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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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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
My conscience is informed by reason. It’s like Kant’s categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Behavior Conscience Information Yourself
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
Every time I went on TV I got a threat.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Myself Threatening Time
In Holland I have seen well-meaning, principled people blinded by multiculturalism, overwhelmed by the imperative to be sensitive and respectful of immigrant culture, while ignoring criminal abuse of women and girls.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Abuse Crime Ignorance Meaning Myself People Principle Respectful Woman
Avoiding offense means that we don’t accept each other as equals.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Acceptance Avoid Equality Offense Partner
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Death Injustice Kind Live People Silence Time
It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Cage Dissolve Mental Time
If such a young nation as the U.S. could make it to superpower status, we could do it as well.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Nation Status Well Young
I call myself a liberal – a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Call Liberal Myself
Liberal capitalism is not perfect, but compared to the other ‘isms,’ it’s far superior.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Capitalism Liberal Perfection Superior
I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

English Gratitude Language Learning Move
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
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
All my life I have been a nomad.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Life Myself Traveler
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Conscience Goodness Myself Thinking

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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Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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