In response to ongoing abuses of women's rights in the name of fundamentalist Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her supporters established the AHA Foundation in 2007 to help protect and defend the rights of women in the West against militant Islam.
Through education, outreach and the dissemination of knowledge, the Foundation aims to combat several types of crimes against women, including female genital mutilation, forced marriages, honor violence, and honor killings.
The Foundation is opposed to the adoption of dual legal systems to adjudicate family disputes in religious families and supports the separation of all religions and the State.
The AHA Foundation works to reinforce the following basic rights: the rights of women and girls to security and control of their own bodies, the rights of women and girls to an education, the rights of women to work outside the home and to control their own income, the rights of women and girls to freedom of expression and association, and the rights of women and girls to other basic civil rights of citizens and residents defined under the laws of Western democracies and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, regardless of sexual identification.
Founding member, Ayaan Hirsi Alli
As a 501(c)3 organization under the Internal Revenue Code of the U.S., the Foundation only accepts charitable and philanthropic contributions and does not sell products of any kind.
Click here to learn more about the AHA Foundation.
WHAT DO WE KNOW? Click here to download facts and figures on the circumstances affecting Muslim girls and women in the United States.
UNITED STATES:
4 February 2010: In a debate on the burqa, Ayaan Hirsi Ali said: "What we are seeing in Europe is that there is conflict between the values of Europe and the values of Islam. MORE >
2 February 2010: At a lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ayaan Hirsi Ali said "We must use intelligence and reason to confront what I perceive as one of the world's greatest inequalities--the treatment of Muslim women". MORE >
29 January 2010: The agreement between Rifqa Bary and her parents to settle their conflict through counseling has ended without a single meeting between the parents and their daughter, according to a motion filed in Franklin County Juvenile Court: the parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, are withdrawing their consent to resolve the case. MORE >
INTERNATIONAL:
8 February 2010: Sweden's unemployment agency has been found guilty of discrimination for expelling a Muslim man from a job training program because he refused to shake hands with a woman: a Stockholm court Monday ordered the Public Employment Service to pay 50,000 kronor ($6,700) in damages to an immigrant from Bosnia who lost his jobless benefits when he was kicked out of the program. MORE >
6 February 2010: In Pakistan, the story of Nasreen (not her real name) has inspired legal reforms in the provincial Parliament in Punjab: in 2002, Nasreen said, "My husband hired three men and got me raped in front of him because I was tired of his abuse and demanded the divorce that Islam gave me a right to". MORE >
6 February 2010: The Irish Council of Imams, a group which represents Muslims living in Ireland, has spoken out against attempts to ban the niqab (a veil worn by Muslim women that covers everything except the eyes) elsewhere in Europe. MORE >
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