{"quotes":[{"text":"Half the published articles on Gaza contain a standard reference to its resemblance to a vast open-air prison (and when I last saw it under Israeli occupation it certainly did deserve this metaphor). The problem is that, given its ideology and its allies, Hamas qualifies rather too well in the capacity of guard and warder.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["gaza","hamas","islam","islamism","israel","israeli-occupied-territories","israeli-palestinian-conflict","prison","siege-of-gaza"],"id":70054,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"[T]his is an enemy for life, as well as an enemy of life.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["islamism","jihad","september-11-attacks","terrorism"],"id":71342,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"Identity politics is killings free speech on campus, silencing Muslim women struggle, boosting both Islamism and the far Right and pushing reconciled Muslim voices to the fringes. It makes implicit assumptions about Islam - from an Islamist, Left or Right- perspective - and insists all Muslims must adhere to that definition or be regarded not truly Muslim. It ignores the fact that most ordinary Muslims are not in favour of a violent and that in surveys and polls they support British values more than the general UK population. Yet the myth persists that the ideology of Islamism is the true expression of what it means to be Muslim.","author":"Tony McMahon","tags":["british","british-muslim","far-right","identity","identity-politics","islam","islamism","islamist","muslim","muslim-women","muslims","politics","struggle","struggles","uk"],"id":84332,"author_id":"Tony+McMahon"},{"text":"Whether most Muslims are peaceable is irrelevant. The fact is that fanatics rule Islam now \u0026 act-out what the Qur'an truly says ...Maul, march, \u0026 murder every Infidel if they won't convert!","author":"Gary Patton","tags":["islam","islamic-terrorism","islamism","islamization","islamophobia","jihadism"],"id":92803,"author_id":"Gary+Patton"},{"text":"We don't have the luxury to say that, there is no hope for reform in Islam, because by saying this, we would be disavowing the entire peace-loving Muslim population of the world. We cannot leave our Muslim sisters and brothers behind to be oppressed by their own priestly tyrants, while the rest of the world keeps progressing with an open mind. The entire civilized society of the world, must put their heart and soul to get Islam liberated from the shackles of fundamentalism. Conscience must triumph over orthodox barbarianism, otherwise there would be no hope for the progress and wellbeing of humanity as a truly wise species.","author":"Abhijit Naskar","tags":["allah","bismillah","brainy","fundamentalism","fundamentalist","harmony","harmony","humanism","humanist","humanitarian","humanitarian-activities","humanitarian-efforts","humanitarian-intervention","humanity","inspiring","islam","islamic","islamic","islamic-terrorism","islamism","islamophobia","love-and-compassion","love-and-kindness","muslim","muslimah","muslims","muslims-life","peace-makers","peace-on-earth","quran","religion","religious-extremism","religious-fundamentalism","religious-harmony","religious-tolerance","sage","service-to-mankind","spirituality","thinker"],"id":101167,"author_id":"Abhijit+Naskar"},{"text":"Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and a cyber-spectral form, to the extent that his death took on something of the feel of an exorcism. It is satisfying to know that, before the end came, he had begun at least to guess at the magnitude of his 9/11 mistake. It is essential to remember that his most fanatical and militant deputy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, did not just leave his corpse in Iraq but was isolated and repudiated even by the minority Sunnis on whose presumed behalf he spilled so much blood and wrought such hectic destruction. It is even more gratifying that bin Laden himself was exposed as an excrescence on the putrid body of a bankrupt and brutish state machine, and that he found himself quite unable to make any coherent comment on the tide—one hopes that it is a tide, rather than a mere wave—of demand for an accountable and secular form of civil society. There could not have been a finer affirmation of the force of life, so warmly and authentically counterposed to the hysterical celebration of death, and of that death-in-life that is experienced in the stultifications of theocracy, where womanhood and music and literature are stifled and young men mutated into robotic slaughterers.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["2011","abu-musab-al-zarqawi","al-qaeda","al-qaeda-in-iraq","arab-spring","death","death-of-osama-bin-laden","exorcism","feminism","iraq","islamism","life","literature","music","osama-bin-laden","pakistan","secularism","september-11-attacks","sunni-islam","terrorism","theocracy"],"id":101704,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often asked at public meetings, in what sometimes seems to me a rather prurient way, whether I myself or my family have 'ever been threatened' by jihadists. My answer is that yes, I have, and so has everyone else in the audience, if they have paid enough attention to the relevant bin-Ladenist broadcasts to notice the fact.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["death-threats","islamism","jihadism","osama-bin-laden","personal-questions","terrorism"],"id":103970,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas—like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male “honor” that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls—you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims—especially women and girls.","author":"Sam Harris","tags":["advancement","bigotry","conservative","critical-thinking","democrat","ideas","immigrant","islam","islamism","islamophobia","liberal","logic","muslim","philosophy","progress","race","racism","rational-thinking","reason","religion","republican","science","thinking","thought"],"id":108984,"author_id":"Sam+Harris"},{"text":"No idea is above scrutiny and no people are beneath dignity.","author":"Maajid Nawaz","tags":["atheism","free-speech","freethought","islam","islamism","reason","religion","skepticism"],"id":125819,"author_id":"Maajid+Nawaz"},{"text":"The United States finds itself with forces of reaction. Do I have to demonstrate this? The Taliban's annihilation of music and culture? The enslavement of women?","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["culture","islam","islamism","jihad","music","taliban","terrorism","united-states","war-on-terror","women"],"id":131439,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":41,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}