Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes - Page 4

...Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.

I come from a world where the word 'trauma' doesn't exist, because we are too poor. I didn't have an easy life compared to the average European. But compared to the average African, it wasn't all that bad.

Women covering their heads is traditional, but now we're seeing more and more women covering themselves from head to toe. This is said to be for religious reasons but it's actually the conflation of religion and politics - every political movement has its slogans, flags and dress.

I am grateful to my father for sending me to school, and that we moved from Somalia to Kenya, where I learned English.

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.

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

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

As soon as something like Monty Python's 'The Life of Brian' appears with a Muhammad figure as the main lead, directed by an Arabic Theo van Gogh, the controversial late Dutch filmmaker, we will have taken an enormous step forward.

All my life I have been a nomad.

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.

Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.

Every time you take a train, step into your car, walk into the shopping mall, go to the airport - every single time, something could happen. That's how terrorism works.

Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one.

What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.

No one in the American Enterprise imposes their beliefs. We clash, and I think that's what the West is all about.

The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised.

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.

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.

I call myself a liberal - a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.

In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

If we don't take effective measures now, the Netherlands could be torn between two extreme rights.

I would rather clean than beg.

Every time I went on TV I got a threat.

If such a young nation as the U.S. could make it to superpower status, we could do it as well.