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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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: November 13
Activist
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Feminist
Journalist
Politician
Scientist
Screenwriter
Xamar
Brother
Convert
Wants
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Dies
Terrified
Values
Burned
Half
Sister
Left
Islam
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Western
More quotes by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
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
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
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
However, some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
My friend, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered in 2004 for having been insufficiently reverent toward Islam.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I want people to emphasize life before death as opposed to life after death.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I would rather clean than beg.
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
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
Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
...Bear true witness, even if it be against yourselves, your parents or your family.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant 'while under their noses women are living like slaves.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
It takes a long time to dissolve the bars of a mental cage.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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
