[In Ethiopia,] Abeh enrolled all three of us in school, which was taught in Amharic. We spoke only Somali and Arabic, so everything was completely fo… - Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The argument that by criticizing Islam you defame believing Muslims is specious. If I criticize George Washington, I am not defaming Americans; if I deplore Abraham’s lying to Pharaoh about his wife being his sister I am not slandering other Jews—or, for that matter, Muslims, who also recognize Abraham as a Patriarch. But a religion, Islam, based on a book, the Quran, that denies women basic human rights is backward, and to say so is not an insult but an opinion.

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.

This was Saudi Arabia, where Islam originated, governed strictly according to the scriptures and example of the Prophet Muhammad. And by law, all women in Saudi Arabia must be in the care of a man. My mother argued loudly with the Saudi immigration official, but he merely repeated in an ever louder voice that she could not leave the airport without a man in charge.