My brother thinks it is very, very bad that I left Islam. My half-sister wants to convert me back; I want to convert her to Western values. My mum is terrified that when I die, and we all go to God, I will be burned.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIWhere there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.
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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.
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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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There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance.
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In 2010, I suggested that if you are a good Muslim with a good conscience, go and look for a better God, and I think that was juvenile of me.
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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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In the real world, equal respect for all cultures doesn’t translate into a rich mosaic of colorful and proud peoples interacting peacefully while maintaining a delightful diversity of food and craftwork. It translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse.
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Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.
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Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one.
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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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But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
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I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.
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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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However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
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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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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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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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We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
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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.
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All my life I have been a nomad.
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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.
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I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
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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 love life more than I love death.
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