“I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.”

I lived in countries that had no democracy. so I don’t find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom.

Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.

In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.

You have to let individuals make their own choices and respect that, even if it’s your own child. And that’s what was taken away from me. My father passed away thinking I still had to go back to his way of believing.

In Holland I have seen well-meaning, principled people blinded by multiculturalism, overwhelmed by the imperative to be sensitive and respectful of immigrant culture, while ignoring criminal abuse of women and girls.

People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no: I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.

If such a young nation as the U.S. could make it to superpower status, we could do it as well.

Liberal capitalism is not perfect, but compared to the other ‘isms,’ it’s far superior.

In a well-functioning democracy, the state constitution is considered more important than God’s holy book, whichever holy book that may be, and God matters only in your private life.

You’ll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist, I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance.

Women covering their heads is traditional, but now we’re seeing more and more women covering themselves from head to toe. This is said to be for religious reasons but it’s actually the conflation of religion and politics – every political movement has its slogans, flags and dress.

I talk about a Christianity that is enlightened enough to separate spirituality from the rest of life. Not just church and state, but knowledge and church.

I assume the closest members of my family don’t actually want to kill me, but the truth is that I have shamed and hurt them; they have to deal with the outrage that my public statements cause, and undoubtedly some members of my clan do want to kill me for that.

Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.

I call myself a liberal – a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.

After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.

In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

You’ll be pleased to hear, Christopher, that I am no longer a Muslim liberal but an atheist, I find that it obviates the necessity for any cognitive dissonance.

Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen.

Many people in Europe and the U.S. dispute the thesis that we are living through a clash of civilisations between Islam and the west. But a radical minority of Muslims firmly believes that Islam is under siege, and is committed to winning the holy war it has declared against the West.

One has to nurture a new generation, to raise children in the spirit of Islam.

All people hope Islam helps everything in life.

We have not ceased to insist that an Islam of tolerance is advantageous to all Muslims, for the Afghans and the whole world and we will always defend it.