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"We tell them, in as much as you love life, the Muslim loves death and martyrdom. There is a great difference between he who loves the hereafter and he who loves this world. The Muslim loves death and martyrdom."

- Palestinian Authority cleric Mufti Sheikh Ikrimeh Sabri. Quoted in Robert Spencer, "Sharon's Stroke," Jihad Watch, December 19, 2005.

"We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death."

- Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. Quoted in Jonathan Chait, "Israel's Justifiable Use of Force, The New Republic Online, July 24, 2006; reprinted from Jonathan Chait, "Who Says War Has to Be Proportional?" Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2006.

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From the article "Lifting the Veil on Islamophobia"
Hirsi Ali: You know, Organization of the Islamic Conference countries send diplomats to the West to dictate what our newspapers may or may not write about Islam—restricting the use of the word “jihad,” for instance. That’s what I find so ridiculous: The leaders of these governments work harder at censoring the media in the U.S. and Europe than they do at addressing the problem of jihadis in their own countries.

Harris: And, of course, many of these states—Saudi Arabia in particular—actively export the ideology of jihadism and Salafi-style Islamism to mosques all over the world.

Hirsi Ali: And sadly, both Western governments and the Western press stay silent.

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from the article on Islamophobia:
...I’d like us to address the issue of “Islamophobia”—which has become the catchall criticism applied to anyone who is more worried about Islam than, say, Mormonism.

Increasingly, questioning Islam results in a person’s being vilified as an “Islamophobe” and a “bigot”—or, in a ridiculous but omnipresent misuse of the term, as a “racist.” These charges come from Muslims themselves and from their apologists on the Left. Even major news sites, such as The Guardian and Salon, frequently publish these attacks...

...It never ceases to amaze me that when one complains about Muslim theocrats abusing Muslim women and freethinkers, one inevitably gets accused of anti-Muslim bigotry.

“Islamophobia”—...“a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”... first appeared in a tweet from Andrew Cummins.

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From the article on religious motivations:
Harris: That’s a point I really wanted us to cover. Most liberals think that religion is never the true source of a person’s bad behavior. Even when jihadists explicitly state their religious motivations—they believe that they have an obligation to kill apostates and blasphemers, and they want to get into Paradise—liberal academics, journalists, and politicians insist on looking for deeper reasons for their actions. However, when people give economic, political, or psychological reasons for doing whatever it is they do, everyone accepts those reasons at face value.

If a man murders his neighbor because he wants to steal his property and doesn’t want to leave a witness, everyone accepts the killer’s account of his actions. But when he says, as every jihadist does, that he was driven by a sense of religious obligation and a yearning for Paradise, liberals insist that the search for an underlying motive must continue. So the game is rigged. If you’re always going to look beneath a person’s religious convictions for something else, of course you’ll never see that religion is an important driver of human behavior.

Hirsi Ali: And that’s where it becomes truly painful. All these Western apologists, no matter where they are on the political spectrum—left, center, or right—are robbing Muslims of the opportunity to reflect. It is very, very difficult in Muslim households, communities, and countries to reflect on Islam. Such a process of introspection and self-criticism has led to the reformations we have seen in other religions—and it’s being denied to Muslims by this focus on economics, politics, and all these other variables that are, in many cases, the result of Islamic doctrine. For instance, there is a very strong case to be made that the desperate economic situation in the Middle East is largely a product of religion.

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from the article on having the mindset of a sheep ~ "undue influence":
In fact, you’re in a position to talk about this with some authority, because you used to share this mind-set. Remind our readers how you felt about Salman Rushdie when you were twenty.

Hirsi Ali: I think of myself back then as analogous to a sheep. Everyone in my community believed that Rushdie had to die. After all, he had insulted the Prophet. I believed that if you insult the Prophet, well, then you have to face the consequences—which means you have to be killed. I didn’t question the merits of that idea. I thought it was moral for Ayatollah Khomeini to take steps to ensure that this apostate who had insulted the Prophet would be punished, and the appropriate punishment was death. I didn’t make that up, of course, and I didn’t just get the idea from my friends; it came from scripture and from my religious teachers.

Harris: Funny enough, that was something you had in common with Cat Stevens. Incredibly, it’s possible for a Western rock star, who has every advantage in life, to acquire such a view. And this is not an accident. Death for apostasy really is a tenet of Islam.

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from the article on why Muslim Extremists are so successful at recruiting:
Hirsi Ali: In a way, it’s easier for Muslims and their friends on the Left to go after people like me and you than it is to go after Boko Haram, the Muslim Brotherhood, or any of these other groups who say they are going to fight corruption by creating some kind of puritanical utopia based on scripture, because moderate Muslims share the teachings of the Koran and hadith. So, intellectually, they never get beyond the point of saying, “Oh, those passages have been misinterpreted.” That’s as far as they ever go.

The reason the so-called Muslim “extremists” are so successful at recruiting, keeping, inspiring, and mobilizing people—and then finally getting them to wage jihad—is that what they’re saying is fully consistent with the teachings of Muhammad. For an intelligent 20-something-year-old, if you say, “Don’t believe me; just read it in the Koran,” he will understand. And then he must make a choice. He must choose whether to stick with Islam or not. And those who stick with it tend to get sucked into this way of life. The moderates don’t do anything about this. They just come after people like you and me.

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From the article:
Why anyone who is not a Muslim must stop eating (except in secret) during Ramadan is another example of Islamic supremacism. Unlike Jewish law, which pertains only to Jews, and Canon Law, which pertains only to Catholics, the Sharia asserts its totalitarian authority over non-Muslims.

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yasmin:
> There are horrible things that happen under Sharia
> law. But even Christianity or Hinduism isn't
> necessarily much better in some third world
> countries...religious practices involving cruelty, or demanding some
> type of compliance from non members, are not unique to Islam.