Azar Nafisi Quotes

We call on the governments of the world to reject Sharia law, fatwa courts, clerical rule, and state-sanctioned religion in all their forms; oppose all penalties for blasphemy and apostasy, in accordance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights; eliminate practices, such as female circumcision, honor killing, forced veiling, and forced marriage, that further the oppression of women; protect sexual and gender minorities from persecution and violence; reform sectarian education that teaches intolerance and bigotry towards non-Muslims; and foster an open public sphere in which all matters may be discussed without coercion or intimidation.

Wherever Islam gets its foot on the ground, you see less freedom, less freedom of speech, less freedom of anything.

In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women's rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran's culture.

In Iran, there is no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no independent judiciary, no free elections. There is no freedom of religion - not even for Shiites, who are forced by Iran's theocracy to adhere to one narrow set of official rules.

In the religion classes, students learn that the Saudi interpretation of Islam supersedes any worldly concept of human rights. Women have the most to lose, yet their ideas are so ingrained that I defy you to find a report of a Saudi mother complaining about what our children are being taught.

I often ask myself, 'Why is it that most of the lies come out of Islamic countries, and why is it that most of the social corruptions are in the Middle East and in these Islamic countries?' The answer is, when you control something, when you suppress something, people try to do it another way.

I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our culture - as if women like to be stoned to death, or as if they like to be married at the age of nine.

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam's founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women's lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan's present was to be returned.

For the jihadists, Muslim women who embrace Western mores, and wear tight jeans or mini skirts, are hated symbols of corruption that need to be eradicated. For the ideological mentors of Breivik, a similar disturbance comes from the burqa, which is banned in France and Belgium, partly thanks to their efforts.

Women in Somalia face almost unimaginable oppression.

To Western eyes and ears, Sharia law seems devoid of respect for differences of opinion or complex moral thinking. Certainly the American idea of separation between church and state is lost in Sharia-style governance.

Part of the Koran is a license for oppression.

The idea that cops need to intimidate people of color, to violate our rights in order to protect people of color is like some Islamist societies’ saying the only way to protect women is to keep them under Sharia law.

Islam and freedom are not compatible.

None of the atrocities in 'The Handmaid's Tale' are pure fiction. Everything Margaret wrote was something that has happened somewhere in the world to human beings.

China may brutalize Buddhists in Tibet and Muslims in Xinjiang while denying basic rights to the rest of its 1.3 billion citizens, but 'woke' activists pushing intersectionality keep mum on all that.

Every religion curbs women rights to some extent. Some countries acted against religions and put a ban on wearing hijab, which was also a violation of human rights.

The problem with Islam is that it's a law, not a religion, and it's incompatible with our values, our rights, and our freedoms.

Look how in societies today where Islam is dominant and prominent, how any non-Islamic person, whether it's a Christian or an apostate or a woman or a critical journalist, how they are treated. This is in a very bad way, often with the death penalty or imprisonment or all those kind of terrible things.

I will not ascribe to the 'Blame America' club for vicious abuses of human rights, systemic exploitation of Cuban labor, unrelenting repression, and stifling censorship.

Arab society features apartheid of women, apartheid of homosexuals, and apartheid of Christians, Jews, and democracy.

Terrorist groups share an agenda of authoritarianism, misogyny, and intolerance. They are an affront to the common values encapsulated in the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Bashar al-Assad's henchmen stomped on the hands of famed Syrian cartoonist Ali Farzat. Our dictators tailor wounds to suit their victims' occupations.

Women have been the most persecuted people throughout all of recorded history, more than any race or religion.

One girl subjected to FGM or forces to marry is one girl too many.