People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no: I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIIf we don’t take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
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What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.
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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.
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The idea that if people are just friendly and demonstrate they want peace, that will be answered with good will – that is really naive.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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 assume the closest members of my family don’t actually want to kill me, but the truth is that I have shamed and hurt them; they have to deal with the outrage that my public statements cause, and undoubtedly some members of my clan do want to kill me for that.
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You have to let individuals make their own choices and respect that, even if it’s your own child. And that’s what was taken away from me. My father passed away thinking I still had to go back to his way of believing.
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I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
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It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
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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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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