Words matter. These are the best Islam Quotes from famous people such as Oriana Fallaci, James Buchan, Tech N9ne, Geert Wilders, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense.
Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise.
My mom and my aunties are really devout Christians. My mom married a Muslim when I was 12, so I got teachings from both sides and then other sides because I wanted to find out which way to go. So not only Christianity and Islam, but Confucianism, Shintoism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Judaism. I tried to read everything.
My view on Islam is that it is not so much a religion as a totalitarian political ideology with religious elements.
Stating my views on Islam has brought me to court on charges of ‘group insult’ and incitement to racial hatred. I am being tried for voicing opinions that I – and my constituents – consider to be the truth. I am being tried for challenging the views that the ruling establishment wants to impose on us as the truth.
We’ll surely stop the work of all western Christian and eastern religions, and also Islam.
Modern society places an emphasis on individual responsibility, whereas Islam places an emphasis on collective responsibility and the family.
There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can compete successfully with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to.
If people in Russia do not take the path of traditional, pure Sufi Islam, Russia will lose out. All the other denominations, like Wahhabism, are new inventions for our country – we have never had it, and we will never accept it.
As long as I am alive, there will be no rest for the enemies of Islam. I will continue my mission against them.
Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith – even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity.
Mosques where sharia law prevails – they exist in France. Refusing to see that means that we do equate Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. We have to denounce and eradicate it.
The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.
The coverage of Islam in the media is becoming more sophisticated, and there is more access to knowledge.
America doesn’t have the moral authority or weight to tip the scales in this fight between moderate Islam and less tolerant Islam. Muslim communities and Muslim nations need to be leading edge of this fight.
To the Left, Islam’s anger and hatred of the West is understandable because they have legitimate grievances against us.
While the West tries to turn its civilization into cultural variety hour, Islam tries to turn Muslim lands into a cultural monolith. The same West that justifies the rap culture thinks that every Muslim terrorist bombing is an expression of economic angst or social alienation.
Let me put it this way: There is nothing in Islam that is fundamentally against the quest for knowledge.
I’m not a perfect Muslim; I think none of us are perfect human beings. I do the five pillars of Islam, you know, I pray five times a day.
The cause of the break with the tradition of antiquity was the rapid and unexpected advance of Islam. The result of this advance was the final separation of East from West, and the end of the Mediterranean unity.
The people who believe themselves to be on the left, and who defend the agents of Islam in the name of tolerance and culture, are being rightwing. Not just rightwing. Extreme rightwing. I don’t understand how you can be so upset about the Christian right and just ignore the Islamic right. I’m talking about equality.
Early Islam was a time of great creativity. Scholars excelled in sciences and literature.
Islam expect every Muslim to do this duty, and if we realise our responsibility time will come soon when we shall justify ourselves worthy of a glorious past.
The God of Islam is not the same God of the Judaeo-Christian faith. The God that we worship in Christianity is a God that has a Son. To Islam, that is blasphemy, to say that God has a son. Therefore, they do not worship the God that we worship.
As Commander of the Faithful, it is out of the question that I fight Islam. We need to fight violence and ignorance. It is true, when one strolls out, one sees women with scarves and men with beards. This has always been the case in Morocco. Morocco is built on tolerance.
If they analyze the situation as thoroughly as they should, Muslims will realize they are the first targets. What are the fundamentalists really after? Simply taking over Islam and then turning its back on modernity.
I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India and Islam.
Was Islam spread by them through force and coercion? No. They preached Islam by personal example.
Every theistic religion, including Catholicism, Mainline Protestantism, Judaism, Mormonism, and Islam, has traditionally held homosexual congress in moral opprobrium.
There are strengths in Islamic tradition. Islam actually, as a monotheistic religion, which defined man as a responsible agent by itself, created the idea of the individual in the Middle East and saved it from the communitarianism, the collectivism of the tribe.
I’m the first person to say don’t equate between terrorism and Islam. But at the same time, I’m not going to pretend that there isn’t a threat from some British Muslim homegrown extremists.
Pakistanis can’t trust. They’ve seen in history that people, particularly politicians, are corrupt. And they’re misguided by people in the name of Islam. They’re told: ‘Malala is not a Muslim, she’s not in purdah, she’s working for America.’
In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women’s rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran’s culture.
It’s not the United States’s job to ‘protect’ Islam.
I have a big problem with Islam.
Islam is antiauthoritarian, sex-positive monotheism.
Failure to find a way to incorporate political Islam in democracy, however uncomfortable its ideology is for secular liberals, will mean we have given them little alternative but to find other means of expression. Inevitably, some of this would be violent.
Islam is fixed, stable, ordered and disciplined, and so are Muslims.
The West has been calling for years for the forces of moderate Islam to stand up to the very small percentage but very large number of radical Muslims all around the world. When countries – the U.A.E. or Egypt or Jordan – do that, we need to highlight it, we need to celebrate it, and we need to continue to encourage it.
The Arab Spring, nobody’s in the streets demonstrating for radical Islam; they’re in the streets with a window of democracy. They want our political reform, our social justice, and our economic opportunity.
We 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.
The truth is that Islam is not like any other faith. It is the religious equivalent of fascism.
Former president Wulff said Islam belongs to Germany. That is true. I also hold this opinion.
If you speak the truth – and I believe people should speak the truth about Islam – you pay a very heavy price.
One has to nurture a new generation, to raise children in the spirit of Islam.
In any show, not everybody is completely with us on all the topics we talk about. We talk about Hindutva, and we talk about the problems with Islam also. If there are Muslims in the audience, laughing at the jokes on Hindutva, they will have to confront the jokes on Islam too.
We believe women have rights in Islam that they’ve yet to obtain.
We are not a land of Islam. In our country, we don’t wear djellaba clothing, we don’t wear a veil, and we don’t impose cathedral-sized mosques.
I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
Secular intellectuals may wax eloquent about ‘true Islam’ being humane and peaceful, on TV programmes, but it is clear that they have not read any authoritative translations of the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith.
Religion is very important to me. One of my aims is to try to show that you can have faith and play cricket. There can be a lot of negativity and misunderstanding of Islam.
No one is attacking Islam, as such. We accept that there is a large French-born Islamic population in France who have a right to be here. The FN is not a racist or Islamophobic party.
We have always realized, as Israelis and as Jews, that we are not fighting Islam and thus avoided turning the Temple Mount issue into a war of Jews against Muslims.
As a result of that, America desires a moderate Islam; an Islam that America can control; an Islam that America can give direction to and give orders to its leaders.
The Left wants Islam not only tolerated across the globe but invited and welcomed inside the gates and into our schools, our entertainment, our military our legislatures, and yes, the White House.
Subconsciously, Islam took over me, so it was like eighty or ninety percent of the fabric of the person I was.
The Bush administration does not desire to see Islam practiced in its pristine purity.
My aim is to show that those governments that violate the rights of people by invoking the name of Islam have been misusing Islam.
The problem is not Hamas, the problem is not people. The root of the problem is Islam itself as an idea, as an idea. And about Hamas as an organization, of course, the Hamas leadership, including my father, they’re responsible; they’re responsible for all the violence that happened from the organization.
I never was in the Nation of Islam… I mean, what I call myself is a natural Muslim, ’cause it’s just me and God. You know, going to the mosque, the ritual and the tradition, it’s just not in me to do. So I don’t do it.
I believe Islam was truly spread by example. So whatever good a Muslim does publicly will be seen – the same is true for the bad.
Our socialism does not include extreme materialistic concepts, since Indonesia is primarily a God-fearing, God-loving nation. Our socialism is a mixture. We draw political equality from the American Declaration of Independence. We draw spiritual equality from Islam and Christianity. We draw scientific equality from Marx.
My career divides in two: before and after 9/11. In the first part I was trying to show that Islam is relevant to political concerns. If you want to understand Muslims, I argued, you need to understand the role of Islam in their lives. Now that seems obvious.
When leading evangelicals say terrible things about Islam, evil things about Islam, terrible things about Muhammad, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Early Islam was a time of great creativity. Scholars excelled in sciences and literature. Our religion should not be a shield behind which we hide from the world but a driving force that inspires us to innovate and contribute to our surroundings. This is the true spirit of Islam.
I 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.
We have a toxic ideology, hopefully very small, within Islam; certainly most people, most Muslims, don’t agree with this violent, jihadist approach.
It is the duty of the followers of Islam to spread through the civilised world, a knowledge of what Islam means – its spirit and message.
What’s right with America and what’s right with Islam have a lot in common. At their highest levels, both worldviews reflect an enlightened recognition that all of humankind shares a common Creator – that we are, indeed, brothers and sisters.
The mistake of the West was to put the Sauds on the throne of Saudi Arabia and give them control of the world’s oil fortune, which they then used to propagate Wahhabi Islam.
The Arab spring confirmed that peaceful change is possible and so reinforced the vision of political Islam. The impact of this went beyond the Brotherhood to include the Salafist tendency in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya that had questioned the democratic path.
A hedonistic lifestyle contrary to all the rules and expectations of Islam is not an unusual precursor to radicalisation: in fact, some young radicals see joining in the jihad as a way of achieving redemption for past sins.
Let me say this loud and clear. There is a world of difference between terrorist acts and the Islamic Shari’a. Islam is not only a religion, but a way of life. And at its heart lie the sacred principles of tolerance and dialogue.
The role of religions in the domination and destruction of African civilizations was ruthless… Islam was as guilty as all the rest.
As a supporter of secularism, I am willing to accept same-sex weddings in a state-sanctioned register office, on grounds of equity. As a believer in Islam, however, I insist that no mosque be forced to hold one against its wishes.
I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became.
Al-Qa’ida seeks to portray America as an enemy of the world’s Muslims. But President Obama has made it clear that the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.
Islam, for example, like so many other faiths, stresses the importance of mutual solidarity with our fellow man.
The philosophical connection between the Islamic world and the West is much closer than I thought. Doubt did not begin with Descartes. We have this construction today that the West and Islam are entirely separate worlds. This is wrong.
The world does not have an Islam problem; the world has a dignity problem.
Jihad is holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.
All we’re doing is going back to what we were: a moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world and to all traditions and people.
It is this desire to see civil society remain a strong and united force within the U.K. that has encouraged me to chair Citizens U.K. Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life.
Respecting other people’s cultures is well and good, but I draw the line at where some branches of Islam, what they do to women. It’s indefensible.
There’s a lot of misunderstanding out there, particularly in the difference between religion and culture. For example, I hear people criticise Islam for arranged marriages, but that’s nothing to do with Islam. It is the culture in some places, but it’s actually against Islam.
Isis want to destroy the knowledge that Islam is a beautiful, scientific and intelligent culture, and we are way ahead of them.
In the U.S., the FBI or the people I met from the Department of Justice might be ignorant about Islam or about the East more generally, but I felt they were less willing to make blanket judgments about Muslims. This caution was less evident with some of the authorities I met in India.
I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam.
We have religious freedom – which is important. But we want everyone in our country to respect our laws, and our laws on Islam say it is not acceptable to have influence abroad on the Muslim community in Austria, and it is not acceptable that Islamic organizations or imams are financed from abroad.
There is not a single Muslim leader today who has the courage and commitment to defend Islam and Muslims, they are all in awe of the United States and other Western powers, and are indebted to them.
Once enough Americans reacquaint themselves with Americanism, we should promote it to all countries just as the Left promotes leftism and Muslims promote Islam. One need not be American to affirm Americanism.
The obstacle for us is not Islam, but the bureaucrats in Brussels.
The clash of civilizations or the clash between Islam and the West may be cliches. But there is an even bigger cliche around: that this clash actually goes on within Islam, between reformists and fanatics.
To claim that ISIS is Islamic is egregiously inaccurate and empirically unsustainable, not to mention insulting to the 1.6 billion non-violent adherents of Islam across the planet.
We have a problem with political Islam in Austria.
Chechens are Muslim, and some share the belief that the West is engaged in a global campaign against Islam.
Fortunately, historians are now beginning to recognise the historic role of Islam as a liberating force for peoples oppressed by the burdens of unjust social systems.
Hamas murders not only Israelis, but also Palestinians whose political stance is different from that which its group promotes; that is, its radical religious outlook in which Islam is the solution to the world’s problems.
In Britain, Christianity is dying. Islam, unfortunately, isn’t.
Well, today, we are in the struggle brought on to us by the terrorists of Islam. It is a war that we did not choose. It was a war that was declared against us as Americans, against our people, against our Constitution.
I never was in the Nation of Islam… I mean, what I call myself is a natural Muslim, ’cause it’s just me and God.
The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it’s Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity.
I did not lose this election, or had a bad result compared with what we might have got because of Islam.
I don’t have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam.
I can’t talk about Christianity if I don’t know it. You can’t talk about Muslims or Islam if you don’t know it.
Islam is misunderstood by many. The extremists grab the headlines; those of us who want to practise our religion and live under this country’s laws do not make the news.
Throughout the past, there has been a lack of intimacy, affection, and regard for Islam by Christianity. This, to a large extent, has been due to a lack of knowledge of the great human and spiritual ideals for which Islam and the teachings of Islam stand.
The interesting part of my spiritual life is studying as much as you can. Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism and Shamanism and Judaism, Christianity – you try to learn what the precepts are, what the religion is, and ultimately, it’s based in the same thought, it’s based in the same outcome, you know.
Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity.
The rise of African nations concurrent with the spread of the Nation of Islam and the civil rights movement gave black America a burst of pride over and above anything they had had since the decline of the movement of Marcus Garvey.
The only model to follow is pure Islam.
I’ve been to Africa three times. All right? You can’t bring Western reasoning into the culture. The same way you can’t bring it into fundamental Islam.
All too many Muslims fail to grasp Islam, which teaches one to be lenient towards others and to understand their value systems, knowing that these are tolerated by Islam as a religion.
As a Westerner, the child of civil rights and anti-war activists, I embraced Islam not in abandonment of my core values, drawn almost entirely from the progressive tradition, but as an affirmation of them.
Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler.
There are only three integral views of the world: the religious, the materialistic, and the Islamic. They reflect three elemental possibilities (conscience, nature, and man), each of them manifesting itself as Christianity, materialism, and Islam.
Moderation is part of faith, so those who accuse Muslim schools of fostering fanaticism should learn a bit more about Islam.
Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe.
Whether it’s people walking off ‘The View’ when Bill O’Reilly makes a statement about radical Islam or Juan Williams being fired for expressing his opinion, over-reaching political correctness is chipping away at the fundamental American freedoms of speech and expression.
My intention is to show the real face of Islam. I see it as a threat.
We have been given a role to play. We have been asked to provide, to give lectures on the role of Islamic development and the way we do it here, so the people who are Muslims there would understand what the role of Islam is.
The fact to the matter is, we never developed a comprehensive strategy to deal with radical Islam. And the 9/11 commission said one of the things we must do is develop a global alliance to combat it.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the major international question was the relation between Islam and democracy.
I mean, in general, the danger is from Oriental faiths and Islam.
There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.
I think there is no reason for us to bring to Islamism or political Islam the fear and ignorance of Western commentators and their hysterical vocabulary.
At the height of his popularity in 1977, Cat Stevens converted to Islam and dedicated his life to educational and philanthropic causes.
Islam and the West have clashed in the past and have not clashed. There is nothing inevitable about it.
Of course, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are not terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. Equating all Muslims with terrorism is stupid and wrong. But acknowledging that there is a link between Islam and terror is appropriate and necessary.
Before I wrote ‘God’s War,’ I probably did eight years of research into the Middle East, Judaism, Islam, Catholicisim, and all sorts of fabulous other things.
Again and again, when Westerners are perceived as denigrating Muhammad, the Koran, or Islam, Islamists demonstrate, riot or kill.
Islam will be what Muslims make of it. And it is the sum total of the interpretation that Muslims give to it.
Probably the one Bible passage that is read by Jews and Roman Catholics, Protestants, Islam, more than any other chapter is Psalm 23. And in Psalm 23 there is a verse that says, ‘Surely, yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’
You notice how liberals keep saying, ‘If only Islam would have a Reformation’ – it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way.
The Prophet defeated the enemies of Islam even when he and his followers were small in number.
I beg Osama to stop warring. He is a Muslim, and Islam means peace. Nobody wins in a war… I wish I were tapped in the problem about Iraq. I knew Saddam enough that I could have talked him into surrendering. But it’s too late.
In the Nation of Islam, Akbar Muhammad is a big deal.
Muslims around the world deserve to see birthplace of Islam represent the ethics of Islam.
Islam’s laws are fixed and that is why Islam is stable.
What has bothered and angered radical Muslims is that I’m a non-Muslim writing anything at all about Islam. But this is fiction, and I don’t think Islam is above criticism or fictionalization any more so than Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism or Hinduism is.
I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam, its law and polity, its culture, its history and its literature.
Christianity and Islam are today the most numerous and fastest growing religions globally. Together they encompass more than half of humanity. Consequence: both are here to stay.
Many people in Europe and the U.S. dispute the thesis that we are living through a clash of civilisations between Islam and the west. But a radical minority of Muslims firmly believes that Islam is under siege, and is committed to winning the holy war it has declared against the West.
The name Muhammad is the most common name in the world. In all the countries around the world – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon – there are more Muhammads than anything else. When I joined the Nation of Islam and became a Muslim, they gave me the most famous name because I was the champ.
The ‘Islam vs. the West’ dialogue ceased to be about real people a long time ago.
I want to ask those who are aiding terror, what do you get by taking innocent lives? Islam is a religion of peace; you are maligning its name.
Archaeologists have made discoveries that challenge fundamental traditions of Judaism as well as those of Christianity and Islam.
I used to fast during Ramadan because I admired the people fasting around me. What made me convert was that I had that certainty that Islam was for me. I felt this relationship with God, and that enlightened my life. I had that conviction in my heart that that was my religion.
They do not understand Islam, and I think that is one area where perhaps I hope one day I will play a role in actually making people understand what we perceive Islam to be.
Islam is about finding your own space.
Was Sen. Barack Obama a Muslim? Did he ever practice Islam? The presidential candidate officially rejects the claims, but the issue of Obama’s personal faith has re-emerged amid conflicting accounts of his enrollment as a Muslim during elementary school in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
I never would’ve thought in Homeland Security that you would see someone saying that we needed to have hearings on radicalization of Christianity because it’s a purported threat to America as much as radicalization of Islam.
Before there was radical Islam, immigration and terror didn’t mix.
I made the film to bring the story of Islam, the story of 700 million of people, to the West.
‘Islamist terrorism.’ The very phrase is contentious. No one wants to make this problem harder by unfairly branding and alienating a quarter of the world’s population, and even in this construction, no one should be thinking this means all of Islam or all Muslims.
What the printing press is to Christianity in the 16th century, that’s what the Internet is doing to Islam now. It has opened up the monopoly over the interpretation of Islam that used to solely belong to the religious class.
Obama has no power to change American policy because there are people who specialize in drawing these policies, which have been and still are hostile towards Islam.
I am concerned if 25 percent of Americans think that President Obama is a Muslim. I mean, it’s obviously a lack of knowledge. But also, it’s for the Muslims as well, you know, because a small numbers of Muslims have really painted a very negative image of Islam.
Christianity and Judaism have gone through the laundromat of humanism and enlightenment, but that is not the case with Islam.
The great majority of Americans do not know much about Islam but nonetheless fear it as violent, expansionist and alien to their society. The problem to overcome is not hatred, but ignorance.
Things that become important to economies become ritualized and become deified. Because I’m Jewish, I always thought it was interesting that in Judaism, salt seals a bargain, particularly the covenant with God. Some people, when they bless bread, they dip it in salt. Same thing exists in Islam.
I’m afraid that a lot of things that people believe about Islam are totally different from the religion that most of us recognize. I was really fortunate that I got to know Islam before it became a headline.
There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it.
Islam is perfect, there is nothing to be added or changed.
I think my love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned.
These are the themes in life which are consistent in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism – of being grounded in who you are and being engaged in an unjust world.
Islam believes that Jesus is a prophet, and they honour him – highly – and they respect him, and they follow his teachings. So, for me, as somebody who was raised Muslim, it is an honour to actually play Jesus, just because of that.
I plan on suing all of the Left wing terrorists and tech tyrants who are trying to shut me down simply because I am a Conservative Jewish woman who speaks truth about Islam.
Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam.
The core of my life is Islam, my religion. Without that, I have no strength, no belief in God or in myself.
I did not come into contact with any Muslim before I embraced Islam. I read the Qur’an first and realized no person is perfect, Islam is perfect, and if we imitate the conduct of the Holy Prophet… we will be successful.
Wherever Islam gets its foot on the ground, you see less freedom, less freedom of speech, less freedom of anything.
I think Muslims have become the new Negroes in America. They are being mistreated at airports, by the Immigration – everywhere. Islam is a religion of peace. They are wrong.
We need to educate people about the reality of Islam, the logics of Islam. I am sure every free man in this world would fight the ideology of Islam.
The lesser jihad is our active fulfillment of Islam’s commands and duties.
ISIS is attempting to rebrand Islam as an ideology that justifies violence and brutality. It rejects the kind of global order our nation has sacrificed so much to achieve.
In 2003, as a 21-year-old convert to Islam, I moved from Colorado to Cairo to see what life was like in a Muslim country.
Every fundamentalist movement I’ve studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.
The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about the rise of China and are threatened by the rise of radical Islam.
If all Henry Kissinger contributed to the Middle East were a regional arms race, petrodollar addiction, Iranian radicalization, and the Tehran-Riyadh conflict, it would be bad enough. His legacy, however, is far worse than that: He has to answer for his role in the rise of political Islam.
I converted Dec. 31, 1999. It was a Friday. That was my second time going to the mosque. The woman who is my wife now… was basically raised Muslim – and she was at that point where she was deciding or trying to come to terms with her own relationship with Islam and how to embrace that for herself.
Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals.
ISIS is very similar to the Kharijites, who were a toxic off-shoot of Islam. It’s not Islam; it’s a perversion of Islam, and to label these militant externalities as Islam is to legitimize their actions.
There 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.
I have a deep and personal aversion to anti-Semitism regardless of its source, and I reject and condemn the anti-Semitic statements and actions of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and Khalid Muhammed.
Political Islam’s parallel societies and radicalizing tendencies have no place in our country.
I think I came to see Islam, or at least one part of Islam, as an important defense mechanism against the commercialization of the world.
In the West, anything that must be hidden is suspect; availability and honesty are interlinked. This clashes irreconcilably with Islam, where the things that are most precious, most perfect and most holy are always hidden: the Kaaba, the faces of prophets and angels, a woman’s body, Heaven.
Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I’ve had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam… and I’m not happy to be right in all of those cases.
There is clearly a conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western democracy and a growing minority that does not.
The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths – of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism.
The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.
My choosing Islam was not a political statement; it was a spiritual statement.
In Islamic societies, politicians can manipulate almost everything. But thus far, no fundamentalist leader has been able to convince his supporters to renounce Islam’s central virtue – the principle of strict equality between human beings, regardless of sex, race, or creed.
You always had a few brothers that was speaking on Islam, like my brother’s uncle. It wasn’t big in my neighborhood, but with certain brothers, it was big. I respected it because Islam is my home. I found my home when Islam came to me. I’ve been living with it ever since.
While there are corporal descriptions of what the afterlife is like in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, what’s going on there is the finite trying to describe the infinite. If God knows everything, started everything and is the only one who knows how it’s going to end, how can any human know what God wants?
But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam.
I realised that the idea of enforcing sharia is not consistent with Islam as it’s been practised from the beginning. In other words, Islam has always been secular, and I had been totally ignorant of the fact.
If the Pope spoke out with moral authority against violent Islam, I would be there cheering him on.
The enemy is not Islam, the great world faith, but a perversion of Islam.
Jihad expands Islam’s domain by any means available.
I have witnessed and heard countless reports of young black men routinely targeted and recruited by various subversive groups. One of the leading recruiters inside U.S. jails and prisons is none other than Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.
While there are many moderate Muslims, Islam’s political ideology is radical and has global ambitions.
I would expect the fundamentalists to agree with me that democracy is incompatible with fundamentalist Islam. Moderate Muslims have to decide which side of the argument they are on.
Islam 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.
It’s seen as xenophobic to be worried about Islam, but they appear to disproportionately allow intolerance to blossom in their communities.
The forces that led to radical Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Islamic State, can ultimately only be defeated by moderate Muslims around the globe, countries like U.A.E. that have led the fight within their own border to promote tolerance.
The Nation of Islam provides an antidote in the United States to fundamentalist Islam – which is why individuals from America have to go abroad to find radical teachings.
Educated women armed with computers have defeated extremists by denying them a monopoly to define cultural identity and interpret religious texts. No extremist can say that women are inferior to men without being made a laughingstock on Al Jazeera. Islam insisted on equality between everyone.
Islam’s not just about covering your hair. It’s about how you treat other people.
We’ve got jihadists. That doesn’t mean that all Muslims are problems with respect to terrorism, but there is something going on here. We’ve got a problem dealing with one aspect of one portion of modern Islam – just as hundreds of years ago the world had a problem with Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition.
Saudi Arabia is the mother and father of political Islam.
We must remember that Islam is not an enemy, and we have no war with Islam.
To be brutally frank, I mean Christianity is dying in Europe, and Islam is on the rise.
Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers.
The main bone of contention is whether Islamic injunctions are legal or moral categories. When Muslims say Islam commands daily prayers or bans alcohol, are they talking about public obligations that will be enforced by the state or personal ones that will be judged by God?
We are not fighting against the Palestinian people, and we are not at war with Islam. We are fighting against terrorism.
But when I reintroduced the Nation of Islam, and began to host meetings in cities and thousands and thousands of people come out.
I’ve not experienced racism from other players. Not once. You experience ignorance but that’s not the same at all, and I’m always happy to discuss things. If that helps people learn about Islam, to learn there’s nothing to fear, then great, that’s all part of my role.
The caricature of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion is horrendously incomplete. Remember that those standing up to Muslim fanatics are mostly Muslims.
It’s probably incorrect to say that Islam is ‘a religion of peace,’ as some politicians like to say. Overstatements like that don’t clarify anything.
Some Libertarians argue that Western occupation fans the flames of radical Islam; I agree. But I don’t agree that, absent Western occupation, that radical Islam ‘goes quietly into that good night.’
So much of Islam is Judeo-Christianity. It’s impossible to divorce them. Islam is 600 years after Christ. Thousands of years after Judaism. Christ, Moses, Abraham – they are all in the Koran.
The Muslims are, as a group, attacking people because under the Quran, there is the house of Islam, and outside of it, there’s the house of war.
My faith in Islam is not unlike my faith in the game of basketball: Both require immense determination, focus, passion and discipline.
Maybe some people may have thought or imagined that Islam drains all creativity. In fact, when you look at history, you discover that the golden age of Spain is what actually produced what we call the guitar.
The rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been a disaster for the public image of Islam – and a boon for the Islamophobia industry.
Wake up, Christians of Tennessee. Islam is at your gate. Do not make the mistake which Europe made. Do not allow Islam to gain a foothold here.
Ninety percent of the comic books I’ve written in the past had little or nothing to do with Islam.
The reality is that Islam is facing a phenomenal rise with regards to fundamentalism. It cannot control it, but what is sure is that neither can European states control and monitor the development of fundamentalist networks in their own territory.
Here is a fact: If Facebook were a religion, it will be the third largest behind Islam and Christianity. Its success is rooted and capitalizing on the human desire to bond.
The Qur’an not only lacks any earthly punishment for someone who abandons Islam, it even includes verses that imply that such a change of heart should be a matter of free choice.
In Islam, the word of the Prophet is final. No true Muslim can disown these verses or say that they would rewrite the offensive verses of the Koran. If they do, then they would have to run for their lives.
America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
I was always inclined towards learning more about Islam.
Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter.
I keep on saying, being moderate is fundamental to Islam.
People sometimes have a bad image of Islam but that is an image of what people are doing with Islam.
I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘moderate Islam.’ I think it’s better to talk about degrees of belief and degrees of practice.
Obama’s entire foreign policy was predicated on the notion that by existing, he would bridge all gaps and bury all hatchets. Instead, the Muslim world burns his picture even as he tells them he respects their radicalism. It turns out that diversity is a one-way street for the devotees of global Islam.
Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what’s going on in the world really bizarre.
Apostasy is a grave crime in Islam and punishable by death in the eyes of members of al Qaeda.
We are being challenged by Islam these years. There are some things for which one should display no tolerance. And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction.
If you convert to Islam after a couple of decades of being a black man in the U.S., the discrimination you receive as a Muslim doesn’t feel like a shock.
I got my first exposure to Islam when I was 13.
The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam.
Unfortunately, a certain type of Islam ghettoizes itself and is incompatible with our society. And it amazes me that some within the Catholic hierarchy act as if they do not understand.
Just as ‘Islam’ literally means ‘peace,’ none of the 99 names of Allah mean violence. Similarly, every religion in the world stands for peace, compassion, and brotherhood.
I did a play called ‘Disgraced’ in 2012 at Lincoln Center, which ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize. I played the lead character, a Muslim American, who had renounced Islam and became very anti-Islam.
ISIS may be a perversion of Islam, but Islamic it is, just as Christian beliefs about the sanctity of the unborn child explain why some Christian fundamentalists attack abortion clinics and doctors.
The concept of God in Jewish orthodoxy is one where you’re having constant quarrels with God. Where I come from, in Islam, the only concept of God is you submit to Him and you obey His commands; no quarreling allowed.
There are common denominators that unite all members of al-Nahda: There is no one in al-Nahda who doubts about Islam There is no one in al-Nahda that believes in extremist views of Islam.
The problem with Islam is that it’s a law, not a religion, and it’s incompatible with our values, our rights, and our freedoms.
Islam and democracy can function together.
Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.
It’s not that we have two different kinds of Islam. I acknowledge the fact that we have two kinds of people. There are moderate Muslims and non-moderate Muslims. But there is really only one Islam, and this is the Islam of the life of Muhammad, of the Quran, of the Hadiths, of the Sunnah.
Here’s the broader inconvenient truth for both Clinton and women’s rights that Trump is more than willing to tell voters: Islam, as it is practiced in most countries around the world, suppresses women’s rights – the only issue is the degree of severity of the repression.
A country which has a population 99% as their faith in Islam can also be a country which are subscribing to the universal values of the E.U.
We have shown that Islam can rule the world perfectly for 14 centuries, and during this time of Muslim power we did not borrow ideas like democracy from others, so why do we need to learn democracy from them now?
The truth is nobody was a Muslim until Public Enemy came out. Then, everybody was Muslim this and Muslim that. It’s a bandwagon thing. Islam is a way of life… it’s a religion. It’s not just something you put on a record.
The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.
Islam and the Constitution are in clear conflict.
With Islam, there’s the Sharia. There’s the Islamic law which prevails, and as long as it doesn’t distinguish between God and the state, it’s a problem.
Hip-hop in the ’90s began moving towards the Nation of Islam and the 5 Percenters, black nationalist movements; very much so, these movements embraced a form of Islam: Malcom X’s form of Islam prior to his change.
Radical Islam, it has grown into a global jihad.
Islam is a dangerous religion.
Abraham is the shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He stands at the heart of these three faiths. And yet you know almost nothing about him.
Islam does not believe in democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of assembly. It does not separate religion and politics. It is partly a religion, but it is much more than that. It has a political agenda that goes far outside the realm of religion.
The U.S. is friends with dictatorial regimes, then invades places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what happens afterwards is a catastrophe. In the place of their leaders, fundamentalist movements that use the name of Islam spring up, and all that’s left is terror and bloodshed.
Having embraced Islam, I felt as if I were born again. I found in Islam the answers to those queries which I had failed to find in Christianity.
There are fear mongers who talk about Islam as somehow it is an incubator of hate… remember Christians, like the Westboro Baptist Church, are just as capable of promoting intolerance.
Islam and freedom are not compatible.
I often think that woman is more free in Islam than in Christianity. Woman is more protected by Islam than by the faith which preaches monogamy.
It is not right to associate the fight against international terrorist networks with an imaginary crusade against Islam.
Growing up, I came to love Egypt and respect Islam, but I never thought to go beyond the surface. Back in Canada, many of my father’s Egyptian friends questioned his decision not to raise his only child more strictly in the faith. I was not taught salat, the Muslim ritual of prayer, nor did I study Arabic.
I’m concerned that Islam has not just been politicised but that it’s becoming an identity. This is like turning religion into a football match; it’s a distraction from the real thing.
My philosophy – inclusive and pluralist Islam, dedicated to service to human beings from every faith – is antithetical to armed rebellion.
Southeast Asia is an area in which there is a form of Islam which is both devout and progressive, and therefore to be supported. It’s an area in which I see a congruence of American interests and local interests: to have tolerant societies and become more prosperous.
The UN structure is one-sided, stacked against the world of Islam.
Abedi appears to be one of the many thousands of Western Muslims who have embraced militant Islam, often as a way of trying to resolve the tension between their split identities.
For most inhabitants of the Arab world, the prevailing cultural attitude toward women – fed and encouraged by Wahhabi doctrine, which is based on Bedouin social norms rather than Islamic jurisprudence – often trumps the rights accorded to women by Islam.
I was sixteen when I converted to Islam. Beyond the fraternal aspect, my conversion did not change my life. I was already living by the same principles – being righteous, having values.
For the most part, Islam is about peace. It’s dealing with submission to the most high. Mohammed is a prophet, a messenger. But at the same time, we’ll fight in the name of Allah. We’re not going to let you disrespect our prophet.
Islam is something we can’t afford any more.
America has always welcomed anyone willing to assimilate to its national character. But radical Islam rejects assimilation and is bent on the conquest of our national character.
I questioned the blind faith demanded by my religion, which was Islam.
Make no mistake about it – Islam is just not another way to approach God.
I can say with a level of confidence that Islam is not a religion of war, only because the majority of Muslims don’t subscribe to that perspective, not because there’s something inherent in the text that tells me it’s a religion of peace.
My father saw Islam as a way to connect with the community. He never went to prayer services except for big communal events. I am absolutely certain that my father did not go to services every Friday. He was not religious.
Donald Trump giving a speech on Islam is like me giving a speech titled, ‘The Best Haircuts to Have If You Really Want to Succeed in Corporate America.’ I could do it. But I’d mostly be making it up as I went along.
Islam is itself destiny and will not suffer destiny.
The secular elites are so terrified of telling the truth about radical Islam. When you talk about the radical Islamists, we have got to get straight and get serious and talk about it in the right way.
Muslims are not bloodthirsty people. Islam is a religion of peace that forbids the killing of the innocent. Islam also accepts the Prophets, whether those prophets are Mohammed, God’s peace and blessing be upon Him, or Moses or the other prophets of the Books.
Islam, or any religion, will become totalitarian if it is made into an ideology, because that is the nature of ideologies.
I was fascinated by the Black Panthers because I’d been in contact with the Nation of Islam, thanks to Muhammad Ali, and their way of talking was that the whites were the devil, and they’d get rid of them once they took over.
In any authoritarian society, the possessor of power dictates, and if you try and step outside, he will come after you. This is equally true of Sovietism, of China and of Iran, and in our time it has happened a lot in Islam. The point is that it’s worse when the authoritarianism is supported by something supernatural.
Islam believes in many prophets, and Al Quran is nothing but a confirmation of the old Scriptures.
I always found it ironic when a Saudi official bashes Islamists, given that Saudi Arabia is the mother of all political Islam – and even describes itself as an Islamic state in its ‘Higher Law.’
I suppose that the media and their portrayal of Islam and the almost tribal separations and divisions of the Muslims are the greatest issues confronting Muslims in the United Kingdom.
Pakistan is not the torch-bearer of Islam, and if I change my country, it doesn’t mean that I have to change my religion.
It is not necessary to dwell on the political and social principles of Islam, to underline how close they also are in spirit to the concepts of human rights which govern the political and social systems of the West.
Ataturk approved of the mevlevi dervish approach to God as being ‘an expression of Turkish genius’ that reclaimed Islam from what he saw as hide-bound, backward Arab tradition.
North Eurasia is one of the best examples of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Islam and Christianity. This is a rare thing in today’s world, even in its most liberal parts.
The West needs leaders with the courage and the will to fight the scourge of radical Islam.
If you want to practice Islam in the inconsequential, semi-secular sense, fine.
We are in a struggle against the forces of radical Islam and terror, which must be defeated for our children and our grandchildren.
I think race has been a burden for black Americans. Being Muslim has also been a challenge because so many people do not understand Islam.
Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society.
Most victims of ISIL are, in fact, Muslims. So it seems to me that to refer to ISIL as occupying any part of the Islamic theology is playing on a – a battlefield that they would like us to be on. I think that to call them – to call them some form of Islam gives the group more dignity than it deserves, frankly.
Islam has a negative outlook on it around the world based on what the media tries to show. They not showing the peace.
Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of war, and most Muslims don’t understand the true nature of Islam.
One of the basic principles when you dealing with mathematics and Islam: Seek knowledge.
Islam is a violent, I was going to say religion, but it’s not a religion. It’s a political system. It’s a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination. That is the ultimate aim.
When I was writing ‘The Satanic Verses,’ if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn’t have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn’t seem to be a big deal.
Religion is defined by the relationship between God and man. And Islam is the submission and the acknowledgment of the human being to the creator.
Picture what this country felt like in the weeks and months after 9/11. Can you imagine anyone even beginning to allow an advertising campaign promoting Islam, being endorsed and supported by a man the feds believe to be a terrorist, on New York City subways?
Indonesia is the world’s third-largest democracy. And we also have the world’s largest Muslim population. This demonstrates that democracy and Islam are not incompatible. Terrorism is not associated with any religion.
General Zia-ul-Haq, a dictator and unscrupulous political actor, used Islam as a pretext for waging war in Afghanistan and adopting an aggressive stance towards India. By advancing a more orthodox version of Islam, he was able to hold on to a repressive regime and quell any opposition.
There have been huge Muslim demonstrations against cartoons depicting Muhammad and any other perceived insult against Islam. But I am unaware of a single demonstration of Muslims against Muslim terror directed at non-Muslims.
The majority of the world’s Muslims do not believe that terrorism is a legitimate strategy or that Islam is incompatible with democracy.
My brother thinks it is very, very bad that I left Islam. My half-sister wants to convert me back; I want to convert her to Western values. My mum is terrified that when I die, and we all go to God, I will be burned.
The threat from radical Islam is real.
There is a group of individuals who are radical jihadists. We need to call them by name. They believe it is OK to kill people in the name of their religion. It is not all of Islam. It is not all Muslims. But there is a subgroup who believe it is OK. In fact, it is their plan and design to kill people.
The conclusion that I have come to is that actually, no religion, whether it’s Islam, Christianity or any idea based on scripture or texts, is a religion of ‘anything,’ really.
I am totally against the idea that a Muslim woman should not have the same opportunities as a Muslim man to learn, to open up, to work, help shape the future. To close Islam down to a sexist approach is totally intolerable and ridiculous. It’s not Islam.
Islam has shown two faces to the Jews, one benevolent, one less so.
When I’m out of town, I always try to get some readings or some type of new information to where I’m learning more about Islam, just to become the best Muslim I can become.
In their rush to placate everyone and offend no one – and in particular to pander to Islam – the Left wants to shut down Christianity.
While no Muslim worthy of his name would lose his respect for God, the Prophet Muhammad, and other symbols of Islam, he might well refrain from using legal prosecution or violent reaction to those who do not show the same respect. My basis for this claim is nothing other than the holiest source of Islam, the Quran.
For many, embracing the ideology of Osama bin Laden or ISIS allowed them to become the heroes of their own story as well as actors in a cosmic crusade. For others, a ‘cognitive opening’ to militant Islam was often precipitated by a personal disappointment or loss.
I, too, am interested in identity and Islam, which is what people expect of us. But one must not write what is expected. It’s important for North African writers to show they have other things to say.
I believe that Islam is a faith of progress and welfare.
Orthodox Islam, like orthodox interpretations of the other Abrahamic faiths, views homosexuality as sinful and usually defines marriage as only ever a heterosexual union. This isn’t to say that there is no debate on the subject.
Islam was hijacked on that September 11, 2001, on that plane, as an innocent victim.
I can bear my own sorrows, but the sorrows arising from the calamities visiting Islam and Muslims have crushed me. I feel each blow delivered to the Muslim world as delivered first to my own heart.
The West is in for a long, irregular confrontation – not with terrorism, which is simply a tactic, but with radical Islam.
If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.
Rather than being a ‘perversion’ of Islam, it is truer to say that the version of Islam espoused by ISIS, while undoubtedly the worst possible interpretation of Islam, and for Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere obviously the most destructive version of Islam, is nevertheless a plausible interpretation of Islam.
My father, in 1952, just in his 20s, my father became the chief spokesman for the Nation of Islam. From 1952 to 1959, there were four temples. My father was responsible and credited for having maximized this membership. From four temples to 50 temples, there was so much work involved.
In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that’s happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition.
The Dutch are still allowed to speak critically about Islam, and resistance against Islamization is not a crime.
Throughout its history, Islam has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations, both ancient and modern.
EXMNA is a nonprofit that provides support to individuals who have left Islam.
After America won the Cold War, some believed we had come to the ‘end of history,’ and budget-cutters celebrated the so-called ‘peace dividend.’ As a result, we ignored the toxic mixture of militant Islam and terror that ultimately led to 9/11.
However, those who have used those words use half the sentence to fit their purpose, which, of course, I believe is to discredit me and the new Nation of Islam that has come up around me.
There is far more misunderstanding of Islam than there is, I think, of the other religions of the world. So many things are said of it by those who do not belong to that faith.
Allah says in the Qur’an not to despise one another. So the criterion in Islam is not color or social status. It’s who is most righteous. If I go to a mosque – and I’m a basketball player with money and prestige – if I go to a mosque and see an imam, I feel inferior. He’s better than me. It’s about knowledge.
Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.
Most Muslims do not ‘choose’ Islam in the way that they choose to become doctors or lawyers, nor even in the way that they choose to become fans of Coldplay or Radiohead. Most Muslims, like people of any faith, are born into their religion.
Many Muslims consider the United States hostile to Islam and to Arab interests. In fact, the United States saved tens of thousands of Muslims in the Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods?
We invite our friends who hold high positions in the legislative branch of government and state institutions to master the skills of administration, so they could, when the time comes, reform the Turkish state and make it more fruitful at all its levels in the name of Islam.
We represent the moderate teachings and principles of Islam.
On Islam, it is true that I am tough. Perhaps tougher than I should be if my only aim was to get votes.
There’s no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does.
I was raised as a Catholic and as an Ismaili. My father felt that I should have some training in Islam, but my mother was a Catholic, so really, I was raised with both.
In Islam, we believe Jesus is a prophet and respect him and follow his teachings and put him beside the Prophet Muhammad – a lot of people don’t know that.
If my children do not behave according to Islam, if they do not pray for instance, I will punish them.
The fundamental question I believe is, ‘Is political Islam in our best interest?’ If not, what is our policy to authoritatively support the countervailing forces?
Our enemy is not Islam. Islam is not the enemy of America; Americans are not the enemy of Islam. Our real enemy is extremism and radicalism.
Personality cults are an insult to Islam.
Because Islam in its original form was tough and hard, not weak and pliable.
Many spiritual teachers – in Buddhism, in Islam – have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.
The problem is that those of us who were born into Islam and who don’t want to live according to scripture – we don’t have what the Jews have, which is a rabbinical tradition that allows you to ask questions. We also don’t have the church tradition that the Christians have.
Similarly, it is argued that the culture of Islam is incompatible with democracy. Basically, this conventional perspective of the Middle East thus contends that democracy in that region is neither possible nor even desirable.
Any attempt to single out Islam would be a violation of the Constitution.
I grew up in Jerusalem and went to school here. I studied at the Hebrew University – mostly Islam and Arabic: Arab literature, Arab poetry and culture, because I felt like we are living in this region, in the Middle East, and we are not alone: There are nations here whose culture is Arab.
The idea is that they wouldn’t want to deal with militant Islam but an Islam and Muslims who are committed to progress, committed to development, who like peace and are moderate in their ways. So that’s what we are doing here.
The French have a very deep knowledge of Islam in many areas, and we can exchange views.
ISIL is not ‘radical Islam.’ Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, the Muslim Brotherhood – these are radical Islamic groups. They resort to armed struggle and terrorism to move toward their goals. But they are also deeply political organizations that have internal rules, standards, and codes of conduct.
We want Austrian-style Islam, not one controlled by other states.
There are too many people sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully and finding out how we can infiltrate them.
It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam.
We are in a conflict, whether we like it or not. I think we have to identify the enemy and call it by its name. And the enemy is an ideology rooted in militant Islam.
Exposing Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam’s wicked radicalization of black American males must become a key component of our national education.
If you’re someone who doesn’t have Muslim friends, and your only experience of Islam is what you see on the news – the angry man with a beard doing or saying something terrible – then you may inadvertently associate that with Islam and think that is what it’s all about.
I’m a person of faith, and the language that I use to define my faith, the symbols and metaphors that I rely upon to express my faith, are those provided by Islam because they make the most sense to me.
Islam is, to be sure, a big tent, and the one and a half billion Muslims in the world run the gamut from mystical, moderate, pacific Sufis to Salafists.
Islamists and their sympathizers hate us, and they will not stop hating us until we convert to ancient Islam. There is no middle ground or accommodation.
Yes, women should be free to cover their faces when walking down the street. But in our schools, hospitals, airports, banks and civil institutions, it is not unreasonable – nor contrary to the teachings of Islam – to expect women to show the one thing that allows the rest of us to identify them… namely, their face.
The contribution of Islam to history and modern civilization is the product of the efforts of peoples of many races and tongues which came to accept its way of life.
Ramadan is an important part of Islam, and when you are observing it, God is happy with you and you have to have a big celebration.
If we cling to the institution of Islam, then we tend to defend it against whatever we see as a danger to it, so because of this we see now that many people are defending states, defending territories, defending everything institutional in the belief that they defend Islam.
The difference must be distinguished between worship and respect. Islam orders you to obey and respect, as long as you are not worshiping anything other than God… Islam is a religion of peace. You don’t attack. You explain.
America’s freedom of religion, and freedom from religion, offers every wisdom tradition an opportunity to address our soul-deep needs: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, secular humanism, agnosticism and atheism among others.
When Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster the terrorists’ propaganda.
I love my job… but I find myself awkwardly straddling the divide between British Islam and the British media. I get pretty exhausted of having to constantly endure a barrage of lazy stereotypes, inflammatory headlines, disparaging generalisations, and often inaccurate and baseless stories.
Islam tells us every girl and boy should be educated. I don’t know why the Taliban have forgotten it.
It is apparent that Christianity and Islam must come, and come immediately, to a closer understanding, and it is equally apparent that their unity if achieved, will be the most effective defensive measure against Communist expansion.
No, Islam did not free African-Americans from slavery, not in Africa and not in Europe or America. Evangelical Christianity did that.
The terrorists whatever slogans they use have nothing in common with Islam.
Obviously, there’s always a battle over philosophical leanings and persuasions, but the bottom line here is that Americans need to understand that this is an ideology in jihadist terrorism that is dangerous beyond words, and we need the moderate Muslim voices to be heard here if this is to be diminished in Islam itself.
No one in al-Nahda believes that jihad is a way to impose Islam on the world. But we believe that jihad is self-control, is social and political struggle, and even military jihad is only a way to defend oneself in the case of aggression.
If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which Muslim countries’ freedom will remain a distant dream.
You see in Islam, you see in Christianity, you see in Africa, in different religions, in Buddhism and Hinduism, there is a strong commitment to refugee protection.
Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and Christian ethics to the Arabs.
If Islam’s sole interest is the welfare of mankind, then Islam is the strongest advocate of human rights anywhere on Earth.
Not once since becoming president has Mr. Obama linked terror aimed at the United States with Islam.
The Wahhabi movement is a form of radical Islam that people here say did not exist before in Bosnia, where Islam had co-existed with other major religions and was much softer and more liberal.
To try to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy is absolutely crazy. Islam has no understanding of the separation between church and state because they don’t understand Islam to be a church.
The giving of the Quran is in Islam what the incarnation of Christ is to Christianity. If this is so, then Quran-burning is parallel to Christ-crucifying.
ISIS may seem un-Islamic to President Obama, but to anybody who has read Islam’s core texts, it might appear to be a fairly straightforward attempt to create a state based on Mohammed’s instructions as laid down in the Koran, in hadith, and in Mohammed’s own example.
Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share a gospel, loosely, and it’s important that we all realize that.
Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology.
I couldn’t follow the events of September 11 because I was proofreading a novel I’d just completed – on Islam and its quarrel with the West – that I’d promised, six months earlier, to deliver to my editor on September 12, 2001.
In Islam, Jesus is a prophet, and if you look at Mohammed and Jesus and Moses, it’s not like Moses is better than Jesus and Jesus is better than Mohammed. They’re all so highly respected and honored and followed, and they’re all there for a reason.
The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam.
I’m a good Muslim and I’m only interested in Islam.
My family is very feminist, and they consider that Islam is not a super feminist religion, which I know people can argue about. But that’s – anyway that’s how I was brought up, so it would be odd for me to suddenly just up and start wearing a headscarf.
I really believe in the way the energy can consolidate in certain geographical spots. You can find it in a lot of different places, beautiful natural spots, or if you look at Islam or Judaism or Christianity, these ideas of holy places.
For me, Islam is a moral reference point, a source of inspiration to work collectively with people, to love people and to help them, to concentrate on universal values of mercy, co-operation and tolerance.
To the Left, Islam, like the rest of the ‘Third World,’ is one of the many victims of Western Imperialism.
I 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.
I have a lot of respect for aspects of Islam, but I would not choose to live in a theocratically organised Muslim society.
I had this desire to understand Islam better and then focus on the beauty of Arabic and Islamic cultures. And one of the first things to emerge was Arabic calligraphy, which was instantly inspiring.
