Ayaan Hirsi Ali quotes - page 4

Many well-meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these Westerners are the ones who misunderstand Islam. The Quran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse, so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience or their community. I wanted my art exhibit to make it difficult for people to look away from this problem. I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that "Islam is peace and tolerance." (Ayaan Hirsi Ali)

I'd like Muslims to look at their religion as a set of beliefs that they can appraise critically and pick and choose from.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

When your life is threatened, whether it's by human beings or by disease or whatever, you come to appreciate life.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Americans have always welcomed people of all backgrounds, religions, and races. It's a spirit of tolerance, now energized and amplified by the cult of multiculturalism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In October 2002, I flew to California. It was the first time I had ever been in the United States, and I realized almost immediately that my preconceptions of America were completely ludicrous. I was expecting rednecks and fat people, with lots of guns, very aggressive police, and overt racism – a caricature of a caricature. In reality, of course, I saw people living perfectly well-ordered lives, jogging and drinking coffee.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The man, who was probably an itinerant traditional circumciser from the blacksmith clan, picked up a pair of scissors. With the other hand, he caught hold of the place between my legs and started tweaking it, like Grandma milking a goat. "There it is, the kintir," one of the women said. Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain shot up between my legs, indescribable, and I howled. Then came the sewing: the long, blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia, my loud and anguished protests, Grandma's words of comfort and encouragement. "It's just this once in your life, Ayaan. Be brave, it's almost finished."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I love life more than I love death. (Ayaan Hirsi Ali)

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

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Avoiding offense means that we don't accept each other as equals.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there, and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn't done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Christian take on Hellfire seems less dramatic than the Muslim vision, which I grew up with, but Christian magical thinking appeals to me no more than my mother's angels and djinns.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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

When I was with the Labor Party, I'd get into trouble because the party bosses determined that some of what I wrote, or proposed to write about, wasn't conducive to their policies or to electoral success.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There are some mosques with facilities for women; it's usually a back room with a back-door entrance.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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)

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

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

I grew up in Somalia, in Saudi Arabia, in Ethiopia, and in Kenya. I came to Europe in 1992, when I was 22, and became a member of Parliament in Holland.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Image

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0

Occupation: Dutch-American Politician
Born: November 13, 1969
Quotes count: 143
Wikipedia: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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