This dual relationship I have with the US mirrors the duality of the US itself. This duality exists in the US’s reverence for freedom, democracy and human rights, and its denial and violation of such values when it comes to Muslims, the poor, women and peasants in the “Third World.” It exists in my neighbor’s warning that people who criticize the United States should get out and in a friend’s offer of a haven in her home. It exists in the attitude of those who embrace my differentness — as a way to validate their own liberalism — even as they retreat into hurt at any sign of differences between us. It exists in… my being told that, unlike Pakistan, the US is a “free” country, and in my being labeled “anti-American” when I use that freedom to decry war and oppression.

–Asma Barlas

[via Immolation.org: “A Requiem for Voicelessness: Pakistanis and Muslims in the US”]

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

–Henry Ward Beecher