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Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Door Escape Islam Open Prison Religion Stay
I love life more than I love death.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Choice Death Life Love Myself
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Angel Drama Islam Magic Mom Myself Thinking Version
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Belief Democracy Islam Liberal Race Religion Simplicity
Avoiding offense means that we don’t accept each other as equals.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Acceptance Avoid Equality Offense Partner
I have had to pay a price for leaving Islam and for speaking out. I have to pay for round-the-clock security because of the death threats against me.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Death Islam Leaving Myself Pay Price Threat
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Country Democracy Freedom Known Live Luxury Yourself
After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Death Horrific Islam Relationship Violence
In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Adamant Brother Islam
As a woman you are better off in life earning your own money. You couldn’t prevent your husband from leaving you or taking another wife, but you could have some of your dignity if you didn’t have to beg him for financial support.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Better Earning Financial Leaving Life Support Woman
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Burn Herself Iron Live Metal Person Precious Rare System Time Writing
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Acknowledgement Equation Majority Necessary Stupidity Terrorist Wrong
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Head Movement Politics Reason Religious See Woman
What we are now doing with the victory, and I agree with you if you condemn that and I condemn whole-heartedly the trivial bullshit it is to go after a man who makes a scientific breakthrough and all that we as women — organized women — do is to fret about his shirt?
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Agreement Himself Organization Shirt Victory Woman
However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Injustice Silence Time
Americans have always welcomed people of all backgrounds, religions, and races. It’s a spirit of tolerance, now energized and amplified by the cult of multiculturalism.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Amplify Culture Race Religion Welcome

Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.

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Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.

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