Famed writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was infamously targeted with murderous threats from Islamic terrorists, welcomed the federal indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), arguing it validates long-standing criticisms of the organization’s practices and influence.
Earlier this week, a federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, charged the SPLC with multiple counts, including wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors allege that between 2014 and 2023, the group diverted more than $3 million in donor funds to individuals linked to extremist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups, while publicly condemning those same organizations. The SPLC has denied wrongdoing and says it will contest the charges.
In an opinion piece titled, “The SPLC Targeted Me. Now Its Reckoning Has Come,” Hirsi Ali wrote that the indictment did not surprise her, but rather raised questions about why it took so long. She pointed to her own experience with the SPLC, which in 2016 included her in a publication labeling certain figures as “anti-Muslim extremists.” Hirsi Ali said the SPLC’s 2016 blacklist was especially dangerous because it came at a time when Islamist violence was already killing writers, cartoonists, and dissidents across Europe.
She noted she had spent more than two decades under armed protection after extremist threats against her intensified following the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose killer left a note naming her as the next target. That history, she argued, made the SPLC’s decision to classify her as an “anti-Muslim extremist” not just defamatory, but potentially dangerous.
Hirsi Ali argued that the list unfairly grouped together critics of Islamist ideology and exposed them to potential danger at a time of heightened terrorist threats in Europe and elsewhere. She also referenced a 2018 lawsuit by Maajid Nawaz, another figure named in the report, which resulted in a multimillion-dollar settlement and a public apology from the SPLC. Hirsi Ali noted she did not receive a similar apology.
She wrote:
The list handed journalists a ready-made roster of 15 people whose views were to be seen as toxic. But to call it a mere reference guide is to understate what it was. It was published at the peak of a jihadist campaign of terror against the West. The ISIS caliphate still held territory across Syria and Iraq. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was issuing hit lists of writers and cartoonists in its English-language magazine. In January 2015, two of AQAP’s followers walked into the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and murdered 12 people, some of them cartoonists whose offense was drawing. Ten months later, a coordinated ISIS cell killed 130 at Paris’s Bataclan theater and the cafés around it. Terror attacks in Brussels, Nice, Berlin, and Manchester soon followed. This was the climate in which the SPLC chose to publish the names, faces, and affiliations of 15 people it accused of “anti-Muslim extremism.” The list endangered everyone it named. …
I have lived under armed protection for more than two decades because men with weapons and conviction want me dead—for apostasy; for writing about Islamist-driven antisemitism and the subversive actions of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in the West; for drawing attention to practices such as honor killings and female genital mutilation; for arguing that Muslim women deserve the same protections under the law as other women. … an organization founded to combat bigotry chose to place me on a list together with others whose lives were already under threat from the same movements, just for having the audacity to combat Islamist bigotry.
Hirsi Ali highlighted broader concerns about the organization’s finances and fundraising. She cited past reporting and watchdog criticism alleging that the SPLC accumulated large reserves, including funds held offshore, while continuing aggressive fundraising campaigns. According to her account, major spikes in donations followed high-profile events such as the 2017 Charlottesville rally and the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s death.
Hirsi Ali further questioned the integrity of the SPLC’s widely cited “Hate Map,” arguing it expanded over time to include mainstream conservative and religious groups. She referenced a 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council, where the attacker reportedly used the SPLC’s map to identify the target, as an example of potential real-world consequences.
In interpreting the current allegations, Hirsi Ali framed the SPLC’s trajectory as part of a broader pattern in which institutions drift from their original missions. She argued the group evolved from a civil rights organization focused on combating violent white supremacist groups into one that targets ideological opponents while maintaining its public authority.
The indictment also includes claims about an SPLC informant allegedly involved in organizing the 2017 Charlottesville rally while being paid by the organization, an allegation Hirsi Ali said underscores the seriousness of the case if proven. SPLC interim CEO Bryan Fair has called the charges politically motivated and said the organization will defend itself in court.
Hirsi Ali acknowledged that an indictment is not a conviction, but argued the case represents a significant moment of accountability. She concluded that donors, journalists, and the public should apply greater scrutiny to influential advocacy organizations, especially those that position themselves as arbiters of extremism and hate.