Quotes About Islam

The Sufi Islam practiced in northern India is quite different from the Shi'a Islam practiced in Lebannon, which in turn is different from the Sunni Islam practiced in Pakistan. Even within a single branch of Islam there are customs and practices that vary by region and across time. Thus, the Islam of seventh-century Arabia is different from the Wahhabism that exists today in Saudi Arabia.

Whatever sins Christians engaged in the past, and they were extensive, the fact is that the most humane and decent countries in the world nearly all have Christian origins. That is not true of states that grew out of Islam.

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.

Once Europe existed in a Dark Age and Islam carried the torch of learning. Now we Muslims live in a Dark age.

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.

As I read the Qur'an and prayed the Islamic prayers, a door to my heart was unsealed and I was immersed in an overwhelming tenderness.

You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you'll understand quite a lot.

Vous pourriez lire dix gros volumes sur l'histoire de l'islam depuis les origines, vous ne comprendriez rien à ce qui se passe en Algérie. Lisez trente pages sur la colonisation et la décolonisation, vous comprendrez beaucoup mieux

oui je précise et j'insiste: pourquoi l'Occident chrétien qui a une longue tradition d'intolérance, qui a toujours eu du mal à coexister avec "l'Autre" a-t-il su produire des sociétés respectueuse de la liberté d'expression, alors que le monde musulman, qui a longtemps pratiqué la coexistence, apparaît désormais comme une citadelle de fanatisme?

Si l'on faisait l'histoire comparée du monde chrétien et du monde musulman, on découvrirait d'un côté une religion longtemps intolérante, porteuse d'une évidente tentation totalitaire, mais qui s'est peu à peu muée en religion d'ouverture, de l'autre côté une religion porteuse d'une vocation d'ouverture, mais qui peu à peu dérivé vers des comportements intolérants et totalitaires.

Some in the West suggest that Isam needs a separation of mosque and state. However, in the case of Iran at least what is needed is a separation lof religion and business.

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.

There are a lot of Christian fundamentalists; there are a lot of Muslim extremists. Every religion - Mormonism - has something way on the side that's completely using the religion as some weird backbone for their twisted faith. It has nothing to do with their religion.

I believe that Islam is a faith of progress and welfare.

If Islam's sole interest is the welfare of mankind, then Islam is the strongest advocate of human rights anywhere on Earth.

The medieval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.

9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us.

In the West, you have always associated the Islamic faith 100 percent with Arab culture. This in itself is a fundamentalist attitude and it is mistaken.

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 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.

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.

The revival of Islam dates from the early years of the 20th century. It was brought about by their humiliation, by their sense of how low they'd fallen compared with the West.

So, this war is against the Islam that the West does not control.

The Islamic tradition does show some areas of apparent incompatibility with the goals of women in the West, and Muslims have a long way to go in their attitudes towards women. But blaming the religion is again to express an ignorance both of the religion and of the historical struggle for equality of women in Muslim societies.