Quotes About Extremism

If anybody doesn't want to fight or murder, grab 'em, tear 'em to pieces! Kill them in thirteen juicy ways. For a starter, to teach them how to live, rip their guts out of their bodies, their eyes out of their sockets, and the years out of their filthy slobbering lives!

Barack Obama has exhibited sympathy, if not for the terrorists, then certainly for the Islamic supremacists.

They [terrorists] are trying to evoke sympathy for themselves. They're not sympathetic people. They're violent, cold-blooded killers who are trying to stop the advance of freedom.

The best way to fight terrorism is to invest in education. Instead of sending weapons, send teachers.

Fanatics tend to live in a black-and-white world, with a simplistic view of good against evil. The fanatic is in fact a person who can only count to one. Yet at the same time, and without any contradiction, the fanatic almost always basks in some sort of bittersweet sentimentalism, composed of a mixture of fury and self-pity.

Self-sacrifice can sometimes be a well-honed weapon that the fanatic wields for destructive emotional purposes. Moreover, those who are eager to sacrifice themselves will not find it difficult to sacrifice others.

Muy a menudo, el fanático sólo puede contar hasta uno, ya que dos es un número demasiado grande para él o ella. Al mismo tiempo, descubriremos que, a menudo, los fanáticos son sentimentales sin remedio.

O crescimento do fanatismo pode ter relação com o fato de que quanto mais complexas as questões se tornam, mais as pessoas anseiam por respostas simples. Fanatismo e fundamentalismo muitas vezes têm uma resposta com uma só sentença para todo o sofrimento humano.

ein Grund für die Zunahme der Wellen des Fanatismus ist vielleicht die wachsende Sehnsucht nach einfachen Lösungen, nach Erlösung 'auf einen Schlag'.

The fanatic is always in a hurry to fall on your neck to save you, because he loves you. He loves you unconditionally. But, conversely, he might grab you and strangle you if he discovers that you are beyond redemption. Lost. And if that is the case, he is obliged to hate you and rid the world of you.

In attacking the saints, the Islamist extremists – though they refuse to recognize this themselves – are striking at the very roots of Islam in South Asia. One might say that the beginnings of South Asian Islam were the Book and the Saint.

In Pakistan, you often find that a wife is Shia, the husband Sunni. And in the past this was never a problem, but now extremists want to divide us. Sufism and Sufi shrines play a very important role against this, by bridging Sunni and Shia. When someone asks me if I am Sunni or Shia I reply that like my saints I really do not care. It is irrelevant. I think only of the will of God.

We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.

Fifty-two of the fifty-six signers of the American Declaration were orthodox Christians who believed in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or as they would be known today, "an extremist Fundamentalist hate group."28

The bottom line is that devout Muslims can have no doubt about the reality of paradise or about the efficacy of martyrdom as a means of getting there. Nor can they question the wisdom and reasonableness of killing people for what amount to theological grievances.

Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.

Islam is just a religion. Islamism is the ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society. Islamism is, therefore, theocratic extremism. Jihadism is the use of force to spread Islamism. Jihadist terrorism is the use of force that targets civilians to spread Islamism.

It is rational, even, for Muslim women to encourage the suicides of their children, as long as they are fighting for the cause of God. Devout Muslims simply know that they are going to a better place.

On some occasions the only people making accurate claims about the motivations of Islamists and jihadists are themselves dangerous bigots. That's terrifying.

It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the Prophet.

The best way to undermine extremists' insistence that truth is on their side is to argue that theirs is merely one way of looking at things. The only truth is that there is no correct way to interpret scripture. When you open it up like that, you're effectively saying that there is no right answer. And in the absence of a right answer, pluralism is the only option. And pluralism will lead to secularism, and to democracy, and to human rights.

A close study of these books, and of history, demonstrates that there is no act of cruelty so appalling that it cannot be justified, or even mandated, by recourse to their pages.

If you believe anything like what the Koran says you must believe in order to escape the fires of hell, you will, at the very least, be sympathetic with the actions of Osama bin Laden.

Sayyid Qutb