Popular quotes about Islam! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Well, 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 WahidI 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 first thing Islam does is to destroy the self image of the believers. It convinces them that without Islam they are worthless creatures only fit for hellfire. It tells them that their culture is jahelyyah (ignorance) and their ancestral religion was taaghoti (satanic). They are made to despise their identity and selfhood and seek their glory in their submission to Islam and slavery to its deity who was Muhammad's own alter ego.
Ali SinaIslam doesn't promote violence or peace. Islam is just a religion, and like every religion in the world, it depends on what you bring to it. If you're a violent person, your Islam, your Judaism, your Christianity, your Hinduism, is going to be violent.
Reza AslanThe trouble with Islam is deeply rooted in its teachings. Islam is not only a religion. Islam (is) also a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force.
Wafa SultanThis paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.
Salman RushdieI have no expertise of other religious traditions so I'm not going to opine on them, but in Islam the more you know about the religion, the more likely you're going to go to hell. Many people will find that paradoxical because we tend to think of religion as a way of making ourselves feel better and a way of damning and excluding infidels or reprobates or heretics or what have you. It was very hard for me to find an Islam that belongs to me and doesn't feel like it's been imposed on me.
Haroon MoghulPoliticians 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 LimbaughWe who don't want radical Islam to spread must compete with the agents of radical Islam. I want to see what would happen if Christians, feminists and Enlightenment thinkers were to start proselytizing in the Muslim community.
Ayaan Hirsi AliThat 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 StevensEstablishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals.
Abdolkarim SoroushIslam brings hope and comfort to millions of people in my country, and to more than a billion people worldwide. Ramadan is also an occasion to remember that Islam gave birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefited mankind.
George W. BushInfuriatingly stupid analysts - especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world - wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were all about Islam saving Aristotle and the zero, which medieval Muslim scholars had done more than eight hundred years ago; about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent. These were fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew.
Ayaan Hirsi AliIslam united all heresies persecuted in Byzantine Empire and synthesised them well into a conseffion that later became a symbol of Arab self-affirmation.
Lev GumilevI renew my call for the occupier (the United States) to leave our land. The departure of the occupier will mean stability for Iraq, victory for Islam and peace and defeat for terrorism and infidels.
Muqtada al SadrIt was thought that to rally Islam against godless communism would be doing the Soviet Union a very bad turn indeed, and that, in fact, transpired. In 1985, a group of mujahedeen came to Washington and was greeted by President [Ronald] Reagan, who called them "freedom fighters."
Edward SaidFans 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 SangakkaraThe Honorable Elijah Muhammad said no matter how much they attacked him and the Nation of Islam under his leadership, they only helped the Nation to grow. So, the more they attacked me and the more I withstood that onslaught, the more thousands of people came out to, at least, hear a man that was being so vilified in the media. When they recognized that they were not hurting but helping me, they decided they wouldn't say anything except to continue to discredit. So, there is a conscious effort not to publicize anything that the Nation is doing of value.
Louis FarrakhanI mean, but obviously, in people's eyes, it still - it can still link Islam to terrorism. I mean, why does it make a difference that they're white?
Aasif MandviI consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
Barack ObamaContrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people's desires.
Anjem ChoudaryIslam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet - who was only another male mammal - is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent.
Christopher HitchensThe 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 KhadduriIslam 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 RamadanThe Muslim Brotherhood is a global movement whose members cooperate with each other throughout the world, based on the same religious worldview - the spread of Islam, until it rules the world.
Mohammed Mahdi Akef...until the Crusades Islam was indistinguishable from Judaism and... only then did it receive its independent character, while Muhammad and the first Caliphs are mythical figures.
Nikolai Alexandrovich MorozovMoney and riches don't mean nothing to me. I don't care nothing about being no rich individual. I'm not living for glory or for fame; all this is doomed for destruction. You got it today, tomorrow it's gone. I got bigger things on my mind than that. I got Islam on my mind.
Muhammad AliIslamic Religious Law Fundamentalist Islam wants shari'a to replace the U.S. Constitution and fundamentally transform America.
Pamela GellerIslam is a way of life which opens the heart to the meaning of existence. Thus any increase of outward splendor is usually a sign of a decrease in inward illumination
Ahmad ThomsonThe 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 HarrisI believe that everybody has the right to believe what they want to believe and to knock somebody's faith and religion is foolish, whatever it may be - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism.
Nicolas CageIronically, 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 ArmstrongChristianity, Judaism, and Islam all stem from the same Abrahamic roots. All three reject terrorism.
H. John PooleReligion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to Islam. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion.
Mustafa Kemal AtaturkWe have different levels of slavery. We've got educational slavery. All the major religions of the world, even Christianity and Islam, are engaged in some form of servitude of people. I don't look favorably on either one although I think properly practiced all religions are basically good.
John Henrik ClarkeThe problem is that Islam does not have a pope, so there's no one guy to say, 'This isn't kosher'...Not that he would.
Fareed ZakariaYou've got problems in Central Asia. And you've got problems within our own communities back home. So if we end up saying, look, this has nothing to do with Islam or it's got no connection with that broader question, then we look, frankly, as if we're in denial about the problem. And the interesting thing in the Middle East is that they have absolutely no problem there in identifying that as Islamist extremism and calling it that.
Tony BlairThe evil lot who did that thing on September 11 did it because they wanted to create a war between America and Islam. And by invading Iraq, we gave them what they hoped for.
Billy BraggThe politicized version of Shia Islam that we see in the Islamic Republic post-1979 clearly is very conservative, but, there are other things one could say about Ayatollah Khomeini's concept of a Shia state because that in itself is a blasphemy as far as most Shia clerics are concerned. There's a theory that he developed in the early 1960s in the town of Najaf talking about - well not liberalism, necessarily, but flexibility though.
Sadakat Kadri