61 quotes
In the madrassa, questions were not welcome; they were considered impertinent.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
If your goal is to seek the truth, which education is supposed to do, then we cannot deny that a strict interpretation of Islam is preparation for bigotry, violence, and oppression.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
Life is not about projecting onto others your inability to cope, nurturing hatred and then going off either to self-destruction or to annihilate those who have been more successful than you.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
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.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
I too was ill prepared for the West. The only difference between my relatives and me is that I opened my mind.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
Islam is not a religion of peace. It's a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can.
[O]utrage and clear, critical thinking seldom go hand in hand.
Some things must be said, and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.
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.
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.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
In a way these threats motivate me. They have given my voice more legitimacy.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
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.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
I believe the honor-and-shame culture can be discarded. To think otherwise is to define Muslims as as incapable of growth and adaptation, and I can’t think of anything more pejorative and racist.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
In the text of the Quran and in Shari’a law, men and women are self-evidently not equal. Muslim women are considered physically, emotionally, intellectually, and morally inferior to men, and they have fewer legal rights.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
There is a huge difference between being tolerant and tolerating intolerance.
The fact that honor killings can occur in Texas, New York, and Georgia makes the virtual silence of Western feminists on this subject all the more bizarre and deplorable.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
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.
Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010)
Perhaps the writer who has best identified the problems within the Muslim world is the philosopher Ibn Warraq, of Pakistani origin, author of Why I Am Not a Muslim. That this courageous man writes under a pseudonym shows that even in the West he does not feel safe.
The Caged Virgin (2004)
In countries such as Pakistan and Iran, and to a lesser extent in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, after the introduction of Islam, a significant regression occurred in individual freedom, the acquisition of scientific knowledge, and the rights of women.
The Caged Virgin (2004)
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.”