Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes (56 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: 56 quotes 6 likes

Famous Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes

“Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

“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 book Infidel

Source: Infidel

“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

“Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn't make it easier.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel

“Of course, I also encountered hostile reactions in campaigning. People called me names, even spat at me; I received more threats. The most remarkable people, to me, were those who apparently approved of everything I said but nonetheless wouldn't dream of voting for the Liberal Party. It reminded me of Somalia: they wouldn't vote outside their clan.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 15

“There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

https://archive.is/20130704013203/www.ejpress.org/article/10660

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes about people

“…with like-minded people one cannot discuss. With like-minded people one can only participate in a church service, and, as is widely known, I do not like church services.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

NOS Journaal, official Dutch newsrail, 8 pm, August 30, 2006. "Met gelijkgezinden kun je alleen maar een kerkdienst* houden, en zoals bekend, houd ik niet van kerkdiensten." "Kerkdienst" means church service of a Christian denomination, such as Mass (liturgy) and cannot be used in Dutch to describe a Muslim prayer service.

“In October 2002, I flew to California. It was the first time I had ever been in the United States, and I realized almost immediately that my preconceptions of America were completely ludicrous. I was expecting rednecks and fat people, with lots of guns, very aggressive police, and overt racism – a caricature of a caricature. In reality, of course, I saw people living perfectly well-ordered lives, jogging and drinking coffee.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 15

“Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 14, “Opening the Muslim Mind: An Enlightenment Mind (pp. 212-213)

“Many well-meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these Westerners are the ones who misunderstand Islam. The Quran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse, so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience or their community. I wanted my art exhibit to make it difficult for people to look away from this problem. I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that "Islam is peace and tolerance."”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 16: Politics

“Numbers were a mystery to me. I was so far behind. It was only in Nairobi, at age ten, that I figured out anything at all about the way time is calculated: minutes, hours, years. In Saudi Arabia the calendar had been Islamic, based on lunar months; Ethiopia maintained an ancient solar calendar. The year was written 1399 in Saudi Arabia, 1972 in Ethiopia, and 1980 in Kenya and everywhere else. In Ethiopia we even had a different clock: sunrise was called one o'clock and noon was called six. (Even within Kenya, people used two systems for telling time, the British and the Swahili.) The months, the days--everything was conceived differently. Only in Juja Road Primary school did I begin to figure out what people meant when they referred to precise dates and times. Grandma never learned to tell time at all. All her life, noon was when shadows were short, and your age was measured by rainy seasons. She got by perfectly well with her system.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 5: Secret Rendezvous, Sex, and the Scent of Sukumawiki

“Today you have this horrible alliance between the far left and the Islamists and they’re using the modern media tool to shut people like me out by smearing us.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Quoted in “Ayaan Hirsi Ali slams protesters who prevented her visit to Australia,” Emily Ritchie, The Australian, (April 5, 2017) https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/ayaan-hirsi-ali-hits-back-at-muslim-women-for-carrying-water-for-extremists/news-story/163a1a49c66d32a5501718d2984894ed

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes about women

“Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture’s intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women’s rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now

Source: Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now

“The man, who was probably an itinerant traditional circumciser from the blacksmith clan, picked up a pair of scissors. With the other hand, he caught hold of the place between my legs and started tweaking it, like Grandma milking a goat. "There it is, the kintir," one of the women said. Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain shot up between my legs, indescribable, and I howled. Then came the sewing: the long, blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia, my loud and anguished protests, Grandma's words of comfort and encouragement. "It's just this once in your life, Ayaan. Be brave, it's almost finished."”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

When the sewing was finished, he cut the thread off with his teeth.
Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 2: Under the Talal Tree

“Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel

“This was Saudi Arabia, where Islam originated, governed strictly according to the scriptures and example of the Prophet Muhammad. And by law, all women in Saudi Arabia must be in the care of a man. My mother argued loudly with the Saudi immigration official, but he merely repeated in an ever louder voice that she could not leave the airport without a man in charge.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 3: Playing Tag in Allah's Palace

“My mother saw herself as a victim. Once upon a time she had shaped her future and made decisions -- she had left Somalia for Aden, divorced her first husband and chosen my father--but at some point, it seemed, she lost hope. Many Somali women in her position would have worked, would have taken control of their lives, but my mother, having absorbed the Arab attitude that pious women should not work outside the home, felt that this would not be proper. It never occurred to her to go out and create a new life for herself, although she can't have been older than thirty-five or forty when my father left. Instead, she remained completely dependent. She nursed grievances; she was resentful; she was often violent; and she was always depressed.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 5

“I cannot think of a system of law that dehumanizes & degrades women more than Islamic Law.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

7 News Sydney, (April 4, 2017)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Trending quotes

“However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Variant: There are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
Source: Infidel

Silence , Time

“I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Epilogue: The Letter of the Law
Source: Infidel (2007)

“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 the bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 15: Threats

Bird , Time

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Quotes

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

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 13: Leiden

History , Idea , Drink , Wine

“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

“[In Ethiopia, ] Abeh enrolled all three of us in school, which was taught in Amharic. We spoke only Somali and Arabic, so everything was completely foreign again for a little while. It wasn't until I could communicate that I came to a startling realization: the little girls in school with me were not Muslims. They said they were Kiristaan, Christian, which in Saudi Arabia had been a hideous playground insult, meaning impure. I went bewildered to my mother, who confirmed it. Ethiopians were kufr, the very sound of the word was scornful. They drank alcohol and they didn't wash properly. They were despicable.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 4: Weeping Orphans and Widowed Wives

Alcohol , School , Girl , Communication

“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.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 1: Bloodlines

Age , Sense , Time , Personality

“Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)

“The most pressing question of our time is this: Is European society to be taken over by a radical invasion of Muslim immigrants?”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk", Palm Beach Daily News (21 March 2009)

Question , Time

“Every accommodation of Muslim demands leads to a sense of euphoria and a conviction that Allah is on their side. They see every act of appeasement as an invitation to make fresh demands.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk", Palm Beach Daily News (21 March 2009)

Sense

“Where there is no freedom of speech, there is no conscience.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Speech on Freedom of Expression at the European Parliament, 14 February 2008

Freedom

“Islam is not a religion of peace. It's a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk", Palm Beach Daily News (21 March 2009) http://web.archive.org/web/20090324042409/www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/03/21/0321muslimsali.html

Peace , Religion

“We had already learned part of the Quran by heart in Mogadishu, although of course we had never understood more than a word or two of it, because it was in Arabic. But the teacher in Mecca said we recited it disrespectfully: we raced it, to show off. So now we had to learn it all by heart again, but this time with reverent pauses. We still didn't understand more than the bare gist of it. Apparently, understanding wasn't the point.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

Understanding , Learning , Teachers , Time

“This is exactly how minds are opened: through honest, frank dialogue. Tears may be shed, but not blood.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 14, “Opening the Muslim Mind: An Enlightenment Mind” (p. 209)

Tear

“With our grandmother staying behind in Somalia, my mother had nobody with whom to share tasks and plans. She could do nothing on her own. She wasn't supposed to go out on the street without these new guardians of ours, our uncles, and neither were we. To phone them she had to scuttle down to the corner grocer, with my ten-year-old brother in tow acting as her protective male.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

“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 book Infidel

Introduction
Infidel (2007)

Death , People , Silence , Time

“On September 16, 1978, there was an eclipse of the moon in Riyadh. Late one afternoon it became visible: a dark shadow moving slowly across the face of the pale moon in the darkening blue sky. There was a frantic knocking on the door. When I opened it, our neighbor asked if we were safe. He said it was the Day of Judgement, when the Quran says the sun will rise from the west and the seas will flood, when all the dead will rise and Allah's angels will weigh our sins and virtue, expediting the good to Paradise and the bad to Hell. Though it was barely twilight, the muezzin suddenly called for prayer--not one mosque calling carefully after another, as they usually did, but all the mosques clamoring all at once, all over the city. There was shouting across the neighborhood. When I looked outside I saw people praying in the street.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Ch. 3

People , Angels , Hell , Sun

“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.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Hirsi Ali: "Never confuse Islamic Sharia and the Muslims who really mean it with those extremist Christians who live in the United States" http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2007/07/017367print.html, Jihad Watch, 13 July 2007
Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a video interview http://web.archive.org/web/20070703045949/http://www.cbc.ca/onthemap/fullpage.php?id=87, CBC News, 11 July 2007

Democracy

“Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)

Religion , Time , People , Learning

“Beware of zealots of any flavor. Beware of proselytizers of religious utopias. And beware of professors who confuse teaching students how to think with teaching them what to think.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Epilogue: Letter to My Unborn Daughter (p. 273)
2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)

Thinking

“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

Conclusion: The Miyé and the Magaalo (p. 261)
2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)

People , World , Food , Color

“A mosque is an island of gender apartheid.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 16, “Seeking God but Finding Allah” (p. 252)

“Contempt for women is inscribed in the works of Saint Paul.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 16, “Seeking God but Finding Allah” (p. 241)

Women

“That is my dream. But frankly, I do not know if Western feminists have the courage or clarity of vision to help me realize it.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 15, “Dishonor, Death, and Feminists” (p. 235)

Courage , Dreams , Help

“The liberation of women is like a vast, unfinished house. The west wing is fairly complete….
Go to the east wing, however, and what you find is worse than unfinished.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 15, “Dishonor, Death, and Feminists” (pp. 233-234)

Housing , Women

“Ignoring the problem means abandoning the next victims to their fate; even worse, it means abandoning the core values that sustain Western society.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 15, “Dishonor, Death, and Feminists” (p. 232)

Fate , Problem

“But the more pressing business is what feminists can do to prevent an alien culture of oppression from taking root in the West.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 15, “Dishonor, Death, and Feminists” (p. 231)

Business

“So this, in a nutshell, was my Enlightenment: free inquiry, universal education, individual freedom, the outlawing of private violence, and the protection of individual property rights.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 14, “Opening the Muslim Mind: An Enlightenment Mind” (p. 212)

Freedom , Universe , Education

“If there is an infallible mark of an advanced civilization it is surely the marginalization and criminalization of violence.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 13, “Violence and the Closing of the Muslim Mind” (p. 191)

“In the madrassa, questions were not welcome; they were considered impertinent.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 13, “Violence and the Closing of the Muslim Mind” (p. 186)

Question

“The fundamentalists seem haunted by the human body and neurotically debate which fractions of it should be covered, until they declare the whole thing, from head to toe, a gigantic private part.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 11, “School and Sexuality” (p. 154)

Parting

“In a clan society, every kind of human relationship turns on your honor within the clan; outside it, there is nothing—you are excluded from any kind of meaningful existence.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 11, “School and Sexuality” (p. 152)