Dalia Mogahed Quotations

I can tell you character traits I admire and work to develop in myself - perseverance, self-discipline, courage to stand up for what is right even when it is against one's friends or one's self.

My national identity is first American. My religious identity is first Muslim.

I admire many people, but I am not sure that I have any 'heroes.'

I am very grateful for the opportunities I have been afforded.

[Ted] Cruz is not at all popular in the Senate. Republicans say he may be too disliked to be a nominee. And there is a real concern about that. I think the one way to go after Trump maybe is go after him as a closet Democrat. That he has supported Democrats in the past.

What have we heard from Republican voters? They want somebody that's new, they want somebody that's fresh. They don't want an establishment.

Republicans are taking the possibility of [Donald] Trump as nominee seriously enough that the committee that oversees next year's Senate races laid out a confidential seven-page blueprint for candidates on how to run with Trump at the top of the ticket.

We don't know yet but so far the three candidates that have dealt with [Donald] Trump most adeptly are [Ted] Cruz, [Chris] Christie, and [Marco] Rubio. But they've all avoided him in one form or another.

Republicans advising candidates to "grab onto the best elements of [his] anti-Washington populist agenda," but warning that Trump is a "misguided missile," "subject to farcical fits" and candidates should avoid getting drawn into "every Trump dust-up," but should quickly condemn some of his comments, including "wacky things about women."

Because people were attracted to him because he was not elected to an office. He was not a politician. And like you said before, he was a person that people say "Wow! He has the idea!" But the more and more you listen to Donald Trump, the more you have the sense that he is not the person that's going to run the country. And I have strong views.

Muslims have a right to every other people, like everybody, to come to the United States.

If you look at Paris, they didn't have guns and they were slaughtered. If you look at what happened in California, they didn't have guns, they were slaughtered. They could've protected themselves if they had guns.

We don't want to bury our heads in the sand about serious issues.

Muslims are the primary victims of ISIS. Muslims are the ones who want to do the most to defeat this ideology. It's important that we don't do their propaganda for them, by giving them the legitimacy that they crave.

As Donald Trump continues to dominate the 2016 field, the Republican establishment's low-grade anxiety is becoming an all-out panic

The establishment Republicans are beginning to say on the record what they had been whispering about in private for months: that Donald Trump at the top of the ticket could mean an electoral wipeout down the ballot.

I think it's important to understand that ISIS's biggest enemy are ordinary Muslims. That's why they're fleeing.

I thought the Wall Street Journal quote, they got a guy in Iowa to say I think exactly where I think this race is right now for a lot Republicans. He said, "Nobody in Iowa wants [Donald]Trump for president. But everybody in Iowa wants somebody like Trump for president." That's what you need.

I don't think there's any clever way for the establishment to take Donald Trump down. It's very simple. Another candidate is going to have to find a way either to out-maneuver him, or to just frankly beat him in the argument.

Some people think [Ted] Cruz is just as bad of an electoral nightmare down the ballot as [Donald] Trump.

If you want to beat Donald Trump - then you need to be the candidate that is not the establishment in your thinking, in the way you're presenting yourself.

There are hundreds and hundreds of followers of Islamic State around Europe and the U.S. The Saudis are showing this. And all you have to do is look at the conversation inside of our mosques and inside of our communities.

I had actually, after the Paris attacks in this country, we all patted ourselves on the back and said, "Well, we have a much more assimilated Muslim population here than they do in Europe."

When we talked about a wall, right, to try to keep out this threat. The problem is that these are ideas. And they are filtering throughout the world. And it was naïve, and I think ultimately, the reason why we, as Muslims, stood on Friday and went to the mosque and took the risks on our own lives, is because we've had enough. I think the world has had enough.

I hate this idea that we, as Americans, are going to say we're going to have a sense at the border, someplace else, that - to figure out whether or not Muslims can come to the United States.

There are many other [then ISIS] terrorist organizations. And their primary victims are Muslims. I think that's very important.

ISIS simply do not have ideological, theological, or popular support. And this is a criminal organization that is funding their criminality with things like drug trade and selling oil.

I just want to point out that Warren Harding, The Times assailed his nomination for president.And we can see how effective that was.

I have to say that I saw terrorists in 2002, went to Islamabad, Pakistan, and met women who were supporting this ideology. I call them the Taliban Ladies Auxiliary back then.

Like one of any minority, I have experienced prejudice.

I think the guy who gets the least chatter, given how high his chances are of winning the nomination, is Ted Cruz.

People are so complex and multidimensional that raising someone to 'hero' status is too great a simplification.

I don't say anything wacky about women. I have more respect for women than anybody would understand and I'm going to give people jobs and I'm going to protect people.

We have to be concerned about the gun killing that people who are Americans, who are Irish, and who are English, who are all around the country.

You know, a meme is now circulating that's called the Ostrich Brigade. And it's used to describe all those people who are burying their heads in the sand. I call it the three D strategy. It's denial, deflection, and a demonization of those of us who want to speak honestly about these issues of extremism.

I think the blood is spilling in Syria and it's mostly Muslims.

Human development, not secularization, is what's key to women's empowerment in the transforming Middle East.

I'm not in the business of changing policies. I hope to inform, not form, decisions.

I'm hearing here that this Muslim movement, well, for women, is what we have to focus on. And women have been doing, I think, the right thing. Having the conversations, talking to people about that.

I think what speaks loudest and what speaks to your point is the blood that's spilling from Australia, to now California. I mean, how much blood has to be spilled until we recognize inside of a Muslim community that with do have an ideological problem?

Everything I have experienced in my life helps form who I am today, and I would not change or forget any of it.

This is a book called Women in the Shade of Islam. It's published by the government of Saudi Arabia. I picked it up in Pakistan, where the Taliban Ladies Auxiliary, and our young wife in California would've picked up an item like this. And it puts out that Salafi-Wahhabi ideology that is ultimately the toxic poison that is crossing all these borders.

How women view religion's role in society is shaped more by their own country's culture and context than one monolithic view that religion is simply bad for women.

If no one can do that, yeah, Donald Trump better man the lifeboats, because there's some significant chance he'll win the nomination.

While economic development [in Egypt] made a few people rich, it left many more worse off. As people felt less and less free, they also felt less and less provided for.

Better a broken heart than a hardened one.

Remember this: For all the ugliness in the world there is far more beauty. For all the cruelty there is far more kindness. And remember one more thing: Those who remind you of this simple fact-keep them close

Folks in the media ask at the behest of Democrats, "isn't it insensitive for us to do a Second Amendment rally following this terror attack?" Let me tell you something. I really don't view our job as being sensitive to Islamic terrorists.

They're still out there talking about gun control measures, as if somehow terrorists care about what our gun laws are.

We build buildings based on the false assumption that women go to mosques half as much as they actually do. In fact, the US is the only country in the world where women and men report that they attend the mosque in equal numbers, but our institutions aren't representing this reality.