Many people have criticized Islam for being just automatic, having no individuality, just surrendering your will to God, but we Muslims know very well that every moment of the day we have to practice the fact that to surrender one's self to God is an act of free will.
Seyyed Hossein NasrSufis have always been those that have tried to purify the ethics of Islam and society. And they don't have their hands cut off from the external action at all. For example, the bazaar in which the Sufis were very strong always dominated economic life in Islamic world. They could give a much more sane and Islamic form of activity when the economic life of Islam moved out of the bazaar to new parts of Islamic cities with modernized Muslims, who took it in another light and it became very, very anti Islamic, and much against many of the most profound practices of Islamic societies.
Seyyed Hossein NasrThere are millions and millions of Sufis who have existed in Islamic history and have the deepest impact on every aspect of Islamic culture and civilization to philosophy to art to science to social structure to economics who have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj.
Seyyed Hossein NasrOnce you've fallen in love, it's turned around your whole life. You keep thinking about this girl all the time instead of thinking about other things. Since the object of love is that particular person, being separated brings about a longing and pain.
Seyyed Hossein NasrOnly man can stop being fully man. He can ascend above all degres of universal existence and by the same token fall below the level of the basest of creatures.
Seyyed Hossein NasrOnly in the West did a philosophy develop that was not only no longer the love of wisdom but went so far as to deny the category of wisdom as a legitimate form of knowledge. The result was a hatred of wisdom that should more appropriately be called โmisosophyโ (literarily hatred of Sophia, Wisdom) rather than philosophy.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr