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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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I see no difference between Islam and Islamism. Islam is defined as submission to the will of Allah, as it is described in the Koran. Islamism is just Islam in its most pure form.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Difference God Islam Purity Religion Submission
Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Family Parents True Yourself
I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘moderate Islam.’ I think it’s better to talk about degrees of belief and degrees of practice.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Belief Believe Better Degree Islam Modern Patience Practice
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
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
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
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Domination Hands Kill War World
Muslim leaders should ask themselves what exactly their relationship is to a political movement that encourages young men to kill and main on religious grounds.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Encouragement Ground Movement Muslim Politics Relationship Religious
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
Liberal capitalism is not perfect, but compared to the other ‘isms,’ it’s far superior.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Capitalism Liberal Perfection Superior
However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

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

Cage Dissolve Mental Time
I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Argument Judgment Victim
We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Feminism Ourselves Woman
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
I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Death Life Myself People
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
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
What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Agreement Finding Myself Stage Stand
Women covering their heads is traditional, but now we’re seeing more and more women covering themselves from head to toe. This is said to be for religious reasons but it’s actually the conflation of religion and politics – every political movement has its slogans, flags and dress.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Head Movement Politics Reason Religious See Woman
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
There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

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

Call Liberal Myself
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Children Education Human Narrative Tolerance Yourself
But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Doubt Human Knowledge Point Stand
In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Adamant Brother Islam
Every time I went on TV I got a threat.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Myself Threatening Time

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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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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