When I was with the Labor Party, I'd get into trouble because the party bosses determined that some of what I wrote, or proposed to write about, wasn't conducive to their policies or to electoral success.

Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage.

My brother thinks it is very, very bad that I left Islam. My half-sister wants to convert me back; I want to convert her to Western values. My mum is terrified that when I die, and we all go to God, I will be burned.

I lived in countries that had no democracy... so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom.

The Christian take on Hellfire seems less dramatic than the Muslim vision, which I grew up with, but Christian magical thinking appeals to me no more than my mother's angels and djinns.

What we are now doing with the victory, and I agree with you if you condemn that and I condemn whole-heartedly the trivial bullshit it is to go after a man who makes a scientific breakthrough and all that we as women — organized women — do is to fret about his shirt?

I grew up in Somalia, in Saudi Arabia, in Ethiopia, and in Kenya. I came to Europe in 1992, when I was 22, and became a member of Parliament in Holland.