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 ALIAll my life I have been a nomad.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.
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I would rather clean than beg.
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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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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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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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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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I’d love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God – much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts.
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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.
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There are some mosques with facilities for women; it’s usually a back room with a back-door entrance.
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I call myself a liberal – a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
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I think of Canada, first and foremost, in terms of space. The amount of space available is breathtaking.
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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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Avoiding offense means that we don’t accept each other as equals.
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My first experience in the Netherlands was very pleasant, extremely pleasant. I mean, I got my residence permit, refugee status, within four weeks of arrival. People treated me extremely well.
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We who don’t want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI