Popular quotes about Islam! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 103
I don't find any difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalists. I believe religion is the root, and from the root fundamentalism grows as a poisonous stem. If we remove fundamentalism and keep religion, then one day or another fundamentalism will grow again. I need to say that because some liberals always defend Islam and blame fundamentalists for creating problems. But Islam itself oppresses women. Islam itself doesn't permit democracy and it violates human rights.
Taslima NasrinPolitical correctness is a major defect of the western ethos. Some Western countries have even passed blasphemy laws that would put you in legal hot waters if you say anything negative about Islam. This means that the truth about Islam cannot be said but Muslims are given total freedom to spread their religion with lies. Islam thrives were truth is suppressed. That is one reason that westerners convert to Islam. They are lied to. How do you expect a society to survive when truth is banned and lies are allowed?
Ali SinaAnti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives, unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad - are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.
Daniel PipesI see no difference between Islam and Islamism. Islam is defined as submission to the will of Allah, as it is described in the Koran. Islamism is just Islam in its most pure form.
Ayaan Hirsi AliThe face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war.
George W. BushThere are serious mistakes - among them the one saying that Jesus came as a messenger for other people other than the sons of Israel... Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Other people who are not sons of Israel have nothing to do with that religion... It is a mistake that another religion exists alongside Islam. There is only one religion which is Islam after Mohammed... All those believers who do not follow Islam are losers.
Muammar al-GaddafiOne of my brothers in my adopted family converted to Islam and I love him with all my heart. I have Muslim women who understand my pain and they give me lots of love and support. But what Black Americans never think about is that the African version of Islam is totally different from American Islam. They've never seen mothers doused in gasoline and set on fire for โreligious' reasons. So they don't know what I'm talking about.
Kola BoofI am a living illustration of Bosnian mixing and converting. My grandparents lived in eastern Herzegovina. Very poor. The Turks came and brought Islam. There were three brothers in the family. One was Orthodox Christian. The other two took Islam to survive.
Emir KusturicaPoliticians have made up their own version of Islam to avoid having to deal with the reality of Islam because it's just too daunting, frightening, scary, whatever, and they don't want to deal with it.
Rush LimbaughThat Islam you see on TV does not represent me, I'm too busy waging jihad against myself, My own nafs are my enemy. I'm sorry that Muslim and Muslim lands do not represent Islam, Our religion is perfect, but we on the other hand.
Boonaa MohammedWe intend to do is invite Barack Obama and the American administration and the general public to think about Islam as an alternative really, we believe that the problems in the world today aren't necessarily because of people and they need to go back to the divine law and so ours is a call to go back to the divine law and implement Islam.
Anjem ChoudaryIn fact many Hindu yogis and Sufis met, they became friends, they spoke about the knowledge and love of God; about all the similarities that exist. And then the simplicity of Islam, the fact these people practiced what they preached brought many, many Hindus into Islam.
Seyyed Hossein NasrWe twist ourselves into knots convincing people that Islam is peaceful and varied before we realize that, wait a second, you can be a Muslim while also recognizing that Islam doesn't even explain half of your behaviors!
Negin FarsadI'm a Muslim. I've been a Muslim for 20 years. . . . You know me. I'm a boxer. I've been called the greatest. People recognize me for being a boxer and a man of truth. I wouldn't be here representing Islam if it were terrorist. . . . I think all people should know the truth, come to recognize the truth. Islam is peace.
Muhammad AliFor Hindus to expect Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism to be driven out of India is as idle a dream as it would be for Mussalmans to have only Islam of their imagination rule the world.
Mahatma GandhiI draw a distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism. Islamism emerged in its modern form in the 1920s and is driven by a belief that Muslims can be strong and rich again if they follow the Islamic law severely and in its entirety. This is a response to the trauma of modern Islam.
Daniel PipesIt's always hard to talk about the culture that you are from, especially with Islam, it is a very sensitive subject and I don't want to be seen to be adding to the problems of Islam and the west.
Jacques MyardWhere it is the majority religion, Islam does not recognize religious freedom, at least not as we understand it. Islam is a different culture. This doesn't mean that it's an inferior culture, but it is a culture that has yet to connect with the positive sides of our modern Western culture: religious freedom, human rights and equal rights for women.
Walter KasperWhat I want is to talk about how someone raised Muslim struggles with the same stuff that everyone else theoretically could. Obviously, the particulars are different, but everybody can sympathize with being forced to answer for their identity, the colour of their skin or their religion. A lot of people struggle with mental illness or romance or failed marriages - these are all parts of my own struggle. I read them through the lens of Islam because that's the particular language I grew up in, but the grammar is universal.
Haroon MoghulOf all religious systems, Islam alone declares that individual perfection is possible in our earthly existence.
Muhammad AsadWe certainly love the Muslim people. But that is not the faith of this country. And that is not the religion that built this nation. The people of the Christian faith and the Jewish faith are the ones who built America, and it is not Islam.
Franklin GrahamFans of different races, castes, ethnicities and religions who together celebrate their diversity by uniting for a common national cause. They are my foundation, they are my family. I will play my cricket for them. Their spirit is the true spirit of cricket. With me are all my people. I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan
Kumar SangakkaraMy personal belief is we should not bow to any object. But Islam was aware of this human weakness and fulfilled that need through Haj to kiss a stone. A stone is a stone but the vacuum was filled and it became the holiest object. I have performed Haj and seen the devotion of people braving stampedes only to kiss that stone.
Asghar Ali EngineerSaudi Arabia is militant Islamic extremism, Wahhabi Islam is extreme and violent. These are the people that execute gays. These are the people that stone women who show their face in public. You donโt hear much about it, but it happens.
Rush LimbaughThe Prophet defeated the enemies of Islam even when he and his followers were small in number.
Abu Bakar BashirPresident Bush's war on Iraq is viewed broadly in Islamic communities as an attack on Islam, and thus the President has alienated a large part of one fifth of the world's population.
John OlverI think Islam, for me, helped me see how similar we all are. If my views are not traditional it's because of being raised in American society. Things that are taboo in an Islamic society are magnified in this society: drinking, extramarital affairs, all kinds of stuff like that. I have to apply the human aspect of all our culture dictates . . .
Chali 2naMy love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned.
Richard DawkinsI am not saying people should not be free to join whichever reason they choose but should we be forced to live our lives around a belief system that originated somewhere around the fourth or fifth century BC. I cannot see any more reason to base a belief system around Christianity, Judaism or Islam than I can around Lord of the Rings.
Alan MooreIslam can only be modernized from within. If I state that I condemn the practice of stoning, that this punishment is despicable, it changes nothing. My fellow Muslims will say: Brother Tariq, you became a European, a Swiss citizen, so you are no longer one of us.
Tariq RamadanI don't believe in hell and heaven anymore. Or angels. I think Islam is a superstition like every other superstition. But now because it's a superstition, unlike Christianity, that hasn't been tested and hasn't gone through a process of enlightenment, I think it's a dangerous superstition.
Ayaan Hirsi AliMake the land of Islam a burning fire that burns their faces and feet wherever they pass.
Mohammed Saeed al-SahafThe conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West - instead, it is between stupid people and other stupid people.
Terry PratchettThe Arab rulers are basically unpopular. They are supported by the United States against the wishes of their people. In all of this rather heady mixture of violence and policies that are remarkably unpopular right down to the last iota, it's not hard for demagogues, especially people who claim to speak in the name of religion, in this case Islam, to raise a crusade against the United States and say that we must somehow bring America down.
Edward SaidIn the story ["The Pyramid and the Ass"] there's this war against the so-called Buddhist Terrorists. As we find out, they're not really terrorists at all, just good folks trying to liberate people from technology and fight against an American government/corporation trying to coopt our souls. The inherent racism and Buddhist-phobia in the story plays into the present demonizing of Islam - and of our loss of knowledge about the great, spiritual history of the Sufis, for example, or the cultural heritage from the middle east.
Alexander WeinsteinIt should not be strange that the values cherished by all the three major religions are the same, since they originate from a common source. For example, Islam, the predominant religion in the Middle East, accepts as an integral part of its religious teachings both the Old and the New Testaments. If this commonality of moral traditions among the world's major religions does not say something about the universality of religion, it does say something about the universality of mankind.
King Hussein IIn Great Britain, an author published a book in which he claimed that Jesus Christ had children. Such statements don't trigger civil unrest and bloodshed in Europe. But write similar statements about Islam in Syria and you might see bloody uprisings.
Bashar al-AssadWe (Muslims) have no right, in our present misery, to boast of past glories. But we must realise that it was the negligence of the Muslims - and not any deficiency in the teachings of Islam - that caused our present decay.
Muhammad AsadMillennials do not know their country at war. They don't see militant Islam as evil. They don't see Islamic terrorism as evil. If they're 30, 911, 2001, they were teenagers, there's been so much propaganda about that. The United States largely has been blamed for these acts of terror, presidents like Bush with their torture have created terrorists and so forth. They've really been given a dose of anti-Americanism, well, I think since they first started going to school but it intensified once they got to high school and college.
Rush LimbaughIn the Muslim-majority countries you can't do without Islam, we can't do without their culture, in which way they are going to come back to this Islamic reference to find a way to deal with the true challenges and not the superficial political questions.
Tariq RamadanIslam is based on naql (texts) and โaql (intellect). Some people just have the texts โ we call them naql-heads.
Hamza YusufMy life is very simple. I like simplicity and for my time to be my own, so that I have the freedom to devote the majority of it to Islam.
Hakeem OlajuwonIt [destroying Twin Towers] was a leap into another realm - the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It's important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort.
Edward Said