Asra Quotes & Sayings

I was born in 1965. When I grew up in India, there was no expectation that a good Muslim woman wore the headscarf. But what happened when I came here to the U.S. and the emergence of the Saudi and Iranian theologies in the world is that the headscarf became the hijab and the hijab is now the idea that is synonymous with headscarf. — Asra Nomani

What we argue in the piece is that the headscarf has become a political symbol for an ideology of Islam that is exported to the world by the theocracies of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just like the Catholic Church in the 17th century did religious propaganda to challenge the Protestant Reformation, these ideologies are trying to define the way Muslims express Islam in the world. — Asra Nomani

We must keep prices under control to ensure that price increases do not exert a major negative impact on people's lives. — Li Keqiang

All that is unfair, offends us if it's not beneficial for us — Luc De Clapiers

In meditation we can watch the itch instead of scratching it. — Ram Dass

We're talking about everybody's free right to have choice. And so what we're also getting are interesting messages like you really need to obey the command of Allah and put a scarf on your head. And what we caution well-intentioned Americans and others to think about is whether the scarf matches their own values related to issues of honor and shame. — Asra Nomani

The thing I didn't see back then is that people can be destroyed by goodness. Damage can be done by hope. If people aren't ready for hope, it's a cruel trick to put it on their doorstep. — Barbara Hall

O thrush, your song is passing sweet, But never a song that you have sung Is half so sweet as thrushes sang When my dear love and I were young. — William Morris

What we are saying is we have to be smart about the ideology that is putting this idea into the world that a woman must be defined by her idea of modesty, that she is the vessel for honor in a community. And I believe that we have to be very pragmatic, too, about the consequence of this. Women in Iran and Saudi Arabia are jailed, punished and harassed if they don't cover themselves legally, according to the standard of those countries. So the consequences for many women is oftentimes very dark. — Asra Nomani

Is the alcohol really just making me stupid, or it bringing out something inside of me that I don't want to believe is there — J.A. Redmerski

We don't believe we are too sexy for our hair. — Asra Nomani

There is a fundamental flaw in interpretations of sharia that say a woman or man should be punished for sex outside of marriage — Asra Nomani

It would be nice if Patrick Murphy was half as upset about Democrats removing God and Jerusalem from their platform, or booing when they were added back in, as he is pretending to be about our new tv ad which simply points out what happened. — Allen West

Focus first on where you want to be, and why, and then on the right path to get there. — Mark Halperin

We heard from a professor at an evangelical college who wore a hijab in solidarity with Muslim women. Now we have a different perspective. Asra Nomani co-wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post titled in part "As Muslim Women, We Actually Ask You Not To Wear The Hijab." — Ari Shapiro

You celebrate a person's life by living your life fully. — Asra Nomani

not enough might be worse than not at all — Nora Roberts

I'd always known that when you went through one of these doors, you went to another planet, and that that other planet might be so far away, you couldn't fly there in spaceship in a million years. Somehow, the whole thing had never seemed strange before today. — Mary G. Thompson

Very interestingly in a movement that I call now the hijab lobby, sadly promulgated by women that some of us refer to as Muslim mean girls and their friends, are trying to put out this meme that we are denying women their choice. — Asra Nomani

The hijab or a variation of the word shows up eight times in the Quran. And it never means headscarf. And so what's happened is that the identity of a Muslim woman especially is being equated to this piece of cloth on her head. And in that ideology there's a very fundamental assumption that people need to think very deeply about, which is do you believe that a woman is too sexy for her hair? — Asra Nomani

I don't understand. Why can't she just be like the other teachers? Why does she have to care? — Tabitha Suzuma