Nomani 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

Fame invades your private life. It takes away from the time that you spend with friends, and the time that you can work. It tends to isolate you from the real world. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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

I started playing bass in my friend's band for some reason. It was just something I did because, well, he asked me if I wanted to play bass and he played me this song - Nirvana's version of "Molly's Lips", the Vaselines song - and he said, "You can do this! This is not hard!" and it's like a two-note song. I learned that and then I thought I was a genius. — Jens Lekman

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

Only saints can save the world. And only our own sins can stop us from being saints. — Peter Kreeft

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

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

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

As long as Iran believes that its security will be increased by having a nuclear program, it's going to pursue its program. — Stephen Kinzer

I'm definitely preoccupied by thinking I'm just a biological thing. I want to feel that there's more, but so often I'm reminded of how we're just like baboons, basically. — Yannis Philippakis

I can't tell you how many life lessons I've learned through bowling. Time management, finding balance in life, how to lose, how to win, how to bowl as a team and deal with people. How to do something I love to do and inspire other people. — Diandra Asbaty

When we raise our vibration to the state of "Being Love," we change and our world shifts into something so delicious and intoxicating that words hardly do justice to its description. — Leeza Donatella