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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIBut without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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I’d like Muslims to look at their religion as a set of beliefs that they can appraise critically and pick and choose from.
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Every time I went on TV I got a threat.
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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.
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The demand that Islam makes of women is to not attract attention to yourself, and if you are in a secular society, that attire does exactly that, and it is a political symbol, no longer religious.
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Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.
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The Christian take on Hellfire seems less dramatic than the Muslim vision, which I grew up with, but Christian magical thinking appeals to me no more than my mother’s angels and djinns.
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But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
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Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.
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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.
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I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
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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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The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals.
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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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No one in the American Enterprise imposes their beliefs. We clash, and I think that’s what the West is all about.
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If such a young nation as the U.S. could make it to superpower status, we could do it as well.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI