Popular quotes about Islam! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It may happen that the enemies of Islam may consider it expedient not to take any action against Islam, if Islam leaves them alone in their geographical boundaries to continue the lordship of some men over others and does not extend its message and its declaration of universal freedom within their domain. But Islam cannot agree to this unless they submit to its authority by paying Jizyah, which will be a guarantee that they have opened their doors for the preaching of Islam and will not put any obstacle in its way through the power of the state.
Sayyid QutbWhen I was growing up, we often heard Islam in the form of a slogan: "Islam is the solution," but no one ever told me that Islam can be a burden... Very few Muslims write about Islam creatively because I don't think we're given permission to. I think that's the bane of modern Islam. It's been reduced to slogans.
Haroon MoghulThere is no radical or moderate Islam. There is only one Islam and that is the Islam from the Koran, the holy book. That is the Islam from Mohammed. There are no two sorts of Islam.
Geert WildersIs Islam a tribe or is it a force of globalization? Islam has certainly been studied as a local, tribalistic phenomenon. But Islam is also theoretically a universalist idea, its spread has been facilitated by modern technologies, and it's an identity that people can slip into and out of fairly easily. I don't think Islam has really been understood as a product of globalization. It might be one of these instances where globalism and tribalism ultimately go hand in hand.
Franklin FoerIslam'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 GulenThe Iranian people were converted to Islam not very much longer after the conquest of the Arab world by Islam, but they refused to adopt the Arabic language, and it's a great point of pride to them that Persian culture and the Persian language and Persian literature survived the conversion to Islam. And the conversion to Islam also was for most of them not the Sunni majority form, but the Shia one. So there's a great discrepancy between Iranian society and many other of what we think of as Arab Muslim States and systems.
Christopher HitchensWell, the most important thing about Islam is that we have to differentiate between two kinds of Islam. The first one is the institution of Islam... second, the culture of Islam.
Abdurrahman WahidAnti-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 PipesAl-Qaeda, ISIS, they can't be Islamic. Islam is the religion of peace. They are bastardizing it. They are frauds. They are calling themselves Islamic and they are calling themselves Muslim, but they're not. Because Islam is as anti-terror as you and I are. Islam is the religion of peace. I'm telling you what our government's position is. The US military position.
Rush LimbaughOne 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 BoofThe problem is sitting in the birthplace of Islam, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where this interpretation of Islam has gone out into the world over the last four decades, creating militancy groups from Indonesia, to now, San Bernardino, California, vicious attack. We have to take back the faith. And we have to take it back with the principles of peace, social justice, and human rights, women's rights, and secularize governance.
Chuck ToddSufis 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 NasrPoliticians 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 LimbaughWhenever Muslim women protest and ask for their rights, they are silenced with the argument that the laws are justified under Islam. It is an unfounded argument. It is not Islam at fault, but rather the patriarchal culture that uses its own interpretations to justify whatever it wants. It utilizes psychology to say that women are emotional. It utilizes medical science to say that men's brains are formed in such a way that they are better able to understand concepts. These are all hypotheses. None of this has been proven.
Shirin EbadiWe 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 ChoudaryAmerica needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, even eaten with people who in America would have been considered 'white,' but the 'white' attitude had been removed from their minds by the religion of Islam.
Malcolm XMoses 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 LewisFor 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 GandhiThe 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 KnightThe left considers conservatives and Republicans to be their number one enemy, not Islam. Certainly not Islam! We conservatives and Republicans are a greater enemy that even Al-Qaeda or ISIS.
Rush LimbaughIslam united all heresies persecuted in Byzantine Empire and synthesised them well into a conseffion that later became a symbol of Arab self-affirmation.
Lev GumilevIn this time of challenge, I am asking the prime minister to address Congress on the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.
John BoehnerThe Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qu'ran. It teaches the value and importance of charity, mercy, and peace.
George W. BushMany 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 NasrI 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 2naIn Islam, rules are important, like the Prophet said innal halaala bayyinun, wa innal haraama bayyinun ["what is halal is clear, what is haram is clear"]. The goal is not to diminish the importance of rules, but to have the right priorities.
Tariq RamadanMy love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned.
Richard DawkinsIslam does give human dignity, certainly. The point I wanted to make is that it is great foolishness to try to impose our notions of democracy. They have their own traditions.
Bernard LewisThere was a time when only specialized Christian missionaries needed to be able to defend the gospel of Jesus Christ against the attacks of Islam. Today every Christian has an opportunity and obligation to present the gospel effectively and in Christian love to the Muslims who have permeated our Western society. When your neighbor, your mechanic, your favorite basketball player, your employer or employee, or even your children's friends could very well be Muslims, the need for proper understanding and an effective Christian witness is abundantly clear.
Josh McDowellThe state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put Godโs law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire worldโฆ.The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state.
Majid KhadduriSo many Muslims would tell you that they felt like that you had to - you fold it into yourself because people were looking at you and recognizing you as being the culprit even though, look, I'm American. I don't believe that the teachings of Islam justified those actions.
Mahershala 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 PollittIslam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends His son to die for you.
Cal ThomasIslam 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.
Karen ArmstrongImagine if today, they invented a religion that advocated the killing of gays. We would not tolerate that. However, Islam is a religion that advocates that.
Greg GutfeldWhat King Abdullah of Jordan said is essentially the war against ISIS is a war for the soul of Islam. And it must be Muslim troops on the ground that will destroy ISIS, with the support of a coalition of major powers - U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Russia.
Hillary ClintonThe unimaginable brutality of this latest manifestation of Political Islam in the Arab world is too much to bear for many Muslim Arab
Hisham MelhemThe same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.
Sam HarrisIronically, the first thing that appealed to me about Islam was its pluralism. The fact that the Koran praises all the great prophets of the past.
Karen ArmstrongThe most important things in life can't be seen with the eyes. Ideas can't be seen. Love can't be seen. Honor can't be seen. This isn't a new concept. Judaism and Christianity and Islam and Buddhism and Taoism have all taught for thousands of years that the highest forms of reality are invisible. God is invisible, and he created the universe. Our souls are invisible, and they give life to our bodies. Angels are invisible, and they're the most powerful of God's creatures.
Anthony DeStefanoJihad is holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself or one's community.
John O. BrennanIn 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-AssadIf Islam opposes terrorism, then Saudi Arabia should announce that no one supportive of ISIS or Al Qaeda is welcome in Mecca to make Hajj.
Bob EnyartThere are hard texts in each tradition which we must confront and ask ourselves, 'Can we reinterpret those texts to allow us to live peaceably, and respectfully, with people of other faiths?' That is a job only Jews can do for Judaism, only Christians can do for Christianity, and only Muslims can do for Islam. But sometimes the sight of someone in one faith wrestling with that faith can empower you to wrestle with another faith.
Jonathan Sacks