Sakshi Mathur

“Looking back at that trip, I see now the broad outlines of the same dilemmas that would lead America into the era of Trump: seething anger; open hostility to strangers and those with views opposing one’s own; a contempt for news delivered by allegedly reputable sources; an embrace of reactionary moral posturing; civic and governmental corruption that no longer needed hiding; and married to all this, the ever-hastening redistribution of wealth to those who had it at the continued expense of those who didn’t.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

“all the Eastern religions were fundamentally atheistic.”
― Aatish Taseer, The Way Things Were

“For now, let me try to stay alive and just say these three things: as Muslims, (1) we are more affected by the example of the Prophet than we realize; (2) we are shaped by the stories we tell about him in ways that elude our daily understanding; and (3) there will be no meaningful philosophical shift in the sociopolitical substratum of the Muslim world until the example of the Prophet and the text of the Quran are exposed to a more robust interrogation of their claims to historical truth.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies

“The established majority takes its we-image from a minority of its best, and shapes a they-image of the despised outsiders from the minority of their worst.”
― Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies