Popular quotes about Islam! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 2
I won't be a party to a conspiracy to mobilize the Arabs against the Persians. Only the forces of colonialism benefit from such a conspiracy. I won't be a party to a conspiracy that splits Islam into two - Shiite Islam and Sunni Islam - mobilizing Sunni Islam against Shiite Islam.
Muammar al-GaddafiIslam's basic principles of belief, worship, morality, and behavior are not affected by changing times. Islam does not propose a certain unchangeable form of government or attempt to shape it. Islam has never offered nor established a theocracy in its name. Instead, Islam establishes fundamental principles that orient a government's general character.
Fethullah GulenTo the government, terrorism committed by people who happen to be Muslim is not in any way a reflection of legitimate interpretation of Islam. You might find this hard to believe, but if you're doubting any of this, just search your own memory. All the times that we have heard that Islam's a religion of peace and that we can't use the word "terrorism" to describe it and Obama will not use it. And then remember all the times that this administration actually claims that violence by white right-wing white Christians poses a greater threat to the people of America than Islam.
Rush LimbaughIslam is not a race...Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not 'Islamophobic' to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy.
Ayaan Hirsi AliThere 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-GaddafiIslam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-Jahiliyya [separated from God].
Sayyid QutbIslam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. The cross, crucified, and that turned into victory. Mohammad was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.
Karen ArmstrongThe Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.
John KeeganTo speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam.
Sam HarrisI believe in Islam. I am a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion of Islam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah as the God. Those of you who are Christian probably believe in the same God, because I think you believe in the God Who created the universe. That's the One we believe in, the One Who created universe - the only difference being you call Him God and we call Him Allah. The Jews call Him Jehovah. If you could understand Hebrew, you would probably call Him Jehovah too. If you could understand Arabic, you would probably call Him Allah.
Malcolm XIslamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society.
Maajid NawazThat there's no link between Islam and Christianity and Judaism. There wouldn't be Islam if there wasn't Christianity or Judaism, because it's all one long line of revelation. Seeing it from that point of view it makes you ask yourself why Muslims sometimes separate themselves from that large family that leads to Abraham and, even before that, to Adam. The only answer is that we're conditioned to do it by thinking, Hey, I do things better than he does.
Cat StevensIf you ask a Saudi Imam why women in Saudi Arabia can't drive, he'll say, 'Because Islam demands it.' But that's absurd, because - first of all - Islam demands no such thing; and secondly, the only country in the world in which women can't drive is Saudi Arabia. The inability to understand the difference between a cultural practice and religious belief is shocking among self-described intellectuals.
Reza AslanI'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 AliMoses led his people through the wilderness and he wasn't permitted to enter the Promised Land. Jesus was crucified. Mohammad founded a state which soon became an empire, so that Islam from the very beginning is involved with government, with politics. And therefore there is a very clear strong political tradition in Islam.
Bernard LewisIn Islam religion and politics cannot be separated. Unlike other religions, Islam is political by its very nature.
Ali SinaIf Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men.
Friedrich NietzscheI 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 PipesThe jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawudโs pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangirโs big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout โ some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar.
Michael Muhammad KnightLook at Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution and the slogans that they used: anti-imperialism; anti-colonialism; the struggle of the have-nots against the haves; the state monopoly over economy, which was very much patterned after the Soviet Union. All of these things did not come out of Islam. Islam is not that developed.
Azar NafisiThere is something which is going to be one of the main challenges in the Muslim world today, in the Muslim-majority countries in the Arab world, is the religious credibility. How are you going to react to what is said about Islam? So, by touching the prophet of Islam, the reaction should be, who is going to be the guardian?
Tariq RamadanThe Islamic world is suffering not only because of external oppression but also because of the loss of its own dignity, of its own heritage, of its own practice of Islam, of its weakening of its own ethics, and many things which are internal to Islam not just external.
Seyyed Hossein NasrSince the attachment to the cult of Islam is psychological, the solution must also be psychological. We have all the logical proof that Islam is false. But logic has its limitation. Brainwashed people dismiss logic and pride themselves in their blind faith. Psychological warfare is extremely powerful. The Muslim bravado must be destroyed by humiliations and ridicule.
Ali SinaWhat 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 MoghulIslam developed in opposition to orthodox Christianity from the very start, and it considers itself superior to Christianity. So far, it has only been tolerant in places where it is in the minority.
Walter KasperThere are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country. It's fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have. Obama's father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him.
Feisal Abdul RaufI want to see young people who as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as their young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!
Becky FischerI become more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of Hussein, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers and his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.
Mahatma GandhiThe exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.
William S. BurroughsBeside all this I think there was something personal, being Muslim myself who lived in the West I felt that it was my obligation, my duty, to tell the truth about Islam. It is a religion that has a 700-million following, yet it's so little known about it, which surprised me.
Moustapha AkkadMany 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 NasrToday (1950), the hatred of the Moslem countries against the West is becoming hatred against Christianity itself. Although the statesmen have not yet taken it into account, there is still grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return and, with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world Power.
Fulton J. SheenI think what we are seeing is a vicious circle: by covering the controversies and the conflicting realities, it creates a much distorted perception of Islam and Muslims. When a minority is being taken as a majority, it creates a wrong image.
Tariq RamadanThere was a good moment in Islam when people were actually challenging authority at every level. Very different from the world we live in.
Tariq AliI 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 SangakkaraGood people in the West have often failed to distinguish between Islam and Islamism.
Phyllis CheslerIslam 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 RamadanIslam didn't make it Haram for you to fall in love. It didn't forbid you from wanting someone. It only guides that love so it protects you, her, your families and especially saves you from humiliation on judgment day. If you love her so much, why are you ok with letting her engage in this questionable relationship knowing full well that she will have to answer Allah just like you will. You don't love her enough to save her from that?
Nouman Ali KhanI 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 AliWhether you look at Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, wherever a distinction of sex is made, it is to the advantage of men. If you think of religions as if they were novels, the authors are men, and so are the major characters.
Katha PollittThe idea that I had anything to do with speaking about Islam or about the Muslim world was just absurd to my family. ... I hadn't been to the mosque in like 10 years.
Aasif MandviWhen we are clear enough about our own point of view, we can find help in the methods of Eastern Christianity or in the ways of the Far East, perhaps by consulting the I Ching or through mandala contemplation; we may even find help in the ways of shamanism or Islam. If we are clear about where we stand and the direction we must take, such methods may be useful in order to follow our own way to the end.
Morton T. KelseyWhen we think about Islamic feminism, it is not just about women's rights. It's about a more progressive and tolerant expression of Islam in the world for all people. Women's rights is one aspect of it, it's not the end-all, but I also think that the women's issue is the strongest entry point that we've got to challenging extremism. You raise a woman's issue and you get the backs of the conservatives up against the wall faster than just about any other issue in our community. It's the fastest path that we've got to making change happen.
Asra Nomani