Asra Nomani Quotes

In some countries, women aren't allowed to wear a swimsuit.

The patriarchy is alive and well in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on women's freedoms in southern Somalia - that type of mentality - that's what I had to deal with in captivity.

You—the outside world—will be told that it is our “culture” and “religion” to do X, Y, and Z to women. Understand that whoever deemed it as such was never a woman.

… it is not sufficient to change laws, institutions and customs. It is essential that women acquire ‘a new skin’. This can occur only through a collective effort while women suffer and loathe the oppression of men; it does not follow that her ovaries condemn her to be on her knees for eternity.

In France, we respect women: we don't beat them; we don't ask them to hide themselves behind a veil as if they were impure.

When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition.

There is a vulgar persuasion, that the ignorance of women, by favoring their subordination, ensures their utility. 'Tis the same argument employed by the ruling few against the subject many in aristocracies; by the rich against the poor in democracies; by the learned professions against the people in all countries.

I'm fascinated by how much we, as women, have to subjugate and hide ourselves in order to get on in the world.

A woman can never be too rich or too thin, but until very, very recently, she could be too powerful, for which - if she wasn't smart enough to camouflage herself - she generally paid the price.

Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale.

Nature says women are human beings, men have made religions to deny it. Nature says women are human beings, men cry out no!

Why am I not feminist? Maybe because I come from a country where my mother ruled my life. I never felt in any way that I couldn't achieve what I want.

One of the reasons I don't see eye to eye with Women's Lib is that women have it all on a plate if only they knew it. They don't have to be pretty either.

I'm sure a few marriages broke up because of feminism; it doesn't make feminism a cult.

I've worked for over 11 years in the Muslim world, and the one thing that I feel like I've learned - who's to say if it's true or not true, it's just my experience - is that men don't like to see really strong, aggressive women in that area of the world.

Religion was used as an ideology, as a system of control. When they forced the veil upon women, they were using it as an instrument of control in the same way that in Mao's China people were wearing Mao jackets and women were not supposed to wear any makeup.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

I grew up in a culture in which it was a sin for a woman to speak out.

Women have to be pure and respectful.

The darkest page in history is the persecutions of woman.

Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.

[Women’s subjugation to men] is one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.

Misogyny should be understood as the ‘law enforcement’ branch of a patriarchal order, which has the overall function of policing and enforcing its governing ideology. Sexism wears a lab coat, misogyny goes on witch hunts.... Sexism is bookish; misogyny is combative. Sexism has a theory; misogyny wields a cudgel.

I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.