It [Islam] has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'... This abolition of the self demanded by Muslims was worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity. It is much, much worse in fact... You cannot just say you came out of nothing.
About This Quote
About V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul was a 20th-century British trinidadian-british writer. Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was a Trinidad and Tobago-born British writer renowned for his work of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienation in the wider world, and his vigilant chronicles of life and travels. Read more on Wikipedia →