Quotation

The kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia,.. is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mindset based on tribal concepts of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes the transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam. It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world….It was difficult for me, too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason...Having made that journey, I know that one of the worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values. The message of this book,..is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.