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Quote by Moustafa Bayoumi

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How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America

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Moustafa Bayoumi

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“Your gender may not help to make me feel comfortable; but I will absolutely defend your right to live in a way that doesn't require you to make me feel comfortable. Your skin colour may not be my skin colour; but I will absolutely defend your right to live in your own skin just as much as I live in mine. Your religion or absence of any religion may not align with my own beliefs; but I will absolutely defend your right to believe in anything or nothing at all. Since I'm a human too, I will defend your birthright to be the kind of human that you are.”

“Dignity concerns at all times the person taken in his entirety - the unity of what lies inside and outside - and describes the ideal constitution to which one strives, but which is only too infrequently reached. The higher the person wants to reach, the harder it is for him to reach this idea; for, with the one-sidedness that results from concentration on a great theme he tears open a crevice between himself and his ambition.”

“The person of dialogue attempts to transform the enemy into an opponent and the opponent into a partner. An opponent is for him one who presents challenge, who wants and asks to be understood. The person of dialogue believes that dialogue is the only way to be understood by others. So he makes an effort to look at the world through his opponent's viewpoint, to 'change hats with him' and to 'step into his shoes.' ... He does not shy away from defending his own arguments and is not afraid of the truth, but, invariably, he puts respect for human dignity first. ... Each partner accept that the dignity of the other is of immensurable value. This presupposes the ability to strike a compromise, whenever possible, the readiness to admit that one is not is possession of the sole and complete [truth], and the willingness to accept somebody else's reasoning and to change one's own attitudes. (Quoted from Adam Michnik, In Search of Lost Meaning.)”

“With regard to religious belief, [Adam] Michnik admitted that 'only those forms of religious belief that are "anti-values," that lead to fanaticism and intolerance, are objectionable' and should therefore be opposed. 'I would nevertheless be afraid to live in a world without conservative institutions and values,' he confessed, speaking like a true moderate. 'A world devoid of tradition would be nonsensical and anarchic. The human world should be constructed from a permanent conflict between conservatism and contestation; if either is absent from a society, pluralism is destroyed.”

“If man could write his own fate, he would have designed his journey to be without obstacles. Yet all obstacles come with valuable lessons designed just for you and only you. Suffering is imposed on us time and again so that one day we would grow to become a brave wise masters. That is, a strong being who is confidently aware of their intended direction in life, and fearlessly adding value to the world and their future”