I’d love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God – much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts.
AYAAN HIRSI ALII 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.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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When I was with the Labor Party, I’d get into trouble because the party bosses determined that some of what I wrote, or proposed to write about, wasn’t conducive to their policies or to electoral success.
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Avoiding offense means that we don’t accept each other as equals.
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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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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.
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In a sense, my grandmother was living in the Iron Age. There was no system of writing among the nomads. Metal artifacts were rare and precious…. The first time she saw a white person my grandmother was in her thirties: she thought this person’s skin had burned off.
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We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
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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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I call myself a liberal – a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
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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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I love life more than I love death.
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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 believe that the dysfunctional Muslim family constitutes a real threat to the very fabric of western life. It is in the family that children are groomed to practise, promote and pass on the norms of their parents’ culture.
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Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.
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The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.
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I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.
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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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I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
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Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.
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Islam is not a race. Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy.
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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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Liberal capitalism is not perfect, but compared to the other ‘isms,’ it’s far superior.
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In April 2006, a Dutch court ordered that I leave my safe-home that I was renting from the State. The judge concluded that my neighbors had a right to argue that they felt unsafe because of my presence in the building.
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If we don’t take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights.
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I don’t have much in me left for Somalia, because the country is so broken, it’s not realistic to daydream about it.
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Of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. Equating all Muslims with terrorism is stupid and wrong. But acknowledging that there is a link between Islam and terror is appropriate and necessary.
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However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI