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I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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

Call Liberal Myself
Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Freedom Liberty Offend
I love life more than I love death.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Choice Death Life Love Myself
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Bad Existence Myself Trauma Word World
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
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
But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Doubt Human Knowledge Point Stand
You have to let individuals make their own choices and respect that, even if it’s your own child. And that’s what was taken away from me. My father passed away thinking I still had to go back to his way of believing.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Believe Choice Death Father Freedom Independent Myself Thinking Willing
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Believe Culture Family Islam Life Myself Parents Western
They decided to let immigrants in and I am an immigrant. They gave us a chance to participate in this country’s life and I took it.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Chance Country Decision Immigrant Life Participate
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Atheist Islam Necessary Please Yourself
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
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
Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Believe Easy Reality
No one in the American Enterprise imposes their beliefs. We clash, and I think that’s what the West is all about.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Belief Impose Oneself Thinking
If we don’t take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Measurement Right
I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Death Life Myself People
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Born Faith Islam People Religion Scripture Young
All my life I have been a nomad.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

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

Capitalism Liberal Perfection Superior
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
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 ALI

Bad Brother Burn Death Family Mom Myself Religion Thinking
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Appearance Controversial Life
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
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
I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Argument Judgment Victim
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Believe Civilization Commitment Declare Holy Islam Live People War

I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.

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I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.

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