Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn’t make it easier.

I call myself a liberal – a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.

I confront the European elite’s self-image as tolerant ‘while under their noses women are living like slaves.

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.

It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.

I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.