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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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I talk about a Christianity that is enlightened enough to separate spirituality from the rest of life. Not just church and state, but knowledge and church.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Enlightenment Knowledge Life Myself Separate State Talk
I’d like Muslims to look at their religion as a set of beliefs that they can appraise critically and pick and choose from.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Choice Criticism Muslim Myself Region
The mistake that the Bush administration should admit to is not so much that they made the wrong choices. They made the right analysis; they made the right choices. But what they did wrong was the execution of those choices. That was wrong.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Administration Analysis Mistake Right Wrong
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
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
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
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
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
Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Alone Formal Leadership
I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Argument Judgment Victim
The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Bold Enemy Obligation
In April 2006, a Dutch court ordered that I leave my safe-home that I was renting from the State. The judge concluded that my neighbors had a right to argue that they felt unsafe because of my presence in the building.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Argument Building Leaving Order Right State
Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Coward One Liner Tolerance
It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Cage Dissolve Mental Time
Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Name Oppression Recognition Religion Tolerance
I don’t have much in me left for Somalia, because the country is so broken, it’s not realistic to daydream about it.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Break Country Myself Realistic

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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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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