Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.
AYAAN HIRSI ALII was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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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.
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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.
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I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.
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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.
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It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
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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.
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I love life more than I love death.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
We had a world dominated by the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the Americans on the other hand. They called it the Cold War. But it wasn’t cold. I am someone who comes from the third world. In the third world, the cold war wasn’t cold. Millions had been killed. It was a proxy war.
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We who don’t want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
I think of Canada, first and foremost, in terms of space. The amount of space available is breathtaking.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI -
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.
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Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.
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I see no difference between Islam and Islamism. Islam is defined as submission to the will of Allah, as it is described in the Koran. Islamism is just Islam in its most pure form.
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The idea that if people are just friendly and demonstrate they want peace, that will be answered with good will – that is really naive.
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I confront the European elite’s self-image as tolerant ‘while under their noses women are living like slaves.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI