Women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali was honored at the New-York Historical Society’s 2016 Strawberry Festival benefit luncheon, an annual event recognizing women in public life that dates back to 1856.
Ms. Hirsi Ali received the Woman in Public Life Award for her work to end honor violence, which shames, hurts, and kills thousands of women and girls in the United States each year. Hirsi Ali founded the AHA Foundation in 2007 to “elevate the status of women and girls globally, so they can create peace and prosperity for themselves.”
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Born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969, Hirsi Ali fled to Holland, seeking political asylum, after her father forced her to marry a distant cousin. Eventually, Hirsi was elected to the Dutch parliament, where she was an outspoken critic of honor killings and radical extremism. Hirsi, whose 2008 memoir Infidel (Atria Books) was a New York Times best-seller, recently wrote Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation Now (Harper).
The luncheon took place early this month at the New-York Historical Society.
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