The Christian take on Hellfire seems less dramatic than the Muslim vision, which I grew up with, but Christian magical thinking appeals to me no more than my mother’s angels and djinns.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIWhat we are now doing with the victory, and I agree with you if you condemn that and I condemn whole-heartedly the trivial bullshit it is to go after a man who makes a scientific breakthrough and all that we as women — organized women — do is to fret about his shirt?
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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I love life more than I love death.
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I call myself a liberal – a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
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Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.
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If such a young nation as the U.S. could make it to superpower status, we could do it as well.
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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.
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My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.
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I’d like Muslims to look at their religion as a set of beliefs that they can appraise critically and pick and choose from.
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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.
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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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The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.
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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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If we don’t take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights.
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We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
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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 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.
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No one in the American Enterprise imposes their beliefs. We clash, and I think that’s what the West is all about.
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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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I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
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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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Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.
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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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Americans have always welcomed people of all backgrounds, religions, and races. It’s a spirit of tolerance, now energized and amplified by the cult of multiculturalism.
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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.
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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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All my life I have been a nomad.
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It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI