Quotes from Charles le Gai Eaton

Each man's destiny is hung like a medallion around his neck.

The perfect Muslim, standing upright in the presence of his Maker, at once proud and submissive, free from all illusions and from any bias in dealing with his fellow men, exemplifies fitrah. He is both perfect master and perfect servant.

It is common enough for writers to find that, in the very act of writing, they express ideas and beliefs which they never knew they had; a deeper level of their personality is revealed, a level hidden until then from conscious awareness.

A man might spend a lifetime reading spiritual books and studying the writings of the great mystics. He might feel that he had penetrated the secrets of the heavens and the earth, but unless this knowledge was incorporated into his very nature and transformed him, it was sterile. I began to suspect that a simple man of faith, praying to God with little understanding but with a full heart, might be worth more than the most learned student of the spiritual sciences.

Men who scorn the idea of submission to the divine Will and are outraged by the notion of a God who requires submission are among the first to demand total submission to the process in which we are involved and seem to attach a kind of moral imperative to willing participation in it. Any other attitude, so they say, is reactionary or escapist or anti-social. Perhaps, after all, they have found a divinity to worship; and, if they have, the only charitable comment must be: God help them!

There are strengths and virtues in a polygamous marriage as there are in a monogamous one, and it was Muhammad's destiny to demonstrate both in their perfection.

The Muslim is inclined to believe that man has something more important to do than engage in a wrestling match with temptation, which he sees as a distraction from his principle business, the constant awareness of God.

Religion cannot survive, whole and effective when it is confined to one single compartment of life and education. Religion is either all or it is nothing; either it dwarfs all profane studies or it is dwarfed by them.

God gave to Adam and to his descendants the gift of intelligence, asking in return, not for blind praise, but for a lucid and joyful understanding of the nature of all things and their source.

Man is either Viceroy or else he is an animal that claims special rights by virtue of its cunning and the devouring efficiency of teeth sharpened by technological instruments... But if he is Viceroy, then all decay and trouble in the created world that surrounds him is in some measure to be laid to his account

The Muslim does not feel dwarfed by the immensities of nature because he knows himself to be the viceregent of God standing upright in the midst of such immensities. We, though small in stature, see the stars; they do not see us. We hold them within our consciousness and measure them in accordance with our knowledge; they know us not. We master them in their courses. Immensity cannot know itself; only in human consciousness can such a concept exist.