Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Famous Quotes By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
It is easy to be disgruntled if you are denied rights and freedoms to which you feel entitled. But if you are not coherent, if you cannot put into words what it is that displeases you and why it is unfair and should change, then you are dismissed as an unreasonable whiner. You may be lectured about perseverance and patience, life as a test, the need to accept the higher wisdom of others. — 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
The concept of God in Jewish orthodoxy is one where you're having constant quarrels with God. Where I come from, in Islam, the only concept of God is you submit to Him and you obey His commands; no quarreling allowed. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Where I grew up, death is a constant visitor. A virus, bacteria, a parasite; drought and famine; soldiers, and torturers; could bring it to anyone, any time. Death comes riding on raindrops that turned to floods. It catches the imagination of men in positions of authority who order their subordinates to hunt, torture, and kill people they imagine to be enemies. Death lures many others to take their own lives in order to escape a dismal reality. For many women, because of the perception of lost honor, death comes at the hands of a father, brother, or husband. Death comes to young women giving birth to new life, leaving the newborn orphaned in the hands of strangers. For those who live in anarchy and civil war, as in the country of my birth, Somalia, death is everywhere. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Saudi women had no faces. We pulled away and ran over to the black shapes. We stared up at them, trying to make out where their eyes could be. One raised her hand, gloved in black, and we shrieked, "They have hands!" We pulled faces at her. We were truly awful, but what we were seeing was so alien, so sinister, that we were trying to tame it, make it less awful. And what these Saudi women saw, of course, was little black kids acting like baboons. After — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
In these pages, it is my intention to make many people - not only Muslims but also Western apologists for Islam - uncomfortable. I am not going to do this by drawing cartoons. Rather, I intend to challenge centuries of religious orthodoxy with ideas and arguments that I am certain will be denounced as heretical. My argument is for nothing less than a Muslim Reformation. Without fundamental alterations to some of Islam's core concepts, I believe, we shall not solve the burning and increasingly global problem of political violence carried out in the name of religion. I intend to speak freely, in the hope that others will debate equally freely with me on what needs to change in Islamic doctrine, rather than seeking to stifle discussion. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
If feminism means anything at all, women with power should be addressing their energies to help the girls and women who suffer the pain of genital mutilation, who are at risk of being murdered because of their Western lifestyle and ideas, who must ask for permission just to leave the house, who are treated no better than serfs, branded and mutilated, traded without regard to their wishes. If you are a true feminist, these women should be your first priority. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
It was Friday, July 24, 1992, when I stepped on the train. Every year I think of it. I see it as my real birthday: the birth of me as a person, making decisions about my life on my own. I was not running away from Islam, or to democracy. I didn't have any big ideas then. I was just a young girl and wanted some way to be me; so I bolted into the unknown. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I think of Canada, first and foremost, in terms of space. The amount of space available is breathtaking. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Contrast this with the use by modern Islamic scholars of Muhammad's decision to marry a six-year-old girl, consummating their marriage when she turned nine, to justify child marriage in Iraq and Yemen today. — 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
There is one Islam, unreformed, but three sets of Muslims. Medina, Mecca, and. Dissidents, reformers, whatever you want to call them. The first group are the extremists and fundamentalists, the second the great mass of Muslims who just want to live their lives in peace, and the third are reformers. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I cannot emphasize enough how wrongheaded this is. Withholding criticism and ignoring differences are racism in its purest form. Yet these cultural experts fail to notice that, through their anxious avoidance of criticizing non-Western countries, they trap the people who represent these cultures in a state of backwardness. The experts may have the best of intentions, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
1. Have faith in the one God, Allah, and Muhammad, His Prophet; 2. Pray five times a day; 3. Fast during the day for the entire ninth month of Ramadan; 4. Provide charity; 5. Make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime, if possible. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
We who have the luxury of living in the West have an obligation to stand up for liberal principles. Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. And we need to say unambiguously to Muslims living in the West: if you want to live in our societies, to share in their material benefits, then you need to accept that our freedoms are not optional. They are the foundations of our way of life; of our civilization - a civilization that learned, slowly and painfully, not to burn heretics, but to honor them. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The trap of resentment. It is probably the worst mental prison in the world. It is the inability to let go of anger and the perceived or real injustices we suffer. Some people let one or two, or maybe ten unpleasant experiences poison the rest of their lives. They let their anger ferment and rot their personality. They end up seeing themselves as victims of their parents, teachers, their peers and preachers. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Let me make my point in the simplest possible terms: Islam is not a religion of peace. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Islamic scholars developed a doctrine known as "abrogation" (an-Nasikh wa'l Mansukh), whereby Allah issues new revelations that supersede old ones. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
A Muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or any of the other emotions and longings I felt when I read those books. A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. In Islam, becoming an individual is not a necessary development; many people, especially women, never develop a clear individual will. You submit: that is the literal meaning of the word islam: submission. The goal is to become quiet inside, so that you never raise your eyes, not even inside your mind. But — 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
When I look at people talking about intersectionality, what I see is the human being magnifying a biological attribute, and then putting them aside, putting them in a corner as victims of oppression....I most certainly don't see myself as a victim. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Over the course of my life, I have made many transitions - most of them taking me further away from my Somali roots and steadily toward the enlightened mentality of Western democracy. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The problem is that those of us who were born into Islam and who don't want to live according to scripture - we don't have what the Jews have, which is a rabbinical tradition that allows you to ask questions. We also don't have the church tradition that the Christians have. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
When a 'Life of Brian' comes out with Muhammad in the lead role, directed by an Arab equivalent of Theo van Gogh, it will be a huge step forward. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
The exercise of my reason itself was forbidden. But the questions never stopped coming, eventually leading to this one: "Why would a benevolent God set up the world like this, marking one half of the population to be second-class citizens? Or was it just men who did this? — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Most Americans, and indeed most Europeans, would much rather ignore the fundamental conflict between Islam and their own worldview. This is partly because they generally assume that 'religion,' however defined, is a force for good and that any set of religious beliefs should be considered acceptable in a tolerant society. I can sympathize with that.
But that does not mean that we should be blind to the potential consequences of accommodating beliefs that are openly hostile to Western laws, traditions, and values. For it is not simply a religion we have to deal with. It is a political religion many of whose fundamental tenets are irreconcilably inimical to our way of life. We need to insist that it is not we in the West who must accommodate ourselves to Muslim sensitivities; it is Muslims who must accommodate themselves to Western liberal ideals. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
This was an infidel country, whose way of life we Muslims were supposed to oppose and reject. Why was it, then, so much better run, better led, and made for such better lives than the places we came from? Shouldn't the places where Allah was worshipped and His laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers' countries ignorant, poor, and at war? — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Leading Muslim clerics (the ulema) have come to the consensus that Islam is more than a mere religion, but rather the one and only comprehensive system that embraces, explains, integrates, and dictates all aspects of human life: personal, cultural, political, as well as religious. In short, Islam handles everything. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Liberal capitalism is not perfect, but compared to the other 'isms,' it's far superior. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised ... — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
With the first commandment, Mohammed tried to imprison common sense. And with the second commandment, the beautiful, romantic side of mankind was enslaved. — 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
Bin Laden's quotes from the Quaran resonated in my brain: "When you meet the unbelievers, strike them in the neck." "If you do not go out and fight, God will punish you severely and put others in your place." "Wherever you find the polytheists, kill them, seize them, besiege them, ambush them." "You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as friends; they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
All scriptures contain contradictions and the Qur'an is no exception. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture's intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women's rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity. — 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
Every time I went on TV I got a threat. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I was learning that in these extremely civilized circles, conflict is dealt with in a very ornate and hypocritical manner. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
A woman who is baarri is like a pious slave. She honors her husband's family and feeds them without question or complaint. She never whines or makes demands of any kind. She is strong in service, but her head is bowed. If her husband is cruel, if he rapes her and then taunts her about it, if he decides to take another wife, or beats her, she lowers her gaze and hides her tears. And she works hard, faultlessly. She is a devoted, welcoming, well-trained work animal. This is baarri. If — 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
I believe that the dysfunctional Muslim family constitutes a real threat to the very fabric of western life. It is in the family that children are groomed to practise, promote and pass on the norms of their parents' culture. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I can well remember how when someone in my family lay sick or dying - like my aunt when she contracted breast cancer - the Qur'an was chanted by the bedside, in the belief that its words alone would cure the patient. Analogies with Christian prayer are misleading because the reciter of the Qur'an is voicing God's words, not appealing to God for intercession. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
In response to the question "Do you favor or oppose making sharia law, or Islamic law, the official law of the land in our country?" the nations with the five largest Muslim populations - Indonesia (204 million), Pakistan (178 million), Bangladesh (149 million), Egypt (80 million), and Nigeria (76 million) - showed overwhelming support for sharia. To be precise, 72 percent of Indonesian Muslims, 84 percent of Pakistani Muslims, 82 percent of Bangladeshi Muslims, 74 percent of Egyptian Muslims, and 71 percent of Nigerian Muslims supported making sharia the state law of their respective societies. In two Islamic nations that are considered to be transitioning to democracy, the number of sharia supporters was even higher. Pew found that 91 percent of Iraqi Muslims and 99 percent of Afghan Muslims supported making sharia their country's official law. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I accept that there are multitudes seeking God, seeking meaning, and so on, but if they reject atheism, I would rather they became modern-day Catholics or Jews than that they became Muslims. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn't make it easier. — 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
There can only be one answer to this hideous act of jihad against the staff of Charlie Hebdo. It is the obligation of the Western media and Western leaders, religious and lay, to protect the most basic rights of freedom of expression, whether in satire on any other form. The West must not appease, it must not be silenced. We must send a united message to the terrorists: Your violence cannot destroy our soul. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
What matters is abuse, and how it is anchored in a religion that denies women their rights as humans. What matters is that atrocities against women and children are carried out in Europe. What matters is that governments and societies must stop hiding behind a hollow pretense of tolerance so that they can recognize and deal with the problem. — 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
Nor is my dream of a Muslim Reformation a matter for Muslims alone. People of all faiths, or of no faith, have a great interest in a changed Islam: a faith that is more respectful of the basic doctrines of human rights, that universally preaches less violence and more tolerance, that promotes less corrupt and less chaotic governments, that allows for more doubt and more dissent, that encourages more education, more freedom, and more equality before a modern system of law. I see no other way forward for us -- at least no other way that is not strewn with corpses. Islam and modernity must be reconciled. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. In Islam, becoming an individual is not a necessary development; many people, especially women, never develop a clear individual will. You submit: that is the literal meaning of the word islam: submission. The goal is to become quiet inside, so that you never raise your eyes, not even inside your — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
This was not an attack by a mentally deranged, lone-wolf gunman. This was not an 'un-Islamic' attack by a bunch of thugs - the perpetrators could be heard shouting that they were avenging the Prophet Muhammad. Nor was it spontaneous. It was planned to inflict maximum damage, during a staff meeting, with automatic weapons and a getaway plan. It was designed to sow terror, and in that it has worked. — 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
You must learn what to fear and what not to fear. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
This wasn't just a band of frustrated Egyptian architects in Hamburg. It was much bigger than that,. and had nothing to do with frustration. It was about belief. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I think now that this obsession with identifying racism, which I saw so often among Somalis too, was really a comfort mechanism, to keep people from feeling personally inadequate and to externalize the causes of their unhappiness. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
As a reader, I could put on someone else's shoes and live through his adventures, borrow his individuality and make choices that I didn't have at home. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
On Egyptian television during a 2010 talk show, a Muslim cleric, Sa'd Arafat, reviewed the rules for beating one's wife. He began by saying, "Allah honored wives by installing the punishment of beating."21 Beating, he explained, was a legitimate punishment if a husband did not receive sexual satisfaction from his wife. But he added: "There is a beating etiquette." Beatings must avoid the face because they should not make a wife ugly. They must be done at chest level. He recommended using a short rod. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
If this incomplete ayaan hirsi wants fame sooo much then she shouldn't use religion as a base to be known. Some people justify their in justifications by selling their souls to the devil, ayaan I'm sure u have taken the time to read the bible. Do tell me it's stance on woman comparing to men ... — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
A virgin's silence is the proper answer to a marriage proposal; it signifies a dignified consent. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
There is in fact no good reason al-Ghazali and his ilk should have the last word in defining Islam. Muslims around the world cannot go on claiming that "true" Islam has somehow been "hijacked" by a group of extremists. Instead they must acknowledge that inducements to violence lie at the root of their own most sacred texts, and take responsibility for actively redefining their faith. — 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
If they lived in Saudi Arabia, under Shari'a law, these college girls in their pretty scarves wouldn't be free to study, to work, to drive, to walk around. In Saudi Arabia girls their age and younger are confined, are forced to marry, and if they have sex outside of marriage they are sentenced to prison and flogged. According to the Quran, their husband is permitted to beat them and decide whether they may work or even leave the house; he may marry other women without seeking their approval, and if he chooses to divorce them, they have no right to resist or to keep custody of their children. Doesn't this matter at all to these clever young Muslim girls in America? — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Scheffer said a new ethnic underclass of immigrants had formed, and it was much too insular, rejecting the values that knit together Dutch society and creating new, damaging social divisions. There wasn't enough insistence on immigrants adapting; teachers even questioned the relevance of teaching immigrant children Dutch history, and a whole generation of these children were being written off under a pretence of tolerance. Scheffer said there was no place in Holland for a culture that rejected the separation of church and state and denied rights to women and homosexuals. He foresaw social unrest. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
In every way, to read these books of Western history was sinning. Even the history of how modern states formed confronted me with the contradictions of my belief in Allah. The European separation of God's world from the state was itself haram. The Quran says there can be no government without God; the Quran is Allah's book of laws for the conduct of worldly affairs. In — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
People in the West... have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically for fear of being called racist. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
People accuse me of having interiorized a feeling of racial inferiority, so that I attack my own culture out of self-hatred, because I want to be white. This is a tiresome argument. Tell me, is freedom then only for white people? Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestors' traditions and mutilate my daughters? To agree to be humiliated and powerless? To watch passively as my countrymen abuse women and slaughter each other in pointless disputes? When I came to a new culture, where I saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practice? — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Even with protection, even with death threats, I can publish, I can travel and I can live the life that I want and not the one my parents want or some imam somewhere thinks I should live. — 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
The people who believe themselves to be on the left, and who defend the agents of Islam in the name of tolerance and culture, are being rightwing. Not just rightwing. Extreme rightwing. I don't understand how you can be so upset about the Christian right and just ignore the Islamic right. I'm talking about equality. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Sister Aziza told us about the Jews. She described them in such a way that I imagined them as physically monstrous: they had horns on their heads, and noses so large they stuck right out of their faces like great beaks. Devils and djinns literally flew out of their heads to mislead Muslims and spread evil. Everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews. The Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, who had attacked the Islamic Revolution in Iran, was a Jew. The Americans, who were giving money to Saddam, were controlled by the Jews. The Jews controlled the world, and that was why we had to be pure: to resist this evil influence. Islam was under attack, and we should step forward and fight the Jews, for only if all Jews were destroyed would peace come for Muslims. I — 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
I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant 'while under their noses women are living like slaves. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
Of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. Equating all Muslims with terrorism is stupid and wrong. But acknowledging that there is a link between Islam and terror is appropriate and necessary. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Most of all, I think it was the novels that saved me from submission. I was young, but the first tiny, meek beginnings of my rebellion had already clicked into place. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Avoiding offense means that we don't accept each other as equals. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Unlike white commentators, who were hamstrung by the fear that they would be labeled racist, I could voice my criticisms of the feudal, religious, and repressive mechanisms that were holding back women from Muslim communities. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
In the real world, equal respect for all cultures doesn't translate into a rich mosaic of colorful and proud peoples interacting peacefully while maintaining a delightful diversity of food and craftwork. It translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Such is the tragedy of girls and women who by the strictures of their upbringing and culture cannot own up to their body's desires, even to themselves. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
both the immigrants from the tribe and bloodline and the activists of prosperity share a common delusion: they believe that it is possible to make this transition without paying the price of choosing between values. One side wants change in their circumstances without letting go of tradition; the other, overcome with guilt and pity, wants to help newcomers with the material change but cannot bring themselves to demand that they excise traditional, outdated values from their outlook. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance — Ayaan Hirsi Ali