Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: November 13
Activist
Author
Feminist
Journalist
Politician
Scientist
Screenwriter
Xamar
Meaning
Respectful
Multiculturalism
Seen
Overwhelmed
Principled
Girl
Criminal
Holland
Culture
Immigrants
Immigrant
Women
Criminals
Ignoring
Wells
Sensitive
Imperative
Well
Abuse
Blinded
People
Girls
Imperatives

More quotes by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Image
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
Image
I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant 'while under their noses women are living like slaves.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
Reality is not easy, but all this make-believe doesn't make it easier.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
My conscience is informed by reason. It's like Kant's categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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
Image
I call myself a liberal - a classical liberal as in John Stuart Mill.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
In 1985 as a teenager in Kenya, I was an adamant member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
I would rather clean than beg.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
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
Image
It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Image
What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali