She was born in Somalia, brought up in Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya, only to seek asylum in the Netherlands and later migrate to America. Along the way, a devout and submissive Muslim girl turned into an author, campaigner for women’s rights and fierce defender of Western values. Today she is an atheist. More important, she is arguably the most visible and effective critic of Islam on the planet.

In the US, where she lives with her husband, the outspoken Scottish historian Niall Ferguson, she has just published her latest tirade against her one-time faith, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now. Islam is not a religion of peace, she writes, but one that foments terrorism, breeds sectarian conflict and sanctions the repression of women and minorities. The book seeks to identify what must change in Islam to permit the separation of politics and religion and bring about a peaceful and tolerant faith – and how the West might hasten the process.

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“When you live the way I live,” she told CNN days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, “you have to ask yourself over and over: who are these people who try to kill me? What do they want? What drives them? This is not a group of deranged thugs. It’s an ideology embedded in a world religion. For me to be safe, I have to outlive a generation whose minds are contaminated with it.”