Quotes from Karen Armstrong

The Qur'an was attempting to give women a legal status that most Western women would not enjoy until the nineteenth century.

it is neither helpful nor accurate to assume that other people are always responsible for our pain.

The emancipation of women was a project dear to the Prophet's heart

Again, what works well in the spiritual domain can become destructive and even immoral if interpreted literally and practically in the mundane world. It

What is lawful, what is unlawful?" asked Ku Yuan, prince and poet of Chu. "This country is a slough of despond! Nothing is pure any longer! Informers are exalted! And wise men of gentle birth are without renown!"3

People who have been taught to despise themselves cannot easily respect others.

We pray for what is "to come," not for what already exists. The "event" does not require "belief" in a static, unchanging deity who "exists" but inspires us to make what is "astir" in the name "God"— absolute beauty, peace, justice, and selfless love—a reality in the world.

In the Quranic vision there is no dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the political, sexuality and worship. The whole of life was potentially holy and had to be brought into the ambit of the divine. The aim was tawhid (making one), the integration of the whole of life in a unified community, which would give Muslims intimations of the Unity which is God.

Qur'anic legislation insisted that the individual was free and sovereign—and that also applied to women.

We should also make ourselves aware that our cultural, ethical, religious, and intellectual traditions have all been profoundly affected by other peoples'.

As we have seen, so many of the things we once took for granted have proved unreliable that we may have to "forget" old ways of thought in order to meet the current challenges.

Muhammad replied with tears in his eyes: "O my uncle, by God if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left on condition that I abandon this course, until God has made it victorious, or I perish therein, I would not abandon it.

A primitive capitalism had developed, which had quite different priorities. The lavish sacrifices had been designed to impress the gods and to enhance the patron's prestige. By the fifth century, these eastern peoples had realized that their improved trade and agriculture brought them far more wealth and status than the Vedic rites.

Surveys show that a large proportion of veiled women hold progressive views on such matters as gender. For some women, who have come from rural areas to the university and are the first members of their family to advance beyond basic literacy, the assumption of Islamic dress provides continuity and makes their rite of passage to modernity less traumatic than it might otherwise have been.

Men and women have formulated this perception of sacred space in different ways over the centuries, but in their discussion of the special status of a city such as Jerusalem certain themes tend to recur, indicating that they speak to some fundamental human need.

Logos cannot assuage our sorrow or evoke our sense of the transcendent, so it cannot convince us that, despite all the rational evidence to the contrary, our lives have meaning and value.

Por lo tanto, para Abenarabi, el mundo natural es el «aliento del Misericordioso», y todo cuanto hay en él es una expresión del suspiro divino.

They were weary of the chaos inflicted by the Roman-Persian wars and longed for the peace that only an autocratic empire seemed able to provide.

finally 'Ali, a gawky thirteen year old, could bear it no longer: "O prophet of God," he cried, "I will be your helper in this matter!" Muhammad laid his hand tenderly on the boy's neck: "This is my brother, my executor, and my successor among you," he said. "Hearken to him and obey him.

The philosopher Karl Popper (1902–94) often remarked "We don't know anything" and believed that this was the most important philosophical truth.16

Finally Muhammad quoted the words that God had spoken to the whole of humanity: Behold, we have created you all out of a male or a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you may come to know one another. Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of him. Behold God is all-knowing, all-aware.40

Maimonides agreed that anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Bible must not be interpreted literally, and tried to find rational reasons for some of the more irrational biblical laws. But he knew that religious experience transcended reason. The intuitive knowledge of the prophets, which was accompanied by tremulous awe, was of a higher order than the knowledge we acquire by our rational powers.

One of the many great sources of happiness is to get a glimpse, here and there, of a new aspect of the incredible world we live in and of our incredible role in it."17

What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. Religion was about doing things that changed you at a profound level.