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Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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
Every time you take a train, step into your car, walk into the shopping mall, go to the airport – every single time, something could happen. That’s how terrorism works.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Terrorism Time Train Work Yourself
Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Freedom Liberty Offend
Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Compare Drinking History Ideas Reading
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.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Book Constitution Democracy Holy Life Privacy State
I love life more than I love death.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Choice Death Life Love Myself
I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Hate Myself Religion Remember
My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Friendship Islam Murder Myself Religious
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
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
If we don’t take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Measurement Right
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

Behavior Conscience Information Yourself
European children are educated in a narrative of human tolerance every day, and if you want to be sure to prevent a backlash, you should at least think of bringing Muslim children and teenagers into the fold of that narrative of tolerance.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Children Education Human Narrative Tolerance Yourself
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

Experience Home People Pleasant Resident Treat
Islam is not a race. Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Belief Democracy Islam Liberal Race Religion Simplicity
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
Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Conscience Freedom Speech
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 do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Angel Believe God Myself
I lived in countries that had no democracy. so I don’t find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Country Democracy Freedom Known Live Luxury Yourself
I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Islam Peace People Tolerance
Avoiding offense means that we don’t accept each other as equals.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Acceptance Avoid Equality Offense Partner
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 ALI

Burn Herself Iron Live Metal Person Precious Rare System Time Writing
I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

English Gratitude Language Learning Move
In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Adamant Brother Islam
Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Believe Easy Reality
The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals.
AYAAN HIRSI ALI

Apologize Defend Individual Liberal Movement People Right Treatment

Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage.

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Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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