Yasmine Mohammed Podcast

Salima was born in the UK to a strict Bangladeshi Muslim family. Her parents forced her to memorize the Quran, attend mosque, and wear the hijab from a very young age. She and her siblings were physically abused by their mother and kept isolated from other children their age.​
When her parents began discussing a marriage to a cousin, she decided to run away with her sister. Because Salima was under 18, social services became involved and helped the two sisters escape safely. Unfortunately, the abuse continued in the foster system, and she had to leave her foster home to protect herself.​
Today, Salima lives a life she once only dreamed of, sharing a home with her partner and their two dogs. She now speaks out about the abuse she endured to shed light on the realities faced by women with backgrounds like hers.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salima_alam

Sarit Gad grew up in a Jewish home in Miami, Florida, always drawn to the nostalgia of her ancestors who came from Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon. Her family did not pass down stories, but she always knew they had left the region and she carried that quiet history with her.
The old warnings about Jewish hatred felt like distant echoes from another time, shadows she believed the world had already outgrown.
She believed deeply in coexistence and peace. It was not until October 7th, while interning at the United Nations in New York, that the full complexity of reality became impossible to ignore.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saritmedia/

Magomyed was born in Saudi Arabia during a time of profound darkness. The morality police controlled the population through roadside checkpoints. They would halt vehicles and demand identification while aggressively interrogating passengers: “Who is this woman beside you?” Clerics cited ‘honour’ in their sermons, urging men to tighten their control over the women of their families, warning that otherwise they would be “forced” to commit violence to safeguard familial honor. Teachings such as these, repeated endlessly, propelled thousands of young men into the ranks of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and similar groups.
At seventeen, Magomyed was on the way to answer the call for jihad in Syria. Only 50 kilometers from the Saudi–Iraqi border, he turned back, deciding he wanted to find a different way to serve the ummah. Over the next two years he completely deradicalized, and later moved to Canada to pursue an engineering degree. 
Mogamyed will join Yasmine to discuss the normalization of radicalization in Islamic countries, how quickly that radicalization can lead to giving up your life in the name of Allah, and discuss the difficulty of deradicalization and all of the obstacles and risks involved with making that decision.

Amanda Knox is an exoneree, journalist, public speaker, author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting to Be Heard and FREE: My Search for Meaning. She is the host of the podcast Hard Knox. Between 2007 and 2015, Amanda spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit. She was finally acquitted of murder in 2015. She has since become an advocate for criminal justice reform and media ethics. Amanda is an Executive Producer of the 2025 mini-series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox available on Hulu/Disney+.

Amanda will be joining Yasmine to ponder the questions: 
What does resilience actually look like? 
What does it mean to be free?
How do we live with what we can’t undo?
 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amamaknox/
X: https://x.com/amandaknox
Website: https://www.amandaknox.com

Waiting to be Heard: https://www.amandaknox.com/waiting-to-be-heard.htmlFREE: My Search for Meaning: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/amanda-knox/free/9781538770719/

Jay Solomon, author of The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East and co-author of The Free Press report How Qatar Bought America joins Yasmine in Episode 4 of Islam and the West to discuss how Islamist governments like Qatar and Iran have spent billions of dollars infiltrating the media, education and governments in the West to control the narrative and spread their ideology.

Jay Solomon is one of the U.S.’s premier investigative journalists and writers, with a global track record that goes back nearly 30 years. He was The Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign affairs correspondent for over a decade, during which he broke some of Washington’s largest stories, such as the Obama administration’s secret cash shipments to Iran. He also served tours in the Middle East, India, and East Asia. He’s an expert on international sanctions, illicit finance, nuclear proliferation, and cyber warfare.

Jay on X: https://x.com/jaysolomon

Jay’s works:

The Iran Wars: https://a.co/d/hoNi9nr

How Qatar Bought America: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-qatar-bought-america?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web