Amitava Kumar Quotes

I know a lot of Americans in Paris who have married Frenchmen. They keep bringing up their experience, the clash of civilizations, the clash of personalities.

To suggest that a Muslim cannot think for himself sounds to me very much like an incident of anti-Muslim bigotry.

I'm always criticised by other Somalis and Muslims for what I'm doing as a model and married to a white man and all that.

Much of the prejudice against Islam in the West stems from a lack of understanding of the true nature of Islam as a religion professed by 1.4 billion people in the world. Westerners tend to view other peoples and other cultures only from the perspective of Western benchmarks and philosophy.

As a British Muslim, I am no stranger to prejudice. I know what it's like to be discriminated against just because of your background or religion.

My background wasn't an issue for her or for her family. But if someone had said to my parents back in the 1970s that one of their children would have a mixed marriage, I think they'd have thought that was very unusual.

I don't really have anything against the French except that, as an American, I've been bred to despise them with the same zeal as soccer and Renny Harlin films.

Middle-class Pakistani cultural life is what I've seen, what I know - they're not all screaming faceless mullahs. It's disturbing that in American films, the character on the other side is not even named.

I'm sure I went through a stage when I resented being Indian because in every other manner, in terms of cultural reference points and vocabulary and all the rest of it, I was way ahead of everybody else - so the one thing that set me back was being Indian. And I couldn't do anything about it.

My wife is Greek. I was a non-denomination Christian before we got married.

My father married out of the family. I also married outside the family.

No group of people has been more unjustly maligned in the twentieth century than the Puritans. As a result, we approach the Puritans with an enormous baggage of culturally ingrained prejudice.

My mum is West African, from Senegal; my dad is from Grenada. There was a huge controversy about them getting together.

I did a play called 'Disgraced' in 2012 at Lincoln Center, which ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize. I played the lead character, a Muslim American, who had renounced Islam and became very anti-Islam.

For many Americans, Osama bin Laden is the paradigmatic Muslim, an absurd conviction for anyone who has lived with Muslims.

Out-marriage is an issue religious groups have been wrestling with for some time. Of course men and women fall in love. Of course it's not always convenient to their respective cultural and spiritual norms.

Human prejudice—especially that growing out of race and religion—is cruelly inveterate and lasting.

I am not ashamed to say that our culture is far better than the Islamic culture, which is a culture of barbarism.

There is no sign saying 'good Muslim' or 'bad Muslim.' How many lives will be lost or destroyed trying to determine who is good or who is bad?

Let's stop hiding behind a pseudo-respect of cultures, in a sickening relativism that's only a mask for our cowardice, our cynicism, and our powerlessness. I, born Muslim, Moroccan, and French, I will say it to you: Sharia makes me vomit.

Paradoxically, we have become so ethnocentric in our relativism that we feel it is only okay for others - not us - to think their religion is superior!

I don't think Indian parents will accept Veena Malik as their bahu. After all, she's a Pakistani national!

When we were getting married the Hindu way in Arrah, we had an old guest who asked my wife what her 'good name' was. I think she'd heard that I had married a Muslim. When my wife said, 'Mona Ahmed Ali,' the lady looked at me and exclaimed, 'Oh, so you've married a terrorist.'

Yes, I have an Australian wife; she is half Bengali, half British.

All religions and cultures suffer from sources that preach hate against the 'other.' Throughout history some have, tragically, practiced what their sources preached, while some have sought to dismiss or even counteract the hateful words of their sources.