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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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Attraction Demand Islam Religious Society Symbol Woman
I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Islam Peace People Tolerance
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
The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Bold Enemy Obligation
Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Born Faith Islam People Religion Scripture Young
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Atheist Islam Necessary Please Yourself
I confront the European elite’s self-image as tolerant ‘while under their noses women are living like slaves.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Elite Image Live Myself Slave Tolerance Woman
There are some mosques with facilities for women; it’s usually a back room with a back-door entrance.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Entrance Facility Religious Woman
It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Cage Dissolve Mental Time
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

Community Enlightenment Islam Radical Start Thinking
We have to start with the little babies who are born now, socialize them in freedom and critical thinking. We don’t have to throw away their faith. People confuse the two, thinking if you are enlightened that means apostasy. It doesn’t.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Born Critical Enlightenment Freedom Social Start Thinking Yourself
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
But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can’t acquire knowledge.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Doubt Human Knowledge Point Stand
I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Death Life Myself People
In 2010, I suggested that if you are a good Muslim with a good conscience, go and look for a better God, and I think that was juvenile of me.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Conscience Goodness Myself Thinking
The idea that if people are just friendly and demonstrate they want peace, that will be answered with good will – that is really naive.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Answer Friendly Goodness Ideas Naive People
Avoiding offense means that we don’t accept each other as equals.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Acceptance Avoid Equality Offense Partner
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Death Horrific Islam Relationship Violence
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Artifact Beautiful Building God Love Myself Visit
I call myself a liberal – a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Call Liberal Myself
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
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Bad Brother Burn Death Family Mom Myself Religion Thinking
In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Adamant Brother Islam
There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Difference Huge Tolerance
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

Chance Country Decision Immigrant Life Participate
I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Angel Believe God Myself
If such a young nation as the U.S. could make it to superpower status, we could do it as well.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Nation Status Well Young

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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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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