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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIAfter 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.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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My conscience is informed by reason. It’s like Kant’s categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.
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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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The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised.
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Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.
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I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
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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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Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.
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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.
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I love life more than I love death.
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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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Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.
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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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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 call myself a liberal – a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
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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.
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In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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Many people in Europe and the U.S. dispute the thesis that we are living through a clash of civilisations between Islam and the west. But a radical minority of Muslims firmly believes that Islam is under siege, and is committed to winning the holy war it has declared against the West.
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Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.
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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.
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I would rather clean than beg.
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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.
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We had a world dominated by the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the Americans on the other hand. They called it the Cold War. But it wasn’t cold. I am someone who comes from the third world. In the third world, the cold war wasn’t cold. Millions had been killed. It was a proxy war.
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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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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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I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
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I think of Canada, first and foremost, in terms of space. The amount of space available is breathtaking.
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