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Quotes from Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

born 1969 United States

← All quotes by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

38 quotes

When Muslim women face not just oppression but violent death, why aren’t the feminists out protesting these abusers?

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

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

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

As a tribe we are fragmented; as clans, scattered; as families, dysfunctional.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Virginity is the obsession, the neurosis of Islam.

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

A mosque is an island of gender apartheid.

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

People often ask me what it’s like to live with bodyguards. The short answer is that it’s better than being dead.

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

I believe that the dysfunctional Muslim family constitutes a real threat to the very fabric of Western life.

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

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

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

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

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

Amira and Muna, like so many Muslim girls, were seen by their families as little more than incubators for sons.

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

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)

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)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ayaan Hirsi Ali (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.