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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

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It Was Friday, July

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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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.

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You Have To Let Individuals Make Their Own Choices And Respect That, Even If It's Your Own Child. And That's What Was Taken Away From Me. My Father Passed Away Thinking I Still Had To Go Back To His Way Of Believing.

I Am Grateful To My Father For Sending Me To School, And That We Moved From Somalia To Kenya, Where I Learned English.

I Was A Muslim Once, Remember, And It Was When I Was Most Devout That I Was Most Full Of Hate.

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.

Every Time I Went On Tv I Got A Threat.

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.

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.

The Demand That Islam Makes Of Women Is To Not Attract Attention To Yourself, And If You Are In A Secular Society, That Attire Does Exactly That, And It Is A Political Symbol, No Longer Religious.

Secular Society

Liberal Capitalism Is Not Perfect, But Compared To The Other 'isms,' It's Far Superior.

...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.

Free Speech Is The Bedrock Of Liberty And A Free Society. And Yes, It Includes The Right To Blaspheme And Offend.

Freedom Of Speech

The Christian Take On Hellfire Seems Less Dramatic Than The Muslim Vision, Which I Grew Up With, But Christian Magical Thinking Appeals To Me No More Than My Mother's Angels And Djinns.

We Have To Start With The Little Babies Who Are Born Now, Socialize Them In Freedom And Critical Thinking. We Don't Have To Throw Away Their Faith. People Confuse The Two, Thinking If You Are Enlightened That Means Apostasy. It Doesn't.

My First Experience In The Netherlands Was Very Pleasant, Extremely Pleasant. I Mean, I Got My Residence Permit, Refugee Status, Within Four Weeks Of Arrival. People Treated Me Extremely Well.

People Ask Me If I Have Some Kind Of Death Wish, To Keep Saying The Things I Do. The Answer Is No: I Would Like To Keep Living. However, Some Things Must Be Said, And There Are Times When Silence Becomes An Accomplice To Injustice.

...bear True Witness, Even If It Be Against Yourselves, Your Parents Or Your Family.

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.

I See No Difference Between Islam And Islamism. Islam Is Defined As Submission To The Will Of Allah, As It Is Described In The Koran. Islamism Is Just Islam In Its Most Pure Form.

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.

There Is A Huge Difference Between Being Tolerant And Tolerating Intolerance

Making A Difference

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.

I Don't Have Much In Me Left For Somalia, Because The Country Is So Broken, It's Not Realistic To Daydream About It.

Drinking Wine And Wearing Trousers Were Nothing Compared To Reading The History Of Ideas.

The Mistake That The Bush Administration Should Admit To Is Not So Much That They Made The Wrong Choices. They Made The Right Analysis; They Made The Right Choices. But What They Did Wrong Was The Execution Of Those Choices. That Was Wrong.

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.

However, Some Things Must Be Said, And There Are Times When Silence Becomes An Accomplice To Injustice.

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.

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.

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.

No One In The American Enterprise Imposes Their Beliefs. We Clash, And I Think That's What The West Is All About.

I Confront The European Elite's Self-image As Tolerant 'while Under Their Noses Women Are Living Like Slaves.

Avoiding Offense Means That We Don't Accept Each Other As Equals.

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.

What I Find Daunting Always Is To Stand On A Stage And Talk To People, Whether They Agree With Me Or Not.

All My Life I Have Been A Nomad.

I Think Of Canada, First And Foremost, In Terms Of Space. The Amount Of Space Available Is Breathtaking.

My Conscience Is Informed By Reason. It's Like Kant's Categorical Imperative: Behave To Others As You Would Wish They Behaved To You.

Categorical Imperative

I'd Like Muslims To Look At Their Religion As A Set Of Beliefs That They Can Appraise Critically And Pick And Choose From.

I Don't Believe There Is Such A Thing As 'moderate Islam.' I Think It's Better To Talk About Degrees Of Belief And Degrees Of Practice.

It Takes A Long Time To Dissolve The Bars Of A Mental Cage.

Tolerance Of Intolerance Is Cowardice.

Unlike The United Kingdom Or The Commonwealth, The Umma, Or Muslim Community, Has No Symbolic Leader, Let Alone A Formal One.

In 1985 As A Teenager In Kenya, I Was An Adamant Member Of The Muslim Brotherhood.

I Call Myself A Liberal - A Classical Liberal As In John Stuart Mill.

We Must Reclaim And Retake Feminism From Our Fellow Idiotic Women.

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.

In Holland I Have Seen Well-meaning, Principled People Blinded By Multiculturalism, Overwhelmed By The Imperative To Be Sensitive And Respectful Of Immigrant Culture, While Ignoring Criminal Abuse Of Women And Girls.

I Love Life More Than I Love Death.

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.

My Brother Thinks It Is Very, Very Bad That I Left Islam. My Half-sister Wants To Convert Me Back; I Want To Convert Her To Western Values. My Mum Is Terrified That When I Die, And We All Go To God, I Will Be Burned.

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.

Cognitive Dissonance

The Idea That If People Are Just Friendly And Demonstrate They Want Peace, That Will Be Answered With Good Will - That Is Really Naive.

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.

I Don't Believe In Hell And Heaven Anymore. Or Angels. I Think Islam Is A Superstition Like Every Other Superstition. But Now Because It's A Superstition, Unlike Christianity, That Hasn't Been Tested And Hasn't Gone Through A Process Of Enlightenment, I Think It's A Dangerous Superstition.

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.

The West Is Duly Terrified. But It Should Not Be Surprised.

I Would Like To Be Judged On The Validity Of My Arguments, Not As A Victim.

We Who Don't Want Radical Islam To Spread Must Compete With The Agents Of Radical Islam. I Want To See What Would Happen If Christians, Feminists And Enlightenment Thinkers Were To Start Proselytizing In The Muslim Community.

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.

There Are Some Mosques With Facilities For Women; It's Usually A Back Room With A Back-door Entrance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After The Horrific Massacre Wednesday At The French Weekly Satirical Magazine Charlie Hebdo, Perhaps The West Will Finally Put Away Its Legion Of Useless Tropes Trying To Deny The Relationship Between Violence And Radical Islam.

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.

The More We Oblige, The More We Self-censor, The More We Appease, The Bolder The Enemy Gets.

If Such A Young Nation As The U.s. Could Make It To Superpower Status, We Could Do It As Well.

If We Don't Take Effective Measures Now, The Netherlands Could Be Torn Between Two Extreme Rights.

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.

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.

Islam Is Not A Race...islam Is Simply A Set Of Beliefs, And It Is Not 'islamophobic' To Say Islam Is Incompatible With Liberal Democracy.

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 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.

My Friend, The Dutch Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, Was Murdered In 2004 For Having Been Insufficiently Reverent Toward Islam.

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.

I Would Rather Clean Than Beg.

I Want People To Emphasize Life Before Death As Opposed To Life After Death.

What We Are Now Doing With The Victory, And I Agree With You If You Condemn That And I Condemn Whole-heartedly The Trivial Bullshit It Is To Go After A Man Who Makes A Scientific Breakthrough And All That We As Women — Organized Women — Do Is To Fret About His Shirt?

Where There Is No Freedom Of Speech, There Is No Conscience.

Freedom Of Speech

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.

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.

But Without Doubts, Without A Standpoint Reached Through Questionings, Human Beings Can't Acquire Knowledge.

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.

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.

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.

European Children Are Educated In A Narrative Of Human Tolerance Every Day, And If You Want To Be Sure To Prevent A Backlash, You Should At Least Think Of Bringing Muslim Children And Teenagers Into The Fold Of That Narrative Of Tolerance.

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.

We Had A World Dominated By The Soviet Union On The One Hand, And The Americans On The Other Hand. They Called It The Cold War. But It Wasn't Cold. I Am Someone Who Comes From The Third World. In The Third World, The Cold War Wasn't Cold. Millions Had Been Killed. It Was A Proxy War.

Reality Is Not Easy, But All This Make-believe Doesn't Make It Easier.

The Veil Deliberately Marks Women As Private And Restricted Property, Nonpersons. The Veil Sets Women Apart From Men And Apart From The World; It Restrains Them, Confines Them, Grooms Them For Docility. A Mind Can Be Cramped Just As A Body May Be, And A Muslim Veil Blinkers Both Your Vision And Your Destiny. It Is The Mark Of A Kind Of Apartheid, Not The Domination Of A Race But Of A Sex.

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.

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 Mindset Of The Arab Desert In The Seventh Century. We Were Not Just Servants Of Allah, We Were Slaves.

I Wanted Secular, Non-muslim People To Stop Kidding Themselves That Islam Is Peace And Tolerance.

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.

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.

Many People In Europe And The U.s. Dispute The Thesis That We Are Living Through A Clash Of Civilisations Between Islam And The West. But A Radical Minority Of Muslims Firmly Believes That Islam Is Under Siege, And Is Committed To Winning The Holy War It Has Declared Against The West.

I Do Not Believe In God, Angels And The Hereafter.

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.

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