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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.

-Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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People Ask Me If

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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

Every Time I Went On Tv I Got A Threat.

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

I Love Life More Than I Love Death.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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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.

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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.

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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Making A Difference

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 Do Not Believe In God, Angels And The Hereafter.

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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

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