Nine Lives Quotes

“The Islam I had found in Europe was all about hellfire and guilt. It was totally joyless. In many respects it was more puritan than Wahhabism.”
― Aimen Dean, Nine Lives: My Time As MI6's Top Spy Inside al-Qaeda

“Salafism’s rejection of modern Western values provided these kids with an alternative identity of rebellion (just as Sayyid Qutb had provided me with such a foundation) – a way to define themselves against not only mainstream society but the traditional Islam of their own parents. They reminded me of the nihilists in Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, who mocked their parents’ traditional values as simple-minded.”
― Aimen Dean, Nine Lives: My Time As MI6's Top Spy Inside al-Qaeda

“Loyalty to the treacherous is treachery in the eyes of God. The betrayal of the treacherous is loyalty in the eyes of God. Imam Ali”
― Aimen Dean, Nine Lives: My time as the MI6's top spy inside al-Qaeda