Islamic World Quotes

For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first. ~ Richard Engel

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there's no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That's all crap. ~ Christopher Hitchens

In the Islamic world, the U.S. is seen in two quite different ways. One view recognizes what an extraordinary country the U.S. is. ~ Edward Said

In the traditional Islamic world, the hierarchy of the arts was not based on whether they were "fine" or "industrial" or "minor". It was based upon the effect of art on the soul of the human being. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

First of all, there's no separation of church and state in the Islamic world. They're one and the same. And so when President Bush or Senator Kerry or Prime Minister Blair says, "Look, adopt our secular democracy, look at how good we've done. We have a wonderful level of standard of living for our people," what many Muslims hear is, "Turn your back on God and follow what men say." ~ Michael Scheuer

Whether [the 1993 World Trade Center bombing] was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little. ~ Ron Paul

He [Osama bin Laden] is clearly an odd combination of a 12th-century theologian and a 21st-century CEO. He runs an absolutely unique organization in the Islamic world. It's multiethnic, multilinguistic, multinational. He is a combat veteran, three times wounded. He has a huge reputation in the Islamic world for generosity and leadership. He's a man who speaks eloquent, almost poetic Arabic, according to Bernard Lewis. ~ Michael Scheuer

They [root causes of terror] come out of a long dialectic of U.S. involvement in the affairs of the Islamic world, the oil-producing world, the Arab world, the Middle East - those areas that are considered to be essential to U.S. interests and security. ~ Edward Said

Today, the Muslim world is injured and corrupt people who are the enemies of all Muslims are trying to cause disunity in the Islamic world by intensifying ethnic difference and separating people under names such as 'Shia and Sunni', 'Arabs and non Arabs'. ~ Ali Khamenei

When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations. The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation. And their governments should listen to their hopes. ~ George W. Bush

The great powers have dominated the destiny of the Islamic countries for years and ... installed the Zionist cancerous tumor in the heart of the Islamic world ... Many of the problems facing the Muslim world are due to the existence of the Zionist regime. ~ Ali Khamenei

Throughout the Arab and Islamic world the feeling is that we are now in top gear for a war of civilizations, a clash of civilizations. Support for the United States is very low and there are no voices within the Muslim world, except for a very few. ~ Husain Haqqani

The decadence which did occur in the Islamic world belongs to a much later period of Islamic history than is usually claimed. This fact would be fully substantiated if the integral history of Islamic science and civilization were to be written one day. Unfortunately to this day such a detailed history does not exist and moreover much of the scholarly work that has been done in this field has been carried out by Western scholars who have been naturally primarily interested in those aspects of the Islamic sciences that have influenced the West. It remains the task of Muslims scholars and scientists to look upon the whole of this scientific tradition from the point of view of Islam and the inner dynamics of Islamic history itself. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

How many leaders in the Islamic world are really familiar with the ideas which underpin modernity? I have met some leaders of activist factions, and have been consistently shocked by their lack of knowledge. How many can even name the principal intellectual systems of our time? Structuralism, post-modernism, realism, analytic philosophy, critical theory, and all the rest are closed books to them. Instead they burble on about the 'International Zionist Masonic Conspiracy', or 'Baha'ism', or the 'New Crusader Invasion', or similar phantasms. If we want to understand why so many Islamic movements fail, we should perhaps begin by acknowledging that their leaders simply do not have the intellectual grasp of the modern world which is the precondition for successfully overcoming the obstacles to Islamic governance. A Muslim activist who does not understand the ideologies of modernism can hardly hope to overcome them.

Islam and the New Millennium ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

History proves beyond any possibility of doubt that no religion has ever given a stimulus to scientific progress comparable to that of Islam. The encouragement which learning and scientific research received from Islamic theology resulted in the splendid cultural achievements in the days of the Umayyads and Abbasids and the Arab rule in Sicily and Spain. I do not mention this in order that we might boast of those glorious memories at a time when the Islamic world has forsaken its own traditions and reverted to spiritual blindness and intellectual poverty. We have no right, in our present misery, to boast of past glories. But we must realize that it was the negligence of the Muslims and not any deficiency in the teachings of Islam that caused our present decay.

Islam has never been a barrier to progress and science. It appreciates the intellectual activities of man to such a degree as to place him above the angels. No other religion ever went so far in asserting the dominance of reason and, consequently, of learning, above all other manifestations of human life. ~ Muhammad Asad

Since the rise of Islam, Jews had lived as a tolerated minority, or dhimmi, a status granted to Jews and Christians because they were monotheists. Despite a growing tendency in our own times to paint the premodern Islamic world as an Eden of religious tolerance in which Jews flourished, they always lived by the whims of fickle rulers and the mood of a hostile majority. In the eyes of that majority they were effete, lacking in honor, and powerless by definition, but as long as they accepted the supremacy of Muslims they were usually allowed to live and observe their faith and occasionally to prosper. ~ Matti Friedman

This is not true, you give yourself the right to adopt a religion that orders you to kill others, and you say, this is a religion don't come close to it? There is a difference in the comparison, The Koran is the highest religious and political authority in the Islamic world, but the Danish cartoons are just a passing event in a newspaper that doesn't represent any religious or political authority in Denmark. When you respect others beliefs, others will be obligated to respect your beliefs. Don't ask others for what you don't apply first on yourself. ~ Wafa Sultan

I've heard bombs going off in our embassies, mobs screaming for blood, mullahs issuing death decrees, so-called leaders yelling for jihad. They've been burning books, Dave - the temperature of hate in parts of the Islamic world has gone out to Pluto. And I've been listening to them." "And you don't think we have - the people in Washington?" He said it without anger. I was at one time a leading intelligence agent and I think he genuinely wanted to know. "Maybe in your heads. Not in your gut." He turned and looked out the window. It was starting to rain. He was quiet for a long time and I began to wonder if his blood pressure had taken off again. "I think you're right," he said at last. "I think, like the Jews, we believed in the fundamental goodness of men; we never thought it could really happen. ~ Terry Hayes

The Islamic world is passing through a most devastating period of transition. A history of economic and scientific change which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the Muslim world, being squeezed into a couple of generations. Such a transition period…makes human beings very insecure. They look around for something to hold onto, that will give them an identity. In our case, that something is usually Islam.
[Islamic Spirituality: The Forgotten Revolution] ~ Abdal Hakim Murad

The tradition of Islamic science of course gradually weakened but it did not decay as rapidly as some people have claimed in the West. It continued on into the 10th, 11th and 12th Islamic centuries especially in the fields of medicine and pharmacology. If one is going to talk about the decay of the Islamic sciences, it is only of the last two or three centuries that one should speak if one takes the whole of the Islamic world into consideration. And one should not be ashamed of that fact because no civilization in the history of science has always been avidly interested in the natural sciences throughout its whole history. There have been periods of greater interest and those of lesser interest in every civilization, and there is no reason why one should equate the gradual loss of impetus in the cultivation of the sciences in the Islamic world with an automatic decadence of that civilization. This is a modern, Western view which equates civilization with science as understod in the modern sense. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

But September 11 marked a big change in the sense that the public was suddenly interested, and as a professor at a public university I felt a responsibility to respond to all of the inquiries about the Islamic world. ~ Juan Cole

The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are now part of common culture (though maybe not in the United States Bible Belt, nor in parts of the Islamic world). Most people are at ease with the idea that our present biosphere is the outcome of four billion years of Darwinian evolution. ~ Martin Rees

I think for most Americans, knowledge of the Islamic world was pretty slight before 9/11, and then it was thrust upon us in one of America's darkest hours. ~ Thomas P. Campbell

GK Chesterton once said that to criticise religion because it leads people to kill each other is like criticising love because it has the same effect. All the best things we have, when abused, will cause bad things to happen. The need for sacrifice, to obey, to make a gift of your life is in all of us and it's a deep thing. In the Islamic world today, people are trying to rejoin themselves to an antiquated and ancient faith and the result is massive violence when they encounter people who have not done that. We'd say that sense of sacrifice is good but only if you're sacrificing your own life; once you sacrifice another's life you've overstepped the mark. ~ Roger Scruton

To militant Islamists, the expulsion of the Soviets was just the prelude to purging the entire Islamic world of infidels. ~ Gilles Kepel

What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting this humiliation and degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked and no one hears and no one heeds. Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins ... To America, I say only a few words to it and its people. I swear to God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it here in Palestine and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him. ~ Osama Bin Laden

If anything, the genesis of colleges in the Islamic world seems to have been a way to organise those scholars who were opposed to philosophy and rationalism. Knowledge and science in ancient times were supported by individual patrons and when these patrons changed their priorities, or when they died, any institutions that they might have built often died with them. This is a major reason why no observatory lasted more than 30 years in any of the Islamic empires. ~ Ehsan Masood

The advent of militant atheism marks a reaction - a lurid but natural reaction - to the violence of the Islamic world. ~ David Berlinski

Anyone who rises above the things of this world, to which you kneel, is mightier than you. ~ Ibn Hazm

The medieval islamic world offered vastly more freedom than any of its predecessors, its contemporaries and most of its successors ~ Bernard Lewis

As Fouad Ajami observed, the inability to relate cause to effect is pandemic in the Islamic world. ~ Robert R. Reilly

So much, then, for the "mystery" of how Muslim culture was somehow lost or left behind. The notion that in the medieval era Islamic culture was advanced well beyond Europe is as much an illusion as recent ones about an "Arab Spring." The Islamic world was backward then, and so it remains. ~ Rodney Stark

The Islamic world can be viewed as an onion-layered multiple dictatorship: the dictatorship of political dynasties like the Mubarak, Gaddafi, Hussein, Ben Ali, and Assad families forms its first layer; the dictatorship of the military, the next; after that, that the dictatorship of religion, which determines how children are raised and educated; and finally, the dictatorship of society, which impacts life within families through archaic gender roles. ~ Hamed Abdel-Samad

The social institutions and attitudes inherited from earlier times and maintained with increasing rigidity made it difficult to adapt to changing circumstances or to create new political and economic institutions which would facilitate such an adaption. An attitude towards unbelievers that varied from condescension in good times, to hostility and mistrust in bad times, made it difficult to learn from them, or even to understand them, at a time when it was the West, and not as previously the Islamic world, that had something to teach. ~ Bernard Lewis

I drew a vicious cartoon of an Islamic extremist as a dog, knowing full well what an insult that was is in the Islamic world. Furthermore, I added an apology to dogs everywhere (being a dog lover myself). ~ Terry Mosher

We're being attacked for what we do in the Islamic world, not for who we are or what we believe in or how we live. ~ Thomas E. Woods Jr.

As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right. ~ Pat Buchanan

The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European peoples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category "humans," can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) "translated" into a global ("European") civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable.
~ Talal Asad

The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all. ~ Arundhati Roy

We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida. ~ Chris Matthews

Anyone who follows the Middle East and Islamic world in general can't deny it is often a very violent place, that a band of instability now stretches from Algeria to Pakistan. ~ Richard Engel

The establishment of Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

If you have political reform in the Islamic world, the spiritual reform would follow. ~ Imran Khan

It takes no more research than a trip to almost any public library or college to show the incredibly lopsided coverage of slavery in the United States or in the Western Hemisphere, as compared to the meager writings on even larger number of Africans enslaved in the Islamic countries of the Middle East and North Africa, not to mention the vast numbers of Europeans also enslaved in centuries past in the Islamic world and within Europe itself. At least a million Europeans were enslaved by North African pirates alone from 1500 to 1800, and some Europeans slaves were still being sold on the auction blocks in the Egypt, years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed blacks in the United States. ~ Thomas Sowell

And the fact that the Muslim world, over the course of a decade, rallied and defeated a superpower is an extraordinary symbol in the Islamic world today. You have to remember they were soundly thrashed over the last century by the West, and in the last 50years, three times by the Indians, three times by the Israelis. And so a victory against the Soviets is huge. ~ Michael Scheuer

In America, we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world, the sub-continental world, but it's not a conversation, it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories, no one will tell them' is my mantra. ~ Mira Nair

There is the sword for one thing. Sometimes slung over his back, sometimes laid across his lap, this sword was destined to become more famed throughout the Islamic world than King Arthur's sword Excalibur ever would be in Christendom. Like Excalibur, it came with supernatural qualities, and it too had a name: Dhu'l Fikar, the "Split One," which is why it is shown with a forked point, like a snake's tongue. In fact it wasn't the sword that was split but the flesh it came in contact with, so that the name more vividly translates as the Cleaver or the Splitter. ~ Anonymous

In the Islamic world itself also there is a great crisis in he modern established universities precisely because the systems from the West have been transplanted into that world without a close integration between the humanities, which should be drawn totally from Islamic sources, the religious disciplines and the sciences which have been imported from the West. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The sense of Islam as a threatening Other - with Muslims depicted as fanatical, violent, lustful, irrational - develops during the colonial period in what I called Orientalism. The study of the Other has a lot to do with the control and dominance of Europe and the West generally in the Islamic world. And it has persisted because it's based very, very deeply in religious roots, where Islam is seen as a kind of competitor of Christianity. ~ Edward Said

The Far East and the Islamic world produced minds as intelligent and curious as those of Europe. However, between 1500 and 1950 they did not produce anything that comes even close to Newtonian physics or Darwinian biology. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Here are two enormous worlds side by side; what's remarkable is how little notice they have taken of each other. If the Western and Islamic worlds were two individual human beings, we might see symptoms of repression here. We might ask, What happened between these two? Were they lovers once? Is there some history of abuse? ~ Tamim Ansary

Theologians will protest that the story of Abraham sacrificing Issac should not be taken as literal fact, and the appropriate response is two-fold. First, many, many people, even to this day, do take the whole of their scripture to be literal fact, and they have a great deal of political power over the rest of us, especially in the United States and in the Islamic world. Secondly, how should we take the story? As an alagory? Then an alagory for what? Surely nothing praiseworthy. As a moral lesson? Then what kind of lesson could be derived from this appalling story? ~ Richard Dawkins

The entire Islamic world condemned Iran. Nowadays, because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, there is massive Islamic condemnation of the United States. ~ Jimmy Carter

In many parts of the Islamic world, secular forces, where they exist, tend to be so unsure of themselves, so lacking in self-confidence, that in many cases they line themselves up fairly squarely behind the imperial project and that then creates a big vacuum in which the Islamists become the dominant power because they are the only ones then who are seen as resisting. ~ Tariq Ali

From it genesis twelve hundred years ago to today, Islamic philosophy (al-hikmah; al-falsafah) has been one of the major intellectual traditions within the Islamic world, and it has influenced and been influenced by many other intellectual perspectives, including Scholastic theology (kalam) and doctrinal Sufism (al-ma'rifah or al-tasawwuf al-'ilmi) and theoretical gnosis ('irfan-i nazari). ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

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. ~ Tariq Ramadan

It's always been my belief that the victory of Islam will never take place until a Muslim state is established.. in the heart of the Islamic world. ~ Bill Vaughan

War is not the answer. Violence is not the solution. A more peaceful world is possible. ~ Ron Kovic

He who governed the world before I was born shall take care of it likewise when I am dead. My part is to improve the present moment. ~ John Wesley

My only contact with the outside world was an RCA Victrola, and Elvis would sing, and then I'd dream about expensive cars. ~ Jimmy Buffett

The Technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more CONTROLLED society. Such a society would be dominated by ELITE, unrestrained by traditional values. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

I wanted to get the fastest time in the world this year, but with everything going on, it's a pretty decent swim, ... I knew I was under world record pace. You could tell by the crowd. You can always tell at these meets when something good is going on because of the crowd. ~ Michael Phelps

A lot of people have said a lot of great things about Steve Jobs. And for good reason: he built the world's second-most valuable company, with billions in profits and products that have improved every aspect of our lives. But Steve didn't get there by being a soft, fluffy, Kumbaya-type leader. ~ Kevin O'Leary

What's the use of dying in a ward surrounded by a lot of groaning and croaking incurables? Wouldn't it be much better to throw a party with that twenty-seven thousand and take poison and depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by lovely drunken girls and happy friends? ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

The unhappiest people in this world, are those who care the most about what other people think. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that it stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death. - DIETRICH BONHOEFFER ~ Eric Metaxas

Our belief systems are the glasses through which we each view the world and anticipate what is likely to unfold. Our behavior is always loyal with our beliefs. ~ Margo Adair

People with trust issues also have faith and humility issues. You can't ask the world to rise to your expectations, yet not meet that same standard for others. The notion that God didn't hurt me, but you did becomes an illogical argument for many. People who are trying to love you feel that they can never meet your definition of love because it is one sided or has rules that don't apply to you, as well. This is when the teachings of Christ become distorted. Forgiveness, compassion, love, kindness and second chances becomes a game. People in your life feel they must win it to receive it, which is far from the unconditional love God gives us. In the end, the person with trust issues find themself on a journey of perfection seeking out people incapable of mistakes like the last person or hurting their self esteem. Sadly, they miss the blessings of growth that come through humbly accepting they are also flawed and make mistakes. They miss the blessings of faith because they don't invite God into their heart, so he can help them overcome their cycle of pain. They miss the peace that comes from forgiveness and being forgiven. But most of all, they miss out on the beautiful people God brings into their life who love them so much. ~ Shannon L. Alder

I'm not sure it's a better music world of appreciation and performance. I think the listener is a different guy, and listening is something he does in passing, with other stuff going on. There's less care and understanding of the relationship between the song and the listener. ~ Al Jarreau

You believe that you live in the world, where in fact the world lives within you. ~ Deepak Chopra

We have the ability to manifest our thoughts: to actually say something and express what our feelings are. That, then, transforms the world and puts something into action. ~ Jason Mraz

Renewal is brought by the Holy Spirit. Believers will learn what it means to minister to one another and build each other up. No longer will our lives seem ordinary and indistinguishable from the rest of the world. ~ Billy Graham

Who can dream of God? This man did. In his dreams God was much occupied. Spoken to He did not answer. Called to did not hear. The man could see Him bent at his work. As if through a glass. Seated solely in the light of his own presence. Weaving the world. In his hands it flowed out of nothing and in his hands it vanished into nothing once again. Endlessly. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Same with anyone who's been flying for years and loves it still ... we're part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we're one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind! ~ Richard Bach

The great subversive works of children's literature suggest that there are other views of human life besides those of the shopping mall and the corporation. They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy, and act as a force for change. This is why such literature is worthy of our attention and will endure long after more conventional tales have been forgotten. ~ Alison Lurie

Objectivity, in this sense, means that a person's statements about the world can be trusted if they are submitted to established rules deemed legitimate by a professional community. Facts here are not aspects of the world, but consensually validated statements about it. ~ Michael Schudson

I am not a fool just because the whole world thinks I look like one. ~ Cameron Dokey

Where does my complete flowering as a human being connect with the needs of the world? ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

When will you open your eyes to the possibility of the world? ~ Tony Curl

If the world spent more time and energy trying to figure out how to better themselves than their eventual end ... they would be riding around in solar power cars extremely happy, healthy and prosperous. ~ Timothy Pina

I have the best roommates in the world! It creates a fun sense of family ... and that's really important to me. Things can get so lonely without it. ~ Kristen Bell

God did not entrust his truth to the world casually or haphazardly. He gave his church the role of preserving and protecting his truth. In the same sentence that describes the church as God's household, Paul describes the valuable role the church is to play: "If i delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). With all of the assaults against the truth of God, what hope is there that truth and error can still be sorted out? God has established churches to study, know, do and proclaim his Word in the world ~ John Crotts

I am fairly certain that given a cape and a nice tiara, I could save the world. ~ Leigh Standley

What Facebook stands for in the world is giving people a voice and spreading ideas and rationalism. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

Mr Jellyband was indeed a typical rural John Bull of those days
the days when our prejudiced insularity was at its height, when to an Englishman, be he lord, yeoman, or peasant, the whole of the continent of Europe was a den of immorality and the rest of the world an unexploited land of savages and cannibals. ~ Emmuska Orczy

The world isn't a nice place, but that doesn't mean we can't be nice. ~ Olan Rogers

273. In order to hold on firmly to your faith, you must choose the Road of Hope followed by the disciples of Christ and not the road to death offered by the world. 274. Many people today repeatedly assert, "I ~ Van Thuan, Francis Xavier Nguyen

Presidents make history. I'm just a tool of history. ~ Chris Weitz