Author and public intellectual Ayaan Hirsi Ali is warning about the threat that Islamist activist organizations pose to the U.S. and the broader Western world.

Speaking at National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit on Thursday, Ali pushed back on the popular “lone wolf” narrative used to explain recent acts of Islamist terror, like that perpetrated on Bourbon Street in New Orleans earlier this year, arguing instead that terrorism is one tactic used by a global Islamist network that is pursuing a broader, unrecognized strategy.

That network, Ali argued, advances its goals by infiltrating American institutions and spreading its propaganda through ostensibly nonviolent Islamist activist organizations, which provide cover for violent terrorists.

“There are no lone wolves,” Ali declared.

“So now you have the nonviolent Islamization process that is overseen by groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that is international and universalist in its approach. And then you have the military offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood like ISIS and al-Qaeda and Hamas engaging in this strategic violence,” she explained.

“That’s a well-thought-through strategy that fits very well into one another, and we underestimate it because we talk about ‘lone wolves.’ We try to chase terrorism across the world. We allow them to establish this great infrastructure for Islamizing, for creating that pipeline through nonviolent means in America and in Europe. We are stupid and they are smart.”

Hirsi Ali’s comments came in response to a question from NR Senior Writer Noah Rothman about the Islamist terrorist who drove a car through a crowd of New Year’s Eve revelers, killing 14 and injuring many more. The perpetrator, a 42-year-old Army veteran, flew an ISIS flag in window of the pickup truck he used in the attack. He converted to Islam years before the attack and attended a mosque near his home in Houston.

In the wake of the attack, many commentators described the attacker as a “lone wolf” who had likely been radicalized online, free from the influence of major Islamist organizations. That explanation, Ali argued, discounts the broad reach of the Islamist movement.

As a former Muslim and Dutch-American Somali refugee, Ali speaks from a position of personal familiarity with radical Islam.

After fleeing Somalia, Ali became an outspoken atheist and rose to prominence for her critique of radical Islam, which drew upon her experience of oppression growing up in Somalia. Ali remains a critic of Islam and strains of left-wing ideology as a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.  She converted to Christianity in 2023 after concluding that the faith is necessary for preserving Western civilization.

During the Thursday panel, Rothman also asked Ali about the marriage of convenience between Islamist and progressive ideologies seeking to put an end to American hegemony. Ali laid out how those ideologies emphasize the need to infiltrate American institutions and mentioned a Muslim Brotherhood document outlining the strategy. It was crafted in 1991, and over 30 years later, the Islamists have succeeded in developing an infrastructure within the U.S. and maintaining ties with immigrant communities.

The ideological fusion Ali described can be see on American college campuses, in academic departments and radical campus activist organizations. Anti-Israel protests broke out across college campuses last year during Israel’s multifront war in the Middle East, and many of demonstrators embraced a critique of the U.S. as a racist, colonialist project, drawing on strains of Islamist and radical left-wing thinking.

The Trump administration is combating the outgrowth of antisemitism on college campuses with civil rights investigations into dozens of colleges for antisemitic harassment. The White House’s task force on antisemitism has already cut $400 million of grants from Columbia University because of its high-profile tent encampment and the broader issue of antisemitic student activists and faculty on campus.

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