What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIAs 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.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
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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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The mistake that the Bush administration should admit to is not so much that they made the wrong choices. They made the right analysis; they made the right choices. But what they did wrong was the execution of those choices. That was wrong.
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It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
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Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale.
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I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
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Avoiding offense means that we don’t accept each other as equals.
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I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
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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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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 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 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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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.
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As soon as something like Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ appears with a Muhammad figure as the main lead, directed by an Arabic Theo van Gogh, the controversial late Dutch filmmaker, we will have taken an enormous step forward.
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The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI