“I confront the European elite’s self-image as tolerant ‘while under their noses women are living like slaves.”

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.

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.

It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.

I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.

Why do elites hate the poor? It’s xenophobia. They don’t know any poor people – except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don’t speak English.

Elicited by a particular set of circumstances on a particular day, and we do well to wait a while before concluding that what we see is the whole person.

Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics.

Our Pakistan elites are spoiled by permanent foreign aid and therefore find it difficult to change course. Pakistan needs someone who stands up and says: Fundamentalism is bad, capitalism is good.

According to Goering and the Luftwaffe High Command, they were supposed to be the fighter elite.

I would never call myself cultural elite, but you might be cultural elite.

Elite is not a bad word, it’s an aspirational one.

Language does not make one an elite.