Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
" "(Hirsi Ali has just given a page of examples of Islamic terrorism) Fear has an effect.
Thus slowly, and sometimes not so slowly, people begin to get used to not saying certain things, or they say them but certainly won’t write them. The thin fingers of self-censorship begin to tighten around individual minds, then groups of people, then around ideas themselves and their expression. When free speech crumbles in this way, when Westerners refrain from criticizing or questioning certain practices, certain aspects of Islam, they abandon those Muslims who seek to question them too. They also abandon their own values. Once they have done that, their society is lost.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (born Ayaan Hirsi Magan on November 13, 1969) is a Somali-born American liberal politician and feminist. She was an MP for the Dutch liberal People's Party for Democracy between 2003 and 2006. She currently works for a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.
Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Many well-meaning Dutch people have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic culture incites abuse of women, that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their women, I am constantly informed. In reality, these Westerners are the ones who misunderstand Islam. The Quran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse, so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience or their community. I wanted my art exhibit to make it difficult for people to look away from this problem. I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that "Islam is peace and tolerance."
Works in ChatGPT, Claude, or Any AI
Add semantic quote search to your AI assistant via MCP. One command setup.