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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIMuslim leaders should ask themselves what exactly their relationship is to a political movement that encourages young men to kill and main on religious grounds.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale.
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My brother thinks it is very, very bad that I left Islam. My half-sister wants to convert me back; I want to convert her to Western values. My mum is terrified that when I die, and we all go to God, I will be burned.
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But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
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All my life I have been a nomad.
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There are some mosques with facilities for women; it’s usually a back room with a back-door entrance.
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We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
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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.
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I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.
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My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.
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I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
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I come from a world where the word ‘trauma’ doesn’t exist, because we are too poor. I didn’t have an easy life compared to the average European. But compared to the average African, it wasn’t all that bad.
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Every time I went on TV I got a threat.
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We have to start with the little babies who are born now, socialize them in freedom and critical thinking. We don’t have to throw away their faith. People confuse the two, thinking if you are enlightened that means apostasy. It doesn’t.
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European children are educated in a narrative of human tolerance every day, and if you want to be sure to prevent a backlash, you should at least think of bringing Muslim children and teenagers into the fold of that narrative of tolerance.
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I love life more than I love death.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI