Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I assume the closest members of my family don't actua...

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

islam democracy race

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

diversity ignorance real

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

destiny men sex

The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

appease self enemy

There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

making-a-difference tolerance differences

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

support wife husband

Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

intolerance cowardice tolerance

I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

hate remember

It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

cages bars long

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

islamic christian believe

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

practice believe thinking

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

luxury democracy country

I love life more than I love death.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

love-death i-love-life love-life

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

islam doors bird

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

mind people thinking

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

abuse girl people

I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

tolerance islam people

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

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

freedom-of-speech conscience speech

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

differences racism country

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.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

secular-society political religious

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.