Ayaan Hirsi Ali quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Top Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes

Browse top 53 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Favorite Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes

1. "Avoiding offense means that we don't accept each other as equals." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2. "I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant 'while under their noses women are living like slaves." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

3. "Liberal capitalism is not perfect, but compared to the other 'isms,' it's far superior." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

4. "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

5. "I would rather clean than beg." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

6. "If such a young nation as the U.S. could make it to superpower status, we could do it as well." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

7. "There are some mosques with facilities for women; it's usually a back room with a back-door entrance." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

8. "They decided to let immigrants in and I am an immigrant. They gave us a chance to participate in this country's life and I took it." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

9. "Muslim leaders should ask themselves what exactly their relationship is to a political movement that encourages young men to kill and maim on religious grounds." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

10. "I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

11. "I do not believe in God, angels and the hereafter." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

12. "The idea that if people are just friendly and demonstrate they want peace, that will be answered with good will - that is really naive." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

13. "Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

14. "Every time I went on TV I got a threat." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

15. "I call myself a liberal - a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

16. "I don't have much in me left for Somalia, because the country is so broken, it's not realistic to daydream about it." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

17. "I have had to pay a price for leaving Islam and for speaking out. I have to pay for round-the-clock security because of the death threats against me." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

18. "You must learn what to fear and what not to fear." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

19. "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

20. "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

21. "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

22. "However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

23. "I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

24. "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

25. "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." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

26. "Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

27. "...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

28. "Mahad had done wrong, but I had been unforgivably trusting, which meant I was fatally dense. I had failed to be suspicious. I deserved my grandma's scorn. I was not allowed to talk back to Grandma, and Ma said nothing to defend me. I could only sob, and seethe." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

29. "This move is called Qworegoys,and the women of my grandmother's family taught it to their daughters just as they taught them to make thorn-bush fences to protect the hut from hyenas." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

30. "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

31. "I think of Canada, first and foremost, in terms of space. The amount of space available is breathtaking." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

32. "I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

33. "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

34. "If we don't take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

35. "In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

36. "Infuriatingly stupid analysts - especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world - wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were all about Islam saving Aristotle and the zero, which medieval Muslim scholars had done more than eight hundred years ago; about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent. These were fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

37. "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

38. "Adults never explained anything. They saw children as akin to small animals, creatures who had to be tugged and beaten into adulthood before they were worthy of information and discussion." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

39. "A virgin's silence is the proper answer to a marriage proposal; it signifies a dignified consent." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

40. "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

41. "I would not have put it this way in those days, but because I was born a woman, I could never become an adult. I would always be a minor, my decisions made for me. I would always be a unit in a vast beehive. I might have a decent life, but I would be dependent—always—on someone treating me well. I knew that another kind of life was possible. I had read about it, and now I could see it, smell it in the air around me: the kind of life I had always wanted, with a real education, a real job, a real marriage. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to become a person, an individual, with a life of my own." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

42. "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

43. "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

44. "Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

45. "It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of secual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values. The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

46. "By declaring our Prophet infallible and not permitting ourselves to question him, we Muslims had set up a static tyranny. The Prophet Muhammad attempted to legislate every aspect of life. By adhering to his rules of what is permitted and what is forbidden, we Muslims supressed the freedom to think for ourselves and to act as we chose. We froze the moral outlook of billions of people into the mind-set of the Arab desert in the seventh century. We were not just servants of Allah, we were slaves." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

47. "...Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

48. "Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn't make it easier." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

49. "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

50. "I lived in countries that had no democracy... so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom." ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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