to common sense to me because the group there as well and it's common to anyone else who does the work. but there are so many different organizations in and around boston doing the work that sometimes i feel like they aren't working together. >> sometimes? >> okay. all the time. my question is how we get all of our organizations on the same page and doing the same work at the same time so that we can actually be making a difference? >> it is common sense. it is so common sense and i called one of my girlfriends after we finished of the boston stuff in california and said we've had this break through. we are going to talk to them and tell them that first group is going to get our attention and offer them help and it's amazing. then there was dead silence on the other end of the phone and judy said what have they been doing? we should be ashamed of ourselves. we really should. and we are not all pulling together. it isn't common sense to everybody, and i've come to believe that this prescription that says we have to get everybody together before is a disaster. we've got to capano organize and get everybody on the same page and get all the social services working together. it's not going to happen. so, instead, what you do is find the folks who get, you work with them. that's enough as it turns out. and in a good sense what happens is when that becomes so evident and the architecture is their people start finding their place and it gets stronger and stronger and stronger. if you wait to change everybody's mind first you wait and that's the end of it. >> hell will we sustain this so that it doesn't die and not the way they did in boston? >> you build it into the thinking and the working of the city. you have the city put its foot down and have management. you have people whose job it is to keep this going. you build it into the agency systems and into the boston police department which they have done. it's common sense management stuff and it's not that hard to envision and when people are willing it is not that hard to do. the will is the issue and we will wrap up here. thank you very much. [applause] >> visit booktv.org book tv present "after words" an hour-long program where we invite guest host interview authors. this week deborah scroggins and wanted women. she still lives of two muslim women from the distinct perspectives on the war and islamic fundamentalism. she discusses the lives of ayaan hirisi ali and aafia siddiqui. >> host: deborah ehud version a big ambitious book and has a great literary the world is the stage and you are raising big issues. without any further ado what's plunge in. what is the case and the heart of the book? >> guest: the book tells the story of two women. one is ayaan hirisi ali, the sue moly bourn activist and author of the best-selling autobiography infidel coming and she was notoriously threatened with death for her criticism of islam, and her polar opposite who is a woman who's a pakistan demuro scientist who for a long time was the only woman wanted as an associate of al qaeda and was eventually captured in 2008 and convicted of firing at american personnel in afghanistan so the book follows these two muslim women of about the same age who became complete opposites and it tries to tell the story of the war on terror to their stories. >> host: to when in, such extreme positions, and yet you talk about this weird asymmetry between the two. can you explain this? >> guest: they are about the same agent they've come to the west from the muslim world at around the same time, the end of the cold war, and they both were strongly influenced by islam and even though they turned out one, becoming a critic of islam and won a how critic of the west it's possible to imagine they might have gone in opposite directions, because speed when she was a teenager she belonged to the muslim brotherhood, and aafia siddiqui, when she was a student at mit in cambridge, she studied feminism's of it is possible to imagine they would have gone in opposite directions. and one of the things i find fascinating about the stories is because they are close in age a lot of times the same historical descent affected them in different parts of the world, and so there is that symmetry of seeing how the same events affect their lives. >> host: it is fascinating the squall's meaning all kinds of possibilities that could have gone in either direction. now you have a striking phrase, the virgin and the whole and the need to understand one against the other without which you cannot understand either. what do you mean by this? because this also sums up the essence of the book and which you are looking at the very extreme people and figures, put opposites and making sense of them. >> guest: if you don't realize , the bikini seems natural and perfectly accepted you can't understand how shocking the irca seems to westerners for example. if you're coming from a society where the burke is accepted and you've never seen a bikini you can't understand why the bikinis show the because so shocking to people coming from afghanistan or maybe even pakistan so what i was trying to say is if you don't understand the shadow you can't understand the light so i needed to tell both stories to get a picture of what role women were playing in the role one tear and the whole issue of women's rights. >> host: how did you manage to keep a sense of balance between the two figures, coming from american society and obviously growing up in a very different kind of cultural environment and ayaan hirisi ali before she comes to the west how are we able to keep an object of balance or neutrality between the two cultures? >> guest: i try to give it and i've been writing about the muslim world for a long time to be a i was a newspaper reporter and a magazine reporter before i wrote this book and so i've been writing about the issue of women's rights and more than 20 years, so it's something i've given a lot of thought to and i just try to keep my balance as best i could. >> host: i think you did succeed largely because you are telling two different stories which you are telling in a parallel way and i can understand the story of them sounds different to what stands in pakistan because as you point out the prime minister has called her daughter of the nation, hundreds of processions in her favor, the burning of the american flag and so on and people naming the u.s. imperialism for what happened after 86 years of prison sentence and similarly the opposite for ayaan hirisi ali here in the west. she's a celebrity, she is such a big name here. i found, deborah, that by taking these women who both in their own ways have made such a mark on our times, you are creating the polls in the muslim tent as it were, but they are the opposite end of the tent. it's being held up by the mainstream muslim women like you mentioned benazir bhutto for example whose comfortable both in this world, the western world and her own world in pakistan where she wins elections twice and becomes the first female prime minister have any muslim country, and then is eventually killed for being precisely that for wanting democracy women's rights and so on and there are hundreds of women like her in bangladesh, the prime minister muslim women and of course embassadors and governors and so on. the new pakistan ambassador to pakistan a very articulate woman. my own daughter is one of them come a ph.d. from cambridge became the first ever director of the center in the world of cambridge. the of the one at georgetown, cities are muslim women, american, british, whatever, but they are still living in their own traditions and comfortably adjusting to the world. now the danger is conceptually if you remember the center the average reader who knows little about islam and has so much controversy and debate and discussion particularly in the united states the danger is that they may think that is only their offer that the muslim women are either completely extremist and want to block the west and kill people and so on and on the other hand, they want to reject islam, said you think that there is a danger of an effect pushing the reader into that trap on the intellectual trap of missing out the main street or the central? >> guest: i don't think so because i talk about that in the book as you know that one of the frustrations that muslim women have have had over the last decade is that women like ayaan hirisi ali and aafia siddiqui have crowded out their voices coming and that was -- i quoted a number of women and putting for a simple the nobel laureate talking about ayaan and she said people like ayaan hirisi ali play the mullah game because it isn't possible to have islam and democracy that muslims have to make a choice between the two come and she said i don't agree with that. i think that there's a third way to the islam can be compatible with democracy giving it and the same could be said about aafia siddiqui in pakistan. one of the things that's happened in pakistan is that these women, her voice is have been crowded out and she is accused of not caring enough because she is imprisoned by the west and so i think that's one of the most important points the book has to make and the need to start listening to these voices in the middle. >> host: these are such powerful images of the women in these extreme positions that could completely blot out the people in the middle. now of course he would also point out that both women have certain similarities. dirty different political opinions, they are ambitious, they are bold, fearless, intelligence, they both have their own charisma. that's why they have so much of the following bigot why do you think the tragedy is for the muslim women, the tragedy as it were for the young muslim women growing up in this post-9/11 world and remember the muslim world is one and a half million people, so a lot of muslim women are growing up these models in front of them where do you think that is going on? i think more towards ayaan hirisi ali or to words aafia siddiqui or the mainstream middle because i have my own opinion and i would like to hear yours and then talk about it. >> guest: it is definitely towards the middle to the extent that you can generalize and say about such a vast population. you know, it depends. and i haven't noticed that ayaan hirisi ali has such a following among the muslim women. that is one of the problems that she had politically in the netherlands was that muslim women were actually quite opposed to her because she criticized, she was seen more as a critic of islam and then as a feminist which is how she's seen by the westerners. now, aafia siddiqui, she does have a huge following in pakistan, but i don't know that i see women really wanting to follow in her footsteps. i see them as feeling she's a sort of symbol of pakistan and the way that pakistanis feel that they've been treated by the west is a sort of symbol of that. but i see the muslim world in general as being shaped by the july and forces of globalization better shaving of us and that is pulling a lot more people towards the border. we saw with the arab spurring. >> host: you raised the g word, globalization and that is again something i found fascinating in your study as an anthropologist looking at the society, looking at the change in society. you set the context for the two characters from different parts of the world in the context of these massive global changes taking place and i found that quite fascinating in the changes of the social media, the instant communications, the massive migrations of the populations and both of their lives follow aafia from india to pakistan come to the united states and she ends up in prison in the united states. >> guest: yes. >> host: ayaan hirisi ali, same. somalia, kenya, ends up in saudi arabia and holland and the united states and here it is treated as a celebrity in the "time" magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and of course professor ferguson dedicated his new book to us and as a celebrity figure. so i find that this whole frame of globalization makes the interesting subject of muslim women particularly interesting societies undergoing in the city societies rustling but particularly on muslim women because they find their own way in the world men have been sidelined in their lives and have been forced to make decisions. are they going to join the militant groups or hold onto their moderation as it were or to rediscover some kind of an accommodation. how do you see this in the context of globalization? how do you see muslim women being able to respond to the forces of globalization who feel they are responding positively? you give the example of the arab spring. can you elaborate on that? >> guest: both ayaan hirisi ali and aafia siddiqui are products of globalization just as you describe their lives, the moves that they've made. and i think that also shakes them, shaved their approach to islam and identity because they moved around so much. aafia joost secure identity and islam rather than as a pakistani for example. ayaan hirisi ali chose to seek her identity as a westerner, not as an american but as a westerner she sees herself as part of the west and i think that that's something that muslim women are facing now, too as tribal identities breakdown, ethnic identities breakdown, people are searching for larger identities and that is why is mom, that's one of the reasons it has had such a poll the last couple of decades. we also see another form of identity which is based on human rights and modern ideas of human-rights, and that's something that's coming up and i hope that we are going to be seeing more of it in the future and the muslim world. one of the interesting things happening today is the movement example in iran. the women are persecuted right now by the government, but still they are joining these campaigns like a million signatures campaign and we can see another wave of factors and some coming from the muslim world and muslim women in terms of human rights and democracy. >> host: i need so many inspiring women especially from the muslim world because i anderson and the kind of pressure on them and the challenges they face and that they are constantly able to cope with those challenges and it isn't easy with the world in turmoil. families completely shatter as in the cases of both of these subjects of your particular book coming back to the other societies, i think you successfully point out that the personal experiences, the disruption of her life, remember if been divided. the land of somalia. these are traditional people. they've been there for centuries in the horn of africa but more recent times these people have been divided into the three nations, somalia, kenya, ethiopia and parts of djibouti. so in a sense the families have been split, cut in half, and that is deception to start with. then many of them have gone abroad seeking jobs like the family and this internal conflict where they are looking at their own world tribalism and the modern world through television and the media and so forth and ayaan hirisi ali's experience with trial islam for example the female circumcision, which is not islam and categorically we want to put it on record is not islam it is associated with islam and many local and tribal societies but isn't sanctioned by islam. the notion of importance of the lineage, the code of honor that emphasizes revenge and the horn of africa and in pakistan but they're still not islamic from so her reaction against what she sees as her society and muslim society i think it will be explained by the environment that she's growing up with reject it. this is the kind of world i don't want. its restricted and a terrible and there's no doubt about it. so she reject it and conflates two things colin code tribalism and islam as a world religion. after coming from the other side there is something similar. because you point out, and again that's something i hope is picked up by your reader. you open your book and on page one you have a reference. that's very significant because in fact please explain who he is and then i will come back to my question >> guest: he was a muslim indian living during the rochon great britain, and he advised muslims that the way for them to cope with of the rise of the west and the western takeover was to educate themselves and particularly to learn the british ways and so as to be a will to revive the muslim nation, and he started many schools particularly the all the york university, and so that's one way that muslims have sought to cope with the rise of the west and the other way of course i talked about in the book is the way of the bond which is more of a turning inward to islam and seeking the resources from within islam rather than studying the west. >> host: for the viewers she is a seminal siddhi they could figure in history to become the middle of the 19th century. the british have just taken over india and queen victoria is not the impetus of india and the muslims of india now have to respond and they respond in two distinct ways. so we create a university that is still very much for writing in india, and another institutions. as of the two muslim responses to modernity one is saying we can live as muslims with honor and dignity coming and we can with as you know india and pakistan learn to play cricket even better than the masters, the formal masters of the british we speak english, we wear a tie and put on the blazer, we read books in english and say our prayers. so we are proud to be both, muslim and the subject of the british empire. so this is a model he gives which in fact creates generations of muslims. presidents, prime ministers, scientists, leaders come and the other model believes that islam is under threat. you have to create boundaries around yourself, you have to keep out the modern world. therefore you must emphasize the purity of the islam going back to the seventh century. and there you have a kind of inherent conceptual opposition to each other. what i find fascinating and in your study, and there's a great link that you made between aafia, whose family actually goes. so she is coming out of the tradition cannot herself because she is born after the creation of pakistan and pakistan, but certainly her family come in and get she adopts a philosophy which is almost the opposite. she marius the husband who's wanted for all kinds of things including the murder of daniel pearl called the father of my great friend command course for the involvement in line 11 to the answer in a sense you are seeing the product of one tradition associated with another. were you able to make any explanation or sense out of this? >> guest: well, i think this kind of schizophrenia is very common in pakistan where you see this dualism in a lot of people, not just aafia, where people are coming out of this sort of tradition. they are going in seeking a western education. they are very westernized, they speak english, maybe the language that the speegap home, and yet they are also drawn to this tradition, and that was true of aafia's family, her whole family. both of her parents were highly educated and her father was a doctor, her mother was a social worker and a preacher and taken out of this western schooling and yet they were very serious as well. >> host: we must be careful because it is a school of thought and you must be careful as not to suggest that the preach violence because they don't. in fact their traditional, the like traditionalists and many of the weld fate basically we want to be left alone to practice. certainly from them and even from the modernist we would have extremists coming out in some of these the young men who want to go out with some new york if you remember. now he was a modernist in every sense coming from the fron