Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIEuropean 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.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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The demand that Islam makes of women is to not attract attention to yourself, and if you are in a secular society, that attire does exactly that, and it is a political symbol, no longer religious.
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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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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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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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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.
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My conscience is informed by reason. It’s like Kant’s categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.
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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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I confront the European elite’s self-image as tolerant ‘while under their noses women are living like slaves.
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But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
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Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.
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All my life I have been a nomad.
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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.
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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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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.
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In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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