Muslim leaders should ask themselves what exactly their relationship is to a political movement that encourages young men to kill and main on religious grounds.
AYAAN HIRSI ALIMy conscience is informed by reason. It’s like Kant’s categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.
More Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes
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Every time I went on TV I got a threat.
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As soon as something like Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ appears with a Muhammad figure as the main lead, directed by an Arabic Theo van Gogh, the controversial late Dutch filmmaker, we will have taken an enormous step forward.
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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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Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one.
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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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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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All my life I have been a nomad.
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In a well-functioning democracy, the state constitution is considered more important than God’s holy book, whichever holy book that may be, and God matters only in your private life.
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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 want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
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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.
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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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Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.
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Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.
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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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI