he was imprisoned, Hirsi Ali's grandmother had the traditional procedure performed on five-year-old Hirsi Ali.[13] They settled in Nairobi, where Hirsi Ali attended the English-language Muslim Girls' Secondary School. She sympathised with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and wore a hijab together with her school uniform, which was unusual at the time but gradually became more common. Early life in the Netherlands[edit] Hirsi Ali arrived in the Netherlands in 1992. Once in the Netherlands she requested political asylum, and obtained a residence permit.
Sam Harris (author)
American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcaster Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and podcast host. His work touches on a wide range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and artificial intelligence. Harris has debated with many prominent figures on the topics of God or religion, including William Lane Craig, Jordan Peterson, Rick Warren, Andrew Sullivan, Reza Aslan, David Wolpe, Deepak Chopra, and Jean Houston. Early life and education[edit] He received a Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles,[18][21][22] using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty.[18][22] His thesis was titled The Moral Landscape: How Science Could Determine Human Values. Career[edit] Writing[edit] Views[edit]
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942)[1][2] is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.[3] Early life and education[edit] Dennett was born on March 28, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth Marjorie (née Leck) and Daniel Clement Dennett, Jr.[6][7] Dennett spent part of his childhood in Lebanon, where, during World War II, his father was a covert counter-intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services posing as a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Beirut.[8] When he was five, his mother took him back to Massachusetts after his father died in an unexplained plane crash.[9] Dennett says that he was first introduced to the notion of philosophy while attending summer camp at age 11, when a camp counselor said to him, "You know what you are, Daniel? First ...
Taslima Nasrin
Taslima Nasrin (Bengali: তসলিমা নাসরিন; also Taslima Nasreen, born 25 August 1962) is a Bengali author and former physician who has lived in exile since 1994. From a literary profile as a poet in the late 1980s, she rose to global fame by the end of the 20th century owing to her essays and novels with feminist views and criticism of Islam in particular and of religion in general. Since leaving Bangladesh in 1994 on account of threat calls, she has lived in many countries;[1] as of June 2011 she lives in New Delhi.[2] She works to build support for secular humanism, freedom of thought, equality for women, and human rights by publishing, lecturing, and campaigning.[citation needed] Personal life[edit] Nasrin was born to Rajab Ali and Edul Ara in the town of Mymensingh in 1962. Nasrin has been married three times: first to Bengali poet Rudra Mohammad Shahidullah,[4] then to Bangladeshi journalist Nayeemul Islam Khan[5] and finally to editor Minar Mahmood.[6] Early career[edit] in her early 30s
