Islam Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old Islam quotes, quotes about Islam, and Islam sayings, collected over the years from a variety of sources. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion teaching that there is only one God (Allah) and that Muhammad is the messenger of God. It is the world’s second-largest religion with over 1.8 billion followers or 24% of the world’s population, most commonly known as Muslims. Muslims make up a majority of the population in 50 countries. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique and has guided humankind through prophets, revealed scriptures, and natural signs. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, viewed by Muslims as the verbatim word of God, and the teachings and normative example (called the sunnah, composed of accounts called hadith) of Muhammad (c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE).

“Religion of peace” does not imply that Islam is a pacifist religion, that it rejects the use of violence altogether, as either a moral or a metaphysical evil. “Religion of peace” connotes, rather, that Islam can countenance a state of permanent, peaceful coexistence with other nations and peoples who are not Muslims…This position, I shall argue, is no more than the result of an objective application of principles of Islamic jurisprudence which no jurist or activist, medieval or modern, has claimed to reject. – Sherman Jackson

See also: Islam Page

Islam What is Islam? Outline of Islam A Brief Overview of Islam Islam Means Submission To God Glossary of Islam

Sunni Islam What Is Sunni Islam? Shia Islam What Is Shi’a Islam? Sufi–Salafi relations Islamic Mythology

Islam Quotes In The Holy Quran

And establish prayers, give obligatory charity, and whatever good deeds you send ahead for yourselves; you shall find it with God. Surely, God is All-Seeing of what you do. – Holy Quran 2:110

And this was the legacy that Abraham left to his sons, and so did Jacob; “Oh my sons! God had chosen the religion for you; so die not unless in the Faith of Islam.” – Holy Quran 2:132

Say: “We believe in God, and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and in (scriptures) given to Moses, Jesus, and the prophets, from their Lord. We make no distinction between one and another among them, and to God do we bow our will.” If anyone desires a religion other than Islam, never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter he will be in the ranks of distressed ones. – Holy Quran 3:84-85

Forbidden to you (for food) are: dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which hath been invoked the name of other than Allah; that which hath been killed by strangling, or by a violent blow, or by a headlong fall, or by being gored to death; that which hath been (partly) eaten by a wild animal; unless ye are able to slaughter it (in due form); that which is sacrificed on stone (altars); (forbidden) also is the division (of meat) by raffling with arrows: that is impiety. This day have those who reject faith given up all hope of your religion: yet fear them not but fear Me. This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion. But if any is forced by hunger, with no inclination to transgression, Allah is indeed Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. – The Holy Quran 5:3

For this reason We prescribed for the Children of Israel that whoever kills a person, unless it be for man-slaughter or for mischief in the land, it is as though he had killed all men. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the lives of all men. And certainly Our messengers came to them with clear arguments, but even after that many of them commit excesses in the land. – Holy Quran 5:32

Verily, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find rest. – The Holy Quran 13:28

Indeed, I am God. There is no deity except Me, so worship Me and establish prayer for My remembrance. I am about to make it manifest — so that every soul may be rewarded as it strives. So do not let one avert you from it who does not believe in it and follows his desire, for you [then] would perish. – Holy Quran 20:14-16

[Moses] said, ‘My Lord, expand for me my breast [with assurance] and ease for me my task and untie the knot from my tongue that they may understand my speech. And appoint for me a minister from my family—Aaron, my brother. Increase through him my strength and let him share my task that we may exalt You much and remember You much.’ – The Holy Quran 20: 25-34

O ye who believe! bow down and adore, and serve your Lord, and do well, that ye may prosper; and strive hard for God, as is His due. He has elected you, and has not put upon you any hindrance by your religion, — the faith of your father Abraham. He has named you Muslims before and in this (book) that the Apostle may be a witness against you, and that ye may be witnesses against men. Be ye then steadfast in prayer, and give alms, and hold fast by God; He is your Sovereign, and an excellent Sovereign, and an excellent Helper! – Holy Quran 22:77-78

And those who say, ‘Our Lord, grant us from among our wives and offspring comfort to our eyes and make us an example for the righteous.’ – The Holy Quran 25:74

But those who feared their Lord will be driven to Paradise in groups until, when they reach it while its gates have been opened and its keepers say, ‘Peace be upon you; you have become pure; so enter it to abide eternally therein,’ [they will enter]. And they will say, ‘Praise to Allah, who has fulfilled for us His promise and made us inherit the earth [so] we may settle in Paradise wherever we will. And excellent is the reward of [righteous] workers.’ And you will see the angels surrounding the Throne, exalting [Allah] with praise of their Lord. And it will be judged between them in truth, and it will be said, ‘[All] praise to Allah, Lord of the worlds.’ – The Holy Quran 39:73-75

He is the First and the Last; the Outer and the Inner; He has knowledge of all things. – The Holy Quran 57:3

God forbids you not respecting those who fight you not for religion, nor drive you forth from your homes, that you show them kindness and deal with them justly. Surely God loves the doers of justice. God forbids you only respecting those who fight you for religion, and drive you forth from your homes and help in your expulsion, that you make friends of them; and whoever makes friends of them, these are the wrongdoers. – Holy Quran 60:8-9

He frowned and turned away when the blind man came to him—for all you know, he might have grown in spirit, or taken note of something useful to him. For the self-satisfied one you go out of your way—though it is not your responsibility if he does not attain purity. But from the one who has come to you full of eagerness and awe you are distracted. Never again! This is a reminder—whoever wishes will remember it. – The Holy Quran 80:1-13

[To the righteous it will be said], ‘O reassured soul, return to your Lord, well-pleased and pleasing [to Him], and enter among My [righteous] servants, and enter My Paradise.’ – The Holy Quran 89:27-30

For indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. – The Holy Quran 94:5-6

Islam Quotes From prophet Muhammad

A man asked Allah’s Messenger “Which act in Islam is the best?”
The Prophet replied “To give food and to greet those whom you know and those whom you do not know.” – Prophet Muhammad

Abu Musa asked Allah’s Messenger: Whose Islam is the best? (i.e. who is a good Muslim?).
The Prophet replied, “One who avoids harming Muslims with his tongue and hands.” – Prophet Muhammad

Beautiful Islam entails minding one’s own business. – Prophet Muhammad

Causing harm to yourself and others is forbidden in Islam. – Prophet Muhammad

Do not associate Islam with violence. The most perfect believer in faith is the one whose character is finest and who is kindest to his wife. – Prophet Muhammad

Every religion has a distinctive virtue and the distinctive virtue of Islam is modesty. – Prophet Muhammad

Every religion has a special character and the characteristic of Islam is modesty. – Prophet Muhammad

Every religion has its distinct characteristic, and the distinct characteristic of Islam is modesty. – Prophet Muhammad

Islam began as something strange, and it will become thus again, as it was at the beginning. Blessed, therefore, are the strangers. (He was asked who the strangers are:) The strangers are those who restore what the people have corrupted of my law, as well as those who revive what has been destroyed of it. – Prophet Muhammad

Islam has been built on five [pillars]: testifying that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, establishing the salah (prayer), paying the zakat (obligatory charity), making the hajj (pilgrimage) to the House, and fasting in Ramadhan. – Prophet Muhammad

Islam has been built on five [pillars]: testifying that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God, performing the prayers, paying alms, making the pilgrimage to the House, and fasting in Ramadan. – Prophet Muhammad

Islam is clean, so cleanse yourselves, for only the cleansed shall enter paradise. – Prophet Muhammad

Islam is the purity of speech and hospitality. – Prophet Muhammad

It was also due to the truth and clarity of the doctrine in which Islam calls for faith in only one God, Who is the only one worthy of worship. – Prophet Muhammad

Living green is living the spirit of Islam. – Prophet Muhammad

Loving Humanity is second only to having faith in Allah as one of the best deeds in Islam. – Prophet Muhammad

No Christian shall be brought by force to confess Islam, and no disputes except over the better things shall be envisaged in with them. Muslims shall extend over the Christians everywhere the arm of mercy and kindness, protecting them from the exactions of oppressors. (The Covenant of the Muhammad with the Christians of Persia)

No mockery in Islam. – Prophet Muhammad

Religion is very easy and whoever overburdens himself in his religion will not be able to continue in that way. So you should not be extremists, but try to be near to perfection and receive the good tidings that you will be rewarded; and gain strength by worshipping in the mornings, the nights. – Prophet Muhammad

The best of Islam is to greet with peace those you know and those you do not know. – Prophet Muhammad

Prayer is the standard of Islam. Whosoever loves prayers, and observes their limits, timings and methods, is a true believer. – Prophet Muhammad

Islam orders peace and a true Muslim can only be a symbol of peace and the maintenance of basic human rights. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Islam Quotes From M. Fethullah Gulen

A Muslim can not hope to please God by killing humans. Killing humans can not be a means of pleasing God. – M. Fethullah Gulen

A real Muslim cannot be a terrorist. – M. Fethullah Gulen

A terrorist cannot be a real Muslim; a real Muslim cannot be a terrorist. – M. Fethullah Gulen

A terrorist might appear among Muslims, but then he loses the qualities that make him Muslim. – M. Fethullah Gulen

An individual who accepts Islam from the heart will never knowingly take part in terrorism. – M. Fethullah Gulen

An Islamic authority can do war only within the framework of such definite principles, and only a state, not certain individuals or organizations, can decide a war. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Any terrorist activity, no matter who it is committed by and for whatever purpose, is the greatest blow against peace, democracy and humanity. For this reason, terrorist activities can by no means be approved of. Terror cannot be a means for independence, nor a legitimate route to salvation. The recent terrorist activity, which is by far the most bloody and catastrophic to date, is a sabotage against not only the United States of America but also against world peace and the universal democratic and humanistic values. The perpetrators of this act cannot be but the most brutal of all. – M. Fethullah Gulen

As a practicing Muslim, I strongly condemn the brutal atrocities of the ISIL terrorist group. Their actions are a disgrace to the faith they proclaim and are crimes against humanity. – M. Fethullah Gulen

At places where freedoms do not exist, it is necessary to strive for obtaining these freedoms through democratic ways without resorting to violence whatsoever. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Democracy can only be realized through human rights and freedoms. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Democracy is a human reality. – M. Fethullah Gulen

I deplore the brutal atrocities being committed by the ISIS terrorist group hiding behind a false religious rhetoric and join the people of conscience from around the world in calling for these perpetrators to immediately cease their cruel and inhuman acts. Any form of attack, suppression or persecution of minorities or innocent civilians is an act that contradicts the principles of the Qur’an and the tradition of our Prophet upon whom be peace and blessings. – M. Fethullah Gulen

I have been looking forward to a better world resembling Paradise, where humanity can live in peace and tranquillity. Our world is tired of war and clashes. It direly needs mercy, affection, spiritual well-being, and peace more than air and water. I believe that people in every country are ready for such a world. – M. Fethullah Gulen

In relation to Islam’s stance regarding terrorism, I can assure that Islam, never approves of any kind of terrorism. – M. Fethullah Gulen

In relation to Islam’s stance regarding terrorism, I can assure that Islam, never approves of any kind of terrorism. Terrorism cannot be a means for any Islamic goal, and a terrorist cannot be a Muslim, nor can a true Muslim be a terrorist. Islam orders peace and a true Muslim can only be a symbol of peace and the maintenance of basic human rights. Islam preaches that if there are ten people on board a vessel of whom one is innocent and nine guilty of a criminal act, then the ship may not be sunk in view of punishing the guilty for there is amongst them one innocent. Any right, whatever it’s nature, is respected in Islam and it cannot be violated. The right of an individual cannot be violated in the interest of the community. The Qur’an, Islam’s sacred Book, declares that one who takes a life unjustly is as if he/she took the lives of all humankind, and that one who saves a life is as if he/she saved the lives of all. In the words of our Prophet, a Muslim is one from who comes no harm, neither from his/her tongue nor hand. – M. Fethullah Gulen

In the words of our Prophet, “a Muslim is one from who comes no harm, neither from his/her tongue nor hand.” – M. Fethullah Gulen

Islam abhors and absolutely condemns terrorism and any terrorist activity. – Fethullah Gulen

Islam and democracy can coexist in peace. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Islam as a religion focuses primarily on the immutable aspects of life and existence, whereas a political system concerns only social aspects of our worldly life. – Fethullah Gulen

Islam forbids reprisal and the frame of every action in war is defined by Islamic law, which nobody may transgress. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Islam has never looked favourably upon war, although it is a reality and one of the most prominent elements in the history of humankind; Islam has bound war first and foremost to the condition of defence, and then, within the framework of the principle “inciting division/rivalry is worse than murder,” found in the Qur’an, it has deemed war lawful only to prevent war and disputes which lead to war, to prevent disorder, oppression and subjection. These are the conditions that Islam deems necessary for engaging in war; – M. Fethullah Gulen

Islam is an authentic religion and it should be lived true to its spirit. While striving toward an Islamic life, it is self-contradictory to use illegitimate means. Just as the ends should be righteous, the means should also be righteous. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Islam preaches that if there are ten people on board a vessel of whom one is innocent and nine guilty of a criminal act, then the ship may not be sunk in view of punishing the guilty for there is amongst them one innocent. Any right, whatever it’s nature, is respected in Islam and it cannot be violated. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Islam’s basic principles of belief, worship, morality, and behavior are not affected by changing times. Islam does not propose a certain unchangeable form of government or attempt to shape it. Islam has never offered nor established a theocracy in its name. Instead, Islam establishes fundamental principles that orient a government’s general character. – Fethullah Gulen

Islamic rules of conduct during the war tells us not to touch children, those who pray in their places of worship. This is not something that was declared during a certain time period and then forgotten. Instead, this rule has been stated by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and reiterated by (the first caliph) Abu Bakr, (the second caliph) Omar, and in later times Salahaddeen Ayyoobi, (Seljuk Sultan) Alparslan, Kilicarslan and (Ottoman Sultan) Fatih (Mehmed II).” – M. Fethullah Gulen

It is a groundless apprehension to seek other things in those who have no thought other than serving people; further than apprehension, it is paranoia! – M. Fethullah Gulen

My philosophy – inclusive and pluralist Islam, dedicated to service to human beings from every faith – is antithetical to armed rebellion. – Fethullah Gulen

One of the people in the world I hate the most is Osama bin Laden, because he tarred the bright face of Islam. – M. Fethullah Gulen

One who commits terror cannot stay as Muslim. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Politics can be a factor neither in shaping Islam nor directing Muslims’ acts and attitudes in Islam’s name. – Fethullah Gulen

Real Muslims have never seen, and cannot see terrorism as a way for solving their problems. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Religion provides a foundation upon which to establish peace, human rights, freedoms and the rule of law. Any interpretations to the contrary, including the abuse of religion to fuel conflicts, are simply wrong and deceitful. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Terror leads to disaster in this world, and it leads to Hell in the next world. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Terrorism cannot be a means for any Islamic goal, and a terrorist cannot be a Muslim, nor can a true Muslim be a terrorist. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Terrorism is among major sins the Qur’an threatens with Hellfire. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The goal of religion is to establish peace based on universal human rights, rule of law and high human values in the world. Any interpretations to the contrary, including the abuse of religion to help fuel conflicts, are either false or deceitful. In true Islamic thought based on its core principles, every mean to a legitimate end should also be legitimate itself. To think or act otherwise is nothing but Machiavellism. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The heart of a genuine Muslim community is full of love and affection for all of creation. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The lesser jihad is our active fulfillment of Islam’s commands and duties. – Fethullah Gulen

The problem today is that Islam is not understood properly, in a holistic manner. Islam has always been respectful of plurality of worldviews and this point needs to be understood well today. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The Qur’an, Islam’s sacred Book, declares that one who takes a life unjustly is as if he/she took the lives of all humankind, and that one who saves a life is as if he/she saved the lives of all. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The Qur’anic references for the principle of individuality of crime are well known and even memorized in its original Arabic by many Muslims “No bearer of a burden can bear the burden of another [The Qur’an, Chapters An’am, 6:164; Nahl, 16:15; Fatir, 35:18].” – M. Fethullah Gulen

The right of an individual cannot be violated in the interest of the community. – M. Fethullah Gulen

They read these texts literally and mostly out of context without examining what precede or follows them. The results are disastrous: they misinterpret their religion and then put this misunderstood religion into practice; consequently they are misguided and they misguide others’. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Those people who chant agitating slogans today may one day come into the mosque and shoot me. If any of you in this audience react violently, let it be known that I do not approve or condone it. If I am assassinated, despite all your angers, I ask you to bury my body and seek for order, peace and love in our society. Regardless to what happens; you should say that ‘we, believers should be representatives of love and security. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Today, I am equally sad for the Israeli children who are under the threat of deadly missiles, as I am sad for the dying Iraqi children. Killing innocent children has no place in our faith. – M. Fethullah Gulen, During the first Gulf war. While Saddam was sending missiles to Israeli cities.

We invite our friends who hold high positions in the legislative branch of government and state institutions to master the skills of administration, so they could, when the time comes, reform the Turkish state and make it more fruitful at all its levels in the name of Islam. – Fethullah Gulen

You can not touch innocent civilians even at the time of war. No one can issue a religious verdict condoning such an act either. No one can become a suicide bomber. No one can wrap explosives around his/her body and enter a crowd of innocent civilians. This is religiously unacceptable regardless of the faith of those in the crowd. Such an act can not be condoned even at the time of war. – M. Fethullah Gulen

‘I believe in o­ne God and Mohammed the Apostle of God,’ is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue, and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion. – Edward Gibbon

Islam is …

Islam – a religion horribly misrepresented by terrorists, which is like the IRA saying they represented Irish people. Islam is a BEAUTIFUL religion. would make you cry it’s so beautiful… and gentle. – Sinead O’Connor

Islam and democracy can function together. – Ali Babacan

Islam and freedom are not compatible. – Geert Wilders

Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had. – Bernard Lewis

Islam and the Constitution are in clear conflict. – Darryl Glenn

Islam and the West have clashed in the past and have not clashed. There is nothing inevitable about it. – Lawrence Wright

Islam appeals to people because it appeals also to reason. – Mahatma Gandhi

Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other; nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. Probably this feeling that everything in the teachings and postulates of Islam is “in its proper place” has created the strongest impression on me. – Muhammad Asad

Islam asserts that on the unappealable Day of Judgment every perpetrator of the image of a living creature will be raised from the dead with his works, and he will be commanded to bring them to life, and he will fail, and be cast out with them into the fires of punishment. – Jorge Luis Borges

Islam believes in many prophets, and Al Quran is nothing but a confirmation of the old Scriptures. – Annie Besant

Islam believes that Jesus is a prophet, and they honour him – highly – and they respect him, and they follow his teachings. So, for me, as somebody who was raised Muslim, it is an honour to actually play Jesus, just because of that. – Haaz Sleiman

Islam came to teach us that there is no faith without intelligence and here we are: destroying our intelligence in the name of faith. – Tariq Ramadan

Islam can only be modernized from within. If I state that I condemn the practice of stoning, that this punishment is despicable, it changes nothing. My fellow Muslims will say: Brother Tariq, you became a European, a Swiss citizen, so you are no longer one of us. – Tariq Ramadan

Islam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-Jahiliyya [separated from God]. – Sayyid Qutb

Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate.’ Islam can only be one thing. – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Islam cannot have a significant presence in Australia if we are to live in an open, secular, and cohesive society. We have seen the destruction it is causing around the world. – Pauline Hanson

Islam developed in opposition to orthodox Christianity from the very start, and it considers itself superior to Christianity. So far, it has only been tolerant in places where it is in the minority. – Walter Kasper

Islam does give human dignity, certainly. The point I wanted to make is that it is great foolishness to try to impose our notions of democracy. They have their own traditions. – Bernard Lewis

Islam does not believe in democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of assembly. It does not separate religion and politics. It is partly a religion, but it is much more than that. It has a political agenda that goes far outside the realm of religion. – Pauline Hanson

Islam does not mean peace. It means submission. The word “peace” for Muslims has a different meaning. Peace, according to Muslims, will be achieved when everyone submits to Islam. Muslims can’t offer peace. They can offer truce. In their minds, peace will be achieved only when you are subdued and they are the masters. Any other arrangement is not Islamic. – Ali Sina

Islam does not preach hatred and violence and destruction. – Chris Hayes

Islam doesn’t have to mean blind faith. It can mean what it always meant in your family, a culture, a civilization, as open-minded as your grandfather was, as delightedly disputatious as your father was… Don’t let the zealots make Muslim a terrifying word, I urged myself; remember when it meant family. – Salman Rushdie

Islam doesn’t need reform, we need to reform the Muslim mind. – Tariq Ramadan

Islam doesn’t try to destroy cultures; it cleans them up. You can keep your language but get rid of your racist speech. You can keep your style of cooking, but get rid of alcohol. You can keep your cultural dresses, but keep your modesty on the highest level. – Nouman Ali Khan

Islam expect every Muslim to do this duty, and if we realise our responsibility time will come soon when we shall justify ourselves worthy of a glorious past. – Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Islam explicitly rejects dictatorship and there are no traditions of the Prophet or passages in the Qur’an which clearly give dictators this support. – Bernard Lewis

Islam first came before the world as a doubly totalitarian system. It claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also, by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law, by the principles of the fiqh, to regulate down to the smallest details the whole life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer. … [T]he study of Muhammadan law (dry and forbidding though it may appear to those who confine themselves to the indispensable study of the fiqh) is of great importance to the world today. – Georges-Henri Bousquet

Islam has a negative outlook on it around the world based on what the media tries to show. They not showing the peace. – Dave East

Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. – Barack Obama

Islam has a total organization of life that is completely different from ours; it embraces simply everything. … There is a very marked subordination of woman to man; there is a very tightly knit criminal law, indeed, a law regulating all areas of life, that is opposed to our modern ideas about society. One has to have a clear understanding that it is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a pluralistic society. – Benedict XVI

Islam has always been a force that dispels tyrants and tyranny, opression and exploitaion. Islam has always been a force that militates for justice. – Louis Farrakhan

Islam has always been a part of America’s story…. And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. – Barack Obama

Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology. – Youssou N’Dour

Islam has never been misunderstood. Islam is the problem. But no one is stating the truth. No one is taking a hard look at the root of terrorism which is the brain washing machine called Islam. Islam is not up to me, is not up to any Muslim – man or woman. Islam is exactly what the prophet Muhammad did and said. In order to understand Islam you have to read the biography of Muhammad. It is very traumatising. It is very shocking. He married his second wife when she was six years old. He was over fifty. […] His third wife was Sophia. She was a Jewish woman. It was well documented, well written in our school books that he attacked her tribe. He killed her father, her brother, and her husband. At the same day, he slept with her. That’s what I call Islam. – Wafa Sultan

Islam has no problem with women, but Muslims do clearly appear to have serious problems with them. – Tariq Ramadan

Islam has shown two faces to the Jews, one benevolent, one less so. – Jack Schwartz

Islam has taken everything from its wretched believers. They are robbed from their identity and self pride. All they have now is Islam. That is why Islam for Muslims is more than just a religion. It is their identity. When you criticize Islam, they perceive it as an attack on their identity and cringe with pain. They take that not only as an insult but also as an assault on their person. Like a corned animal they become vicious and fight back with all their might – a fight of survival. That is why you see such a violent reaction to a few silly cartoons. – Ali Sina

Islam has values, following the Koran and the example of Mohammed and they form people very profoundly and for some Muslims it creates a vision of a very different society and a hope it will be established. – Mark Durie

Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or “surrender” as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption. – Christopher Hitchens

Islam in the Arab world coexists with Indonesian, Pakistani and Turkish Islam. There is limited solidarity, even within the Arab world. – Walter Kasper

Islam inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality. – George W. Bush

Islam is a dangerous religion. – Michel Houellebecq

Islam is a mercy, if you see it opposite, cruelty, then know that is not Islam. – Ibn Qayim Al Jawziyah

Islam is a peaceful religion. – Youssou N’Dour

Islam is a religion based upon knowledge, and a denial of the possibility and objectivity of knowledge would involve the destruction of the fundamental basis upon which not only the religion, but all the sciences are rooted. – Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends His son to die for you. – Cal Thomas

Islam is a religion of continuous personal and societal reform through disciplined worship. – Mahmoud M. Ayoub

Islam is a religion of justice and dignity, and we are taught to never keep silent when facing injustice, discrimination and double standards. – Tariq Ramadan

Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. The cross, crucified, and that turned into victory. Mohammad was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength. – Karen Armstrong

Islam is a religion that is essentially rationalistic in the widest sense of this term considered etymologically and historically. The definition of rationalism as a system that bases religious beliefs on principles furnished by the reason applies to it exactly . . . It cannot be denied that many doctrines and systems of theology and also many superstitions, from the worship of saints to the use of rosaries and amulets, have become grafted on the main trunk of Muslim creed. But in spite of the rich developments, in every sense of the term, of the teachings of the Prophet, the Quran has invariable kept its place as the fundamental starting point, and the dogma of unity of God has always been proclaimed therein with a grandeur, a majesty, an invariable purity and with a note of sure conviction, which it is hard to find surpassed outside the pale of Islam. This fidelity to the fundamental dogma of the religion, the elemental simplicity of the formula in which it is enunciated, the proof that it gains from the fervid conviction of the missionaries who propagate it, are so many causes to explain the success of Muhammadan missionary efforts. A creed so precise, so stripped of all theological complexities and consequently so accessible to the ordinary understanding might be expected to possess and does indeed possess a marvelous power of winning its way into the consciences of men. – Édouard Montet

Islam is a religion. It is not an ideology. For a Muslim, there is no such thing as to be against modernity. Why should a Muslim not be a modern person? I, as a Muslim, fulfill all the requirements of my religion, and I live in a democratic, social state. – Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Islam is a revolutionary faith that comes to destroy any government made by man. Islam doesn’t look for a nation to be in better condition than another nation. Islam doesn’t care about the land or who own the land. The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam. Any nation or power in this world that tries to get in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy. – Abul A’la Maududi

Islam is a violent, I was going to say religion, but it’s not a religion. It’s a political system. It’s a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination. That is the ultimate aim. – Pat Robertson

Islam is a way of living rather than a way of thinking. – Alija Izetbegovic

Islam is about finding your own space. – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Islam is according to me, my party, not so much a religion as well as it is a totalitarian ideology. – Geert Wilders

Islam is an evil and wicked religion. – Franklin Graham

Islam is an ideology and there’s a religious component to it that’s radicalized and in some cases it masks itself behind that religion, especially in America, because of freedom of religion. – Michael T. Flynn

Islam is an ideology. It’s not a race. – Ibrahim Hooper

Islam is antiauthoritarian, sex-positive monotheism. – G. Willow Wilson

Islam is at once the most and the least interesting of the world’s monotheisms. It builds upon its primitive Jewish and Christian predecessors, selecting a chunk here and a shard there, and thus if these fall, it partly falls also. – Christopher Hitchens

Islam is based on naql (texts) and ‘aql (intellect). Some people just have the texts – we call them naql-heads. – Hamza Yusuf

Islam is fixed, stable, ordered and disciplined, and so are Muslims. – Abu Bakar Bashir

Islam is in principle egalitarian, and has always had problems with power. – Mary Douglas

Islam is itself destiny and will not suffer destiny. – Muhammad Iqbal

Islam is misunderstood by many. The extremists grab the headlines; those of us who want to practise our religion and live under this country’s laws do not make the news. – Sadiq Khan

Islam is more than a religion, it’s much more than a religion, it’s a way of life, it is a one party political system that has a very elaborate legal system that can put you to death if you leave it. – Reza Aslan

Islam is much more than a formal religion: it is an integral way of life. In many ways it is a more determining factor in the experience of its followers than any other world religion. The Muslim (“one who submits”) lives face to face with God at all times and will introduce no separation between his life and his religion, his politics and his faith. With its strong emphasis on the brotherhood of men cooperating to fulfill the will of God, Islam has become one of the most influential religions in the world today. – John Alden Williams

Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics. – Mohsin Hamid

Islam is not a race…Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy. – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of submission. Islam means submit. – Steve Bannon

Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of war, and most Muslims don’t understand the true nature of Islam. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

Islam is not a religion, but an imperialist ideology like communism or fascism. – Geert Wilders

Islam is not a religion, it’s an ideology, the ideology of a retarded culture. – Geert Wilders

Islam is not a religion. It’s a political system. It has a different set of rules. – Paul Nehlen

Islam is not an excuse for thwarting democracy. – Shirin Ebadi

Islam is not just a religion. Islam is everything. – Cat Stevens

Islam is not measured by the color of his skin. – Malcolm X

Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace. – Barack Obama

Islam is nothing but man’s exclusive and total submission to God. – Abul A’la Maududi

Islam is often seen as a monolith, when it is as diverse as any other tradition, with followers running the gamut from modernizers to traditionalists. Some commentators talk as if the world of Islam was more or less identical with the Arab world — whereas in fact a majority of Muslims are not native Arabic speakers. The most populous Muslim countries are to be found in non-Arab Asia — from Indonesia through South-East and South Asia to Central Asia, Iran, and Turkey, which of course is both in Asia and Europe. There are many predominantly Muslim countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and large minorities of Muslims are to be found on every continent. – Kofi Annan

Islam is one of the fastest-growing faiths within America, and America needs to show that we’re not anti-Islam. We are for, for people being free and having opportunity everywhere, that… We did that in Bosnia, we did that in Kosovo, we did that in numerous other places in the world. – William J. Clinton

Islam is one of the world’s great religions. Let me be explicit about what I, as a historian of Islam who is not a Muslim, mean by that. Islam has brought comfort and peace of mind to countless millions of men and women. It has given dignity and meaning to drab and impoverished lives. It has taught people of different races to live in brotherhood and people of different creeds to live side by side in reasonable tolerance. It inspired a great civilization in which others besides Muslims lived creative and useful lives and which, by its achievement, enriched the whole world. But Islam, like other religions, has also known periods when it inspired in some of its followers a mood of hatred and violence. It is our misfortune that part, though by no means all or even most, of the Muslim world is now going through such a period, and that much, though again not all, of that hatred is directed against us. – Bernard Lewis

Islam is perfect, there is nothing to be added or changed. – Abu Bakar Bashir

Islam is politics or it is nothing. – Ruhollah Khomeini

Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God’s creation. – Aga Khan IV

Islam is something we can’t afford any more. – Geert Wilders

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in America, a guide and pillar of stability for many of our people. – Hillary Clinton

Islam is the only religion that gives dignity to the poor. – Ramsey Clark

Islam is the religion of militant individuals who are committed to truth and justice. It is the religion of those who desire freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism. But the servants of imperialism have presented Islam in a totally different light. They have created in men’s minds a false notion of Islam. The defective version of Islam, which they have presented in the religious teaching institution, is intended to deprive Islam of its vital, revolutionary aspect and to prevent Muslims from arousing themselves in order to gain their freedom, fulfill the ordinances of Islam, and create a government that will secure their happiness and allow them to live lives worthy of human beings. – Ayatollah Khomeini

Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe. – Geert Wilders

Islam is under obligation to gain power over all nations. – Ibn Khaldun

Islam is unusual in that it’s the only one of the great world religions which was born inside recorded history. That there’s an enormous amount of factual historical record about the life of a prophet and about social conditions in Arabia at that time. So it’s possible to look at the origin of Islam in a scholarly way. – Salman Rushdie

Islam is very different, being ferociously intolerant. What I may call Manifold Monotheism becomes in the minds of very simple folk an absurdly polytheistic idolatry, just as European peasants not only worship Saints and the Virgin as Gods, but will fight fanatically for their faith in the ugly little black doll who is the Virgin of their own Church against the black doll of the next village. When the Arabs had run this sort of idolatry to such extremes [that] they did this without black dolls and worshipped any stone that looked funny, Mahomet rose up at the risk of his life and insulted the stones shockingly, declaring that there is only one God, Allah, the glorious, the great, and pinning himself to the second Commandment that no man should dare make a graven image of Allah or any of his creatures. And there was to be no nonsense about toleration. You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell. – George Bernard Shaw

Islam is, to be sure, a big tent, and the one and a half billion Muslims in the world run the gamut from mystical, moderate, pacific Sufis to Salafists. – Peter Bergen

Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet – who was only another male mammal – is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. – Christopher Hitchens

Islam means peace. – Malala Yousafzai

Islam never tells people to go out and kill other people. – Abderrahmane Sissako

Islam really brought a discipline to my life that I didn’t really have before. My old mindset was if they ain’t helping me, I ain’t helping them, but you can’t live life that way. – Dave East

Islam religion has no color distinction, we are just Muslims. – Muhammad Ali

Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for the Holy Warriors! There are hundreds of other [Qur’anic] psalms and Hadiths [sayings of the Prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim. – Ruhollah Khomeini

Islam should be compared to other totalitarian ideologies like Communism or Fascism. – Geert Wilders

Islam stands for the unity and brotherhood of mankind, and not for disrupting the oneness of the human family. – Mahatma Gandhi

Islam stands in a long line of Semitic, prophetic religious traditions that share an uncompromising monotheism, and belief in God’s revelation, His prophets, ethical responsibility and accountability, and the Day of Judgement. Indeed, Muslims, like Christians and Jews, are the Children of Abraham, since all trace their communities back to him. Islam’s historic religious and political relationship to Christendom and Judaism has remained strong throughout history. This interaction has been the source of mutual benefit. – John L. Esposito

Islam takes advantage of two structural flaws that exist in the Western society. One is political correctness and other is the decline of morality. – Ali Sina

Islam teaches tolerance, not hatred; universal brotherhood, not enmity; peace, and not violence. – Pervez Musharraf

Islam tells us every girl and boy should be educated. I don’t know why the Taliban have forgotten it. – Malala Yousafzai

Islam understands its earthly mission to extend the law of Allah over the world by force. – Robert Spencer

Islam undoubtedly deserves respect. It has some things in common with Christianity, such as Abraham as a common progenitor, and the belief in only one God. – Walter Kasper

Islam united all heresies persecuted in Byzantine Empire and synthesised them well into a conseffion that later became a symbol of Arab self-affirmation. – Lev Gumilev

Islam wants to destroy us and I want to prevent it. – Geert Wilders

Islam was hijacked on that September 11, 2001, on that plane, as an innocent victim. – Hamza Yusuf

Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage. – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Islam was not a torch, as has been claimed, but an extinguisher. Conceived in a barbarous brain for the use of a barbarous people, it was — and it remains — incapable of adapting itself to civilization. Wherever it has dominated, it has broken the impulse towards progress and checked the evolution of society. Islam is Christianity adapted to Arab mentality, or, more exactly, it is all that the unimaginative brain of a Bedouin, obstinately faithful to ancestral practices, has been able to assimilate of the Christian doctrines. Lacking the gift of imagination, the Bedouin copies, and in copying he distorts the original. Thus Musulman law is only the Roman Code revised and corrected by Arabs; in the same way Musulman science is nothing but Greek science interpreted by the Arab brain; and again, Musulman architecture is merely a distorted imitation of the Byzantine style. – Andre Servier

Islam was nothing if it did not spell complete democracy. – Mahatma Gandhi

Islam will be what Muslims make of it. And it is the sum total of the interpretation that Muslims give to it. – Maajid Nawaz

Islam will win with or without you, but without Islam you will get lost and lose. – Ahmed Deedat

Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. – Samuel P. Huntington

Islam’s laws are fixed and that is why Islam is stable. – Abu Bakar Bashir

Islam’s not just about covering your hair. It’s about how you treat other people. – Bassem Youssef

Islam, as a religion, has been established in France for a long time, and the religious question has been resolved in this country. Islam does not threaten France’s future in any way. – Tariq Ramadan

Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion. – George W. Bush

Islam, at the moment, is the motherlode of bad ideas. – Sam Harris

Islam, for example, like so many other faiths, stresses the importance of mutual solidarity with our fellow man. – Mehdi Hasan

Islam, from among all religions, best suits the science discoveries and is the most ready to edify souls and force them to abide by justice, kindness and toleration. – Gustave Le Bon

Islam, in contrast to Christianity and Buddhism, does not have monasticism; spiritual life, social life, they are all integrated and related together in one way or another. And the Prophet represents that in his life. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Islam, or any religion, will become totalitarian if it is made into an ideology, because that is the nature of ideologies. – Abdolkarim Soroush

Islam, the religion of peace and any terrorism that happens, is not really Islamic or Islamic inspired. This is called a willful blindness. It’s also political correctness. – Rush Limbaugh

Islam, the third in historical sequence of the ethical monotheistic religions of the Near East, was very successful in establishing its monotheism, but had only very moderate success in spreading its version of Jewish and Christian ethics to the Arabs. – Carroll Quigley

Islamic Religious Law Fundamentalist Islam wants shari’a to replace the U.S. Constitution and fundamentally transform America. – Pamela Geller

Islamic terrorism is the handiwork of people who’ve heeded, not hijacked, Islam. Or so says [Wafa] Sultan. – Ilana Mercer

Islamism is an ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society. – Maajid Nawaz

Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society. – Maajid Nawaz

Islamist terrorism is a cancer on Islam, and Muslims themselves must fight it at our side. – Marine Le Pen

300 years after the rise of Islam there were Zoroastrians in Iran. The Muslim armies never forced people to accept Islam. It was only within Arabia that God ordered the idolaters to have a choice of either embracing Islam or fight against Muslims, because He wanted to remove this terrible idolatry that exited there. But outside Arabia where Islam met Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus, they were given a choice by and large. That’s why many Christians and Jewish communities survived in the Muslim world, but gradually many of them embraced Islam for different reasons. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Short And Powerful Islam Quotes

A perfect Muslim is he from whose tongue and hands mankind is safe. – Mahatma Gandhi

Actually we are Muslims because we believe in the religion of Islam. – Malcolm X

All my friends were non-Muslims. I actually knew very little about Islam – like, very little. – Maajid Nawaz

All of us here today understand this: We do not fight Islam, we fight against evil. – George W. Bush

Any attempt to single out Islam would be a violation of the Constitution. – Chris Gibson

Apostasy from Islam is a crime and is punishable by death. – Ali Gomaa

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. – Barack Obama

Because Islam in its original form was tough and hard, not weak and pliable. – Abu Bakar Bashir

Good people in the West have often failed to distinguish between Islam and Islamism. – Phyllis Chesler

I admire the Islam. There’s a lot of good principles in it. – John McCain

I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and peace. – Muhammad Ali

I believe that Islam and freedom are incompatible. – Geert Wilders

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

I do not believe, that it is true or right that Islam is terrorist. – Pope Francis

I do not believe it is right to identify Islam with violence. This is not right or true. – Pope Francis

I don’t hate Muslims, I hate Islam. – Geert Wilders

I have a big problem with Islam. – Michel Onfray

I have something against Islam. – Geert Wilders

I have to admit that I’m kind of afraid of Islam. – Edgar Hilsenrath

I keep on saying, being moderate is fundamental to Islam. – Najib Razak

I like Islam, it is consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded. – Kurt Gödel

I love Christianity, Islam and many other faiths – through Hinduism. – Mahatma Gandhi

I questioned the blind faith demanded by my religion, which was Islam. – Art Malik

I saw Islam as the correct way to live, and I chose to try to live that way. – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I was always inclined towards learning more about Islam. – Sana Khan

I’m a good Muslim and I’m only interested in Islam. – Idi Amin

I’m just hoping that people understand that Islam is peace and not violence. – Muhammad Ali

If Hinduism teaches hatred of Islam or of non-Hindus, it is doomed to destruction. – Mahatma Gandhi

If ISIS represents Islam, then the KKK represents Christianity. – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

If Islam is not making you happy, then something is wrong with your Islam. – Hamza Yusuf

If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones. – Michael Muhammad Knight

In Britain, Christianity is dying. Islam, unfortunately, isn’t. – Richard Dawkins

In Islam, it is not just your right, but your responsibility to get education. – Malala Yousafzai

Islam has always been part of America. – Barack Obama

It’s not the United States’s job to ‘protect’ Islam. – Dana Loesch

Jihad expands Islam’s domain by any means available. – Ralph Peters

Make no mistake about it – Islam is just not another way to approach God. – Robert Jeffress

My intention is to show the real face of Islam. I see it as a threat. – Geert Wilders

My choosing Islam was not a political statement; it was a spiritual statement. – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality. – Barack Obama

Sixty-five percent of Americans say they know nothing about either Muhammad or Islam. – Deepak Chopra

Sooner or later we must absorb Islam if our own culture is not to die of anemia. – Basil Bunting

The ‘Islam vs. the West’ dialogue ceased to be about real people a long time ago. – G. Willow Wilson

The Allah of Islam is the same as the God of Christians and the Ishwar of Hindus. – Mahatma Gandhi

The only model to follow is pure Islam. – Abu Bakar Bashir

The point of Islam is to promote peace. – Lupe Fiasco

The radical elements in Islam are very dangerous. – Brent Scowcroft

The religion of Islam brings out of the individual all of his dormant potential. – Malcolm X

The religion of Islam is growing faster than any other religion in the world. – Mike Wallace

The sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer. – Barack Obama

The terrorists whatever slogans they use have nothing in common with Islam. – Nursultan Nazarbayev

The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam. – Barack Obama

The universality of Islam is not uniformity, it is unity with diversity. – Tariq Ramadan

The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence. – Mahatma Gandhi

The world does not have an Islam problem; the world has a dignity problem. – Rand Paul

There are more Muslims in North America then Jews Now. – Dan Rather

There is no “true Islam,” just different interpretations. – Shirin Ebadi

There is no greater threat to America than Islam. – William G. Boykin

There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it. – Recep Tayyip Erdogan

There is nothing in Islam that is more violent than Christianity. – Karen Armstrong

To give to those in need is a central pillar of Islam. – Antonio Guterres

U.S. Constitution is under attack from Fundamentalist Islam and shari’a. – Pamela Geller

We are not at war against Islam. – Barack Obama

We believe women have rights in Islam that they’ve yet to obtain. – Mohammad bin Salman

We claim Islam as Deen or a complete way of life. – Pervez Musharraf

We don’t understand enough about the Islam religion and Muslim world. – Madeleine Albright

We have a problem with political Islam in Austria. – Sebastian Kurz

We have to be even more Christocentric because of the influence of Islam today. – Rick Warren

We must remember that Islam is not an enemy, and we have no war with Islam. – Reuven Rivlin

We represent the moderate teachings and principles of Islam. – Mohammad bin Salman

We want Austrian-style Islam, not one controlled by other states. – Sebastian Kurz

We want to tell people how great Islam is yet we are not great Muslims. – Tariq Ramadan

We will encourage more Americans to study in Muslim communities. – Barack Obama

You can be prosecuted if you tell the truth about Islam. – Rush Limbaugh

‘Islamist terrorism.’ The very phrase is contentious. No one wants to make this problem harder by unfairly branding and alienating a quarter of the world’s population, and even in this construction, no one should be thinking this means all of Islam or all Muslims. – Michael Hayden

More Islam Quotes

A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it’s dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us? – Mark Steyn

A country which has a population 99% as their faith in Islam can also be a country which are subscribing to the universal values of the E.U. – Ali Babacan

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. – Winston Churchill

A hedonistic lifestyle contrary to all the rules and expectations of Islam is not an unusual precursor to radicalisation: in fact, some young radicals see joining in the jihad as a way of achieving redemption for past sins. – Deeyah Khan

A key difference between Christianity and Islam is that Muslims believe that the Koran contains verbatim the word of God; it is written in the imperative. This precludes a comparison with Christianity. – Geert Wilders

A lot of people had a misconception that I would be the perfect poster child for Islam. So I got a lot of Instagram comments like, ‘Oh, you don’t have your neck covered, you’re not a Muslim!’ My thing is, stop judging women, especially if you’re a man, because you don’t know the responsibility that comes with wearing a hijab. – Halima Aden

A Muslim has five duties towards another Muslim; to return a salutation, visit the sick, follow funerals, accept an invitation and say ‘God have mercy on you’ when one sneezes. – Elijah Muhammad

A non-Muslim is a second-class citizen called a Kafir. You and I are Kafirs. Much of the Koran concerns itself with the Kafir – how to control us, to subjugate us and to kill us. “Islam has the mind of a psychopathic rapist and because its founder, the “prophet” Mohammed was in fact a psychopathic rapist himself. – Eric Allen

A remarkable feature of Islam is that it gives dignity even to the humblest illiterate peasants. It gives them a certain human dignity which one doesn’t find in other societies. – Bernard Lewis

A society that is not founded on morality falls apart and becomes easy prey to puritan cults such as Islam that on the surface, promote family values and morality. – Ali Sina

Abdur Rab offers a comprehensive vision of Islam using the Quran as his sole religious textual source. He intentionally avoids the hadith literature, which he believes, and argues, has done much damage to the message of the Quran. His work provides many thought-provoking insights and should be a significant contribution to the ‘Quran only’ movement in modern Islam. – Jeffrey Lang

Abraham is such a fascinating figure. Three world religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – all claim him as a patriarch. He was raised in a religious home. And yet he rejected religion in order to pursue a personal relationship with God. – Anne Graham Lotz

Abraham is the shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He stands at the heart of these three faiths. And yet you know almost nothing about him. – Bruce Feiler

Accusing somebody of racism is a very effective weapon in Germany. Islamists know this: As soon as you accuse someone of demonizing Islam, then the European side backs down. – Bassam Tibi

Acts of violence against one’s own countrymen that are legitimated by religion are not new. Nor have such acts been unique to Islam. – Linda Colley

Actually, in its purest form, Islam is incredibly tolerant. That makes what’s going on in the world really bizarre. – Steve Earle

After 9/11, there were a lot of things being said about how the God of Islam and the God of the Christian faith were one and the same, but that’s simply not true … The God that I worship does not require me to kill other people. The God that I worship tells me I am to love my enemy, to give him food when he’s hungry and water when he’s thirsty. – Franklin Graham

After the 9/11 incidents, Islam has become a big question mark among westerners, especially Americans. The mass media constantly raise the issue of relationship between Islam and terrorism. – Abdolkarim Soroush

Again and again, when Westerners are perceived as denigrating Muhammad, the Koran, or Islam, Islamists demonstrate, riot or kill. – Daniel Pipes

Al Qaeda’s leaders seek to reverse what they claim are corrupt Islamic practices bookended by the Mongol invasions in 1256 and Ataturk’s ending the caliphate in 1924. Theirs is a fight to turn Islam’s clock back to the time of Prophet Muhammad’s original followers. – Malcolm Nance

Al Qaeda, the Taliban, a whole host of networks that are bent on attacking America, who have a distorted ideology, who have perverted the faith of Islam, and so we have to go after them. – Barack Obama

Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali’s Ash’arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed. – Peter Adamson

Al-Qa’ida is the antithesis of the peace, tolerance and humanity that is at the heart of Islam. – John O. Brennan

Al-Qa’ida seeks to portray America as an enemy of the world’s Muslims. But President Obama has made it clear that the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam. – John O. Brennan

Al-Qaeda, ISIS, can’t be Islamic. Islam is the religion of peace. They are bastardizing it. They are frauds. They are calling themselves Islamic and they are calling themselves Muslim, but they’re not. Because Islam is as anti-terror as you and I are. Islam is the religion of peace. I’m telling you what our government’s position is. The US military position. – Rush Limbaugh

All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true faith – face of Islam. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. It’s a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It’s a faith based upon love, not hate. – George W. Bush

All religions basically exhort mankind to be righteous and eschew evil. But Islam goes beyond that. It guides us towards practical ways of achieving righteousness and eliminating evil from our individual and collective lives. Islam takes into account human nature and the complexities of human society. Islam is guidance from the Creator Himself. Therefore, Islam is also called the Deenul-Fitrah (the natural religion of Man). – Zakir Naik

All that the Qur’an requires is that men and women strive to create a just society, where the vulnerable are treated decently. This was the bedrock of the Qur’anic message. . . . The early message of the Qur’an is simple. It is wrong to stockpile wealth to build a personal fortune, but good to give alms and distribute the wealth of society. – Karen Armstrong

All three of our major religions in Britain ~ Christianity, Islam and Judaism – have a hateful idea at the very core. That idea is Exclusion: the “othering,” if you like, of the unredeemed. – Matthew Parris

All too many Muslims fail to grasp Islam, which teaches one to be lenient towards others and to understand their value systems, knowing that these are tolerated by Islam as a religion. – Abdurrahman Wahid

All views can’t be true because all views are opposite; this is the logical aspect. For example, Islam says we are good in nature; Christianity says we are born in sin. Islam says God is a man; Christianity says He is more than a man, He is God. All truths can’t be the same. – Norman Geisler

All we’re doing is going back to what we were: a moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world and to all traditions and people. – Mohammad bin Salman

Allah knows exactly what to give you to help you return to Him. The events in your life are purposeful, appropriate & non-random. – Hamza Yusuf

Allah says in the Qur’an not to despise one another. So the criterion in Islam is not color or social status. It’s who is most righteous. If I go to a mosque – and I’m a basketball player with money and prestige – if I go to a mosque and see an imam, I feel inferior. He’s better than me. It’s about knowledge. – Hakeem Olajuwon

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. – Barack Obama

America cannot be America in the new century until it deals with these new questions of gender, including the trans issues, and the questions around faith and Islam. – Van Jones

America does not seek good for Islam, for the Muslims, and for the repressed. – Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

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. – Chris Murphy

America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists. – Barack Obama

America is not at war with Islam. And it is a mistake and it plays into the hands of the terrorists to act as though we are. – Hillary Clinton

America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered white—but the white attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color. On this Hajj pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to re-arrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth. During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)–while praying to the same God–with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions in the deeds of the ‘white’ Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers)–because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man–and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their ‘differences’ in color. With racism plaguing America like incurable cancer, the so-called ‘Christian’ white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster–the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves. – Malcolm X

America treasures the relationship we have with our many Muslim friends, and we respect the vibrant faith of Islam which inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality. This year, may Eid also be a time in which we recognize the values of progress, pluralism, and acceptance that bind us together as a Nation and a global community. By working together to advance mutual understanding, we point the way to a brighter future for all. – George W. Bush

American Muslims are already within the system. We should stop isolating ourselves by thinking we are powerless. The youngest generations of Americans have a better opinion of Islam because they interact with Muslims. Half of young American citizens now are supporting the Palestinians rather than the Israelis. Things are moving. – Tariq Ramadan

Americans know the traditional values of Islam, devotion to faith and good works, to family and society, are in harmony with the best of American ideals. – William J. Clinton

And that sort of victimization narrative is something we shouldn’t contribute to. On the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there is a radical element in Islam, jihadism, that needs to be called by name and needs to be confronted. – Marco Rubio

Anybody looking at the history even of the 20th century would not single out Islam as the bloodthirsty religion; it was Christian/Nazi/Communist Europe and Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu/atheist Asia that set records for mass slaughter. – Nicholas Kristof

Apostasy is a grave crime in Islam and punishable by death in the eyes of members of al Qaeda. – Peter Bergen

Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus. The Ariyans and some other sects had disturbed the tranquility of the east by agitating the question of the nature of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Muhammad declared that there was none but one God who had no father, no son and that the trinity imported the idea of idolatry. – Napoleon Bonaparte

Archaeologists have made discoveries that challenge fundamental traditions of Judaism as well as those of Christianity and Islam. – Stephen Kinzer

As a result of that, America desires a moderate Islam; an Islam that America can control; an Islam that America can give direction to and give orders to its leaders. – Louis Farrakhan

As a result of the [9/11] attack and the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent people, we invaded two countries and killed innocent people in their countries Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America. – Rosie O’Donnell

As a supporter of secularism, I am willing to accept same-sex weddings in a state-sanctioned register office, on grounds of equity. As a believer in Islam, however, I insist that no mosque be forced to hold one against its wishes. – Mehdi Hasan

As a Westerner, the child of civil rights and anti-war activists, I embraced Islam not in abandonment of my core values, drawn almost entirely from the progressive tradition, but as an affirmation of them. – Hamza Yusuf

As Commander of the Faithful, it is out of the question that I fight Islam. We need to fight violence and ignorance. It is true, when one strolls out, one sees women with scarves and men with beards. This has always been the case in Morocco. Morocco is built on tolerance. – Mohammed VI of Morocco

As far as the matters of religion are concerned we know for sure that only Islam is the true religion in the eyes of God. In 3:85 it is mentioned that God will never accept any religion other than Islam. As far as the building of churches or temples is concerned, how can we allow this when their religion is wrong? And when worship is also wrong? Thus we will surely not allow such wrong things in our country. – Zakir Naik

As long as you remember that if you get involved in politics, you have to be very careful that your leader is for Allah. You don’t get involved in politics because it’s the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam. – Siraj Wahhaj

As there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans (i.e. Muslim), I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. – Thomas Carlyle

Assassination, kidnappings and suicide attacks have become too much the standard operating procedure in the Islamic world. So much so that the name of Islam itself has been diminished in the eyes of many people. It is the responsibility of all of us, and particularly those in the Islamic world who care about their religion, to rescue it from its increased association with violence. – John F. Kerry

At a moment when distortions of Islam are what feed most Americans, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin has done something both practical and inspiring. He persuades us that the imperiled environment is both common struggle and common ground for people who share, it turns out, more than simply God. – John Hockenberry

At the end of the day we’re all spirits having a physical experience. That really comes from my relationship with Islam because it just makes me really conscious of my action. – Mahershala Ali

At the heart of Islam is its preservation of an integral view of the Universe. Islam – like Buddhism and Hinduism – refuses to separate man and nature, religion and science, mind and matter, and has preserved a metaphysical and unified view of ourselves and the world around us. – Prince of Wales Charles

At the height of his popularity in 1977, Cat Stevens converted to Islam and dedicated his life to educational and philanthropic causes. – Shawn Amos

At this point I hadn’t yet gotten deep into the historic condition that negroes in this country are confronted with, but at that point in my prison studies I, I read, I studied Islam as a religion more so than as I later come to know it in its connection with the plight or problem of Negroes in this country. – Malcolm X

Ataturk approved of the mevlevi dervish approach to God as being ‘an expression of Turkish genius’ that reclaimed Islam from what he saw as hide-bound, backward Arab tradition. – Stephen Kinzer

Before I wrote ‘God’s War,’ I probably did eight years of research into the Middle East, Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, and all sorts of fabulous other things. – Kameron Hurley

Being kind to your wife is a big show of your faith. Islam teaches tolerance not hatred, universe brotherhood, not enmity, peace and not violence. – Pervez Musharraf.

Being someone who prays or fasts doesn’t mean you want an Islamic state. Islam in the form of the Iranian state has been defeated in the Arab world. All Islamist movements now want to copy the Turkish model. – Burhan Ghalioun

Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it’s simply meaningless. We don’t live in order to die, we live in order to live. – Ursula K. Le Guin

Belief in one god, praying, charity, the five pillars, ethical moral objectives and messages in the Koran, the history of Islam. There are basic tenants in Islam that we universally believe in but I think it’s very naive to think that Sharia, that legal rulings are derived in a vacuum, that people do not bring their own histories and politics and social pledges to bear when they interpret the Koran. – Mark Durie

Beside all this I think there was something personal, being Muslim myself who lived in the west I felt that it was my obligation my duty to tell the truth about Islam. It is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it’s so little known about it which surprised me. – Moustapha Akkad

Blaming Islam is a simple answer, easier and less controversial than re-examining the core political issues and grievances that resonate in much of the Muslim world: the failures of many Muslim governments and societies, some aspects of U.S. foreign policy representing intervention and dominance, Western support for authoritarian regimes, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or support for Israel’s military battles with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. – John L. Esposito

Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam. … Among religions, Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world. – Bertrand Russell

But Islam has yet a further service to render to the cause of humanity. It stands after all nearer to the real East than Europe does, and it possesses a magnificent tradition of interracial understanding and co-operation. No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavour so many and so various races of mankind. … Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and the West is to be replaced by co-operation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition. In its hands lies very largely the solution of the problem with which Europe is faced in its relations with the East. If they unite, the hope of a peaceful issue is immeasurably enhanced — but if Europe, by rejecting the co operation of Islam, throws it into the arms of its rivals, the issue can only be disastrous for both. – Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb

But out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. – Winston Churchill

But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam. – Abu Bakar Bashir

By using power, money, fraud, the enemy is interested in gaining control over the world of Islam. – Mohammed Emami-Kashani

Christian scholars often say that Sufi theories are close to those of Christianity. Many Moslems maintain that they are essentially derived from Islam. The resemblance of many Sufi ideas to those of several religious and esoteric systems are sometimes taken as evidence of derivation. The Islamic interpretation is that religion is of one origin, differences being due to local or historical causes. – Idries Shah

Christianity and Islam are today the most numerous and fastest growing religions globally. Together they encompass more than half of humanity. Consequence: both are here to stay. – Miroslav Volf

Christianity and Islam, they have the same morals, same lifestyle, some of the same stories that shaped them. – Craig Thompson

Christianity and Judaism have gone through the laundromat of humanism and enlightenment, but that is not the case with Islam. – Pim Fortuyn

Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists. – Franz Grillparzer

Christianity, Judaism and Islam all share a gospel, loosely, and it’s important that we all realize that. – Dan Brown

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all stem from the same Abrahamic roots. All three reject terrorism. – H. John Poole

Civilization owes to the Islamic world some of its most important tools and achievements…the Muslim genius has added much to the culture of all peoples. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Come forward as servants of Islam, organise the people economically, socially, educationally and politically and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody. – Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar. – Karen Armstrong

Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires. – Anjem Choudary

Contrary to what many Westerners believe, Islam has a rich tradition of secular painting in spite of its ban on images. It is only in religious rituals that the use of pictorial representation is totally prohibited. – Fatema Mernissi

Deep down in my heart and what I’ve seen and what I’ve been around, there is nothing better than Islam. – Dave East

Democracy is for infidels. A real Muslim is not a democrat because he doesn’t care about the opinions of majorities and minorities don’t interest him. He is only interested in what Islam says. – Abdul Sattar Abu Risha

Does the terror threat we’re facing grow out of a perversion of Islam, or does it represent and extreme, but durable, strain of the religion. – Chuck Todd

Donald Trump is an extremist leader who came out of nowhere. He’s self-financed, recruits through social media, attracts his followers with a radical ideology to take over the world, and is actively trying to promote a war between Islam and the West. – Hasan Minhaj

During the centuries-long process of Reformation and Enlightenment, Christian churches had to accept some things they didn’t like. Islam will have to do the same; otherwise it isn’t part of Europe. – Wolfgang Schauble

During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience. – Bernard Lewis

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)–while praying to the same God–with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions in the deeds of the ‘white’ Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) – because their belief in one God had removed the white from their minds, the white from their behavior, and the white from their attitude. – Malcolm X

Early Islam was a time of great creativity. Scholars excelled in sciences and literature. Our religion should not be a shield behind which we hide from the world but a driving force that inspires us to innovate and contribute to our surroundings. This is the true spirit of Islam. – Basmah bint Saud

East and West are coming together. Whether in peace or anarchy – they are coming together. There needn’t be a clash between East and West, between Islam and Europe. – Orhan Pamuk

Educated women armed with computers have defeated extremists by denying them a monopoly to define cultural identity and interpret religious texts. No extremist can say that women are inferior to men without being made a laughingstock on Al Jazeera. Islam insisted on equality between everyone. – Fatema Mernissi

Eid is a time of joy, after a season of fasting and prayer and reflection. Each year, the end of Ramadan means celebration and thanksgiving for millions of Americans. And your joy during this season enriches the life of our great country. This year, Eid is celebrated at the same time as Hanukkah and Advent. So it’s a good time for people of these great faiths, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, to remember how much we have in common: devotion to family, a commitment to care for those in need, a belief in God and His justice, and the hope for peace on earth. – George W. Bush

Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals. – Abdolkarim Soroush

Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony… In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism. – Oriana Fallaci

Europe is no longer Europe, it is ‘Eurabia,’ a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. – Oriana Fallaci

Even a little knowledge of Islam will show that its religion is not only tolerant of other faiths, but most respectful, and, indeed, fully accepts the divine inspiration of all theistic faiths that came before Islam. It does not only teach tolerance to its followers, but goes a step further and enjoins on them all to create the godly quality of Hilm, that is, tolerance, forbearance, patience, calmness, and forgiveness. It is due to the spirit of tolerance of Islam that even the smallest Christian and Jewish minorities survived and kept all their doctrines during the thousand years of Muslim rule. Nothing like what happened to Muslims in Spain after the Christian conquest has ever happened to a non-Muslim faith in any Islamic dominion. – Aga Khan III

Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith – even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. – Karen Armstrong

Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it…have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind. – John Wesley

Every faith uses some kind of tool to understand itself better. Faith seeks understanding. The Western tradition has used philosophy to understand the truths of the faith and you come up with theology. Where as, Islam at a certain point said: we’ll use law. There are these four major, developed schools of Islamic jurisprudence. – Francis George

Every fundamentalist movement I’ve studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion. – Karen Armstrong

Every Muslim leader must unequivocally proclaim that terror committed in the name of Islam violates the core tenets of the Prophet Mohammed, and they must do so repeatedly. Period. – Mike Pompeo

Every single one of the major world faiths, whether we’re talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have all come to the conclusion that what holds us back from our better self is ego, selfishness, greed, unkindness, hatred. And it all springs from a sense of thwarted ego. – Karen Armstrong

Every theistic religion, including Catholicism, Mainline Protestantism, Judaism, Mormonism, and Islam, has traditionally held homosexual congress in moral opprobrium. – Michael J. Knowles

Every time there is a terrorist incident involving evil fanatics who abuse the name of Islam, ordinary, law-abiding Muslims pay a heavy price. – Sadiq Khan

Extreme Islam is not just an Iraqi or Syrian problem. It is a problem for the Western and industrialized world, too. – Haim Saban

Extremism and Islam are completely different things, we strongly demand the immediate release of the Japanese citizens unharmed … The international community needs to respond firmly and cooperate without caving into terrorism. – Shinzo Abe

Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity. – Prince Charles

Failure to find a way to incorporate political Islam in democracy, however uncomfortable its ideology is for secular liberals, will mean we have given them little alternative but to find other means of expression. Inevitably, some of this would be violent. – Crispin Blunt

Family is such a fundamental part of Islam, and women run the family. I had to force myself not to impose my own definition of political and social freedom on women in Islam, and approach each story objectively. – Lynsey Addario

Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam. – Feisal Abdul Rauf

First of all, in many Muslim countries women have incredible amounts of freedom, sometimes more than in some countries in Europe. So you cannot just make a generalized statement about women. Second, Islam is not the problem. It’s tradition. It’s culture. It’s age-old mind-sets that need to be changed. – Queen Rania of Jordan

For a Muslim, every action, such as prayer or fasting, should be preceded by a conscious intention in order for it to count as a religious activity. . . . The more you experience this process of working consciously with intention, the easier and clearer it becomes. – Robert Frager

For a vast number of “believing” Muslim men, “Islam” stands, in a jumbled, half-examined way, not only for the fear of God — the fear more than the love, one suspects — but also for a cluster of customs, opinions and prejudices that include their dietary practices; the sequestration or near-sequestration of “their” women; the sermons delivered by their mullahs of choice; a loathing of modern society in general, riddled as it is with music, godlessness and sex; and a more particularized loathing (and fear) of the prospect that their own immediate surroundings could be taken over — “Westoxicated” — by the liberal Western-style way of life. – Salman Rushdie

For Hindus to expect Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism to be driven out of India is as idle a dream as it would be for Mussalmans to have only Islam of their imagination rule the world. – Mahatma Gandhi

For many, embracing the ideology of Osama bin Laden or ISIS allowed them to become the heroes of their own story as well as actors in a cosmic crusade. For others, a ‘cognitive opening’ to militant Islam was often precipitated by a personal disappointment or loss. – Peter Bergen

For me, I think that the struggle around how to deal with Islam in the United States is the defining moral struggle of this half of the new century. – Van Jones

For me, Islam is a moral reference point, a source of inspiration to work collectively with people, to love people and to help them, to concentrate on universal values of mercy, co-operation and tolerance. – Wadah Khanfar

For most inhabitants of the Arab world, the prevailing cultural attitude toward women – fed and encouraged by Wahhabi doctrine, which is based on Bedouin social norms rather than Islamic jurisprudence – often trumps the rights accorded to women by Islam. – G. Willow Wilson

For nearly two hundred years, our nation has derived its strength from the diversity of its people and of their beliefs. That strength has been greatly enhanced by [the Islamic] religious heritage. – Gerald R. Ford

For the most part, Islam is about peace. It’s dealing with submission to the most high. Mohammed is a prophet, a messenger. But at the same time, we’ll fight in the name of Allah. We’re not going to let you disrespect our prophet. – Ghostface Killah

Former president Wulff said Islam belongs to Germany. That is true. I also hold this opinion. – Angela Merkel

Fortunately, historians are now beginning to recognise the historic role of Islam as a liberating force for peoples oppressed by the burdens of unjust social systems. – Aly Khan

Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia the man who, of all men exercised the greatest influence upon the human race . . . Mohammed . . . – John William Draper

Free market ideology – does anyone know where it first comes from? It comes from medieval Islam, and specifically, Shari’a. Because Shari’a provided this commercial law that is independent from the state. – David Graeber

From a new angle and with a fresh vigour, Islam took up that systematic development of positive knowledge which the Greeks had begun and relinquished. If the Greek was the father, then the Arab was the foster-father of the scientific method of dealing with reality, that is to say, by absolute frankness, the utmost simplicity of statement and explanation, exact record and exhaustive criticism. Through the Arabs it was, and not by the Latin route, that the modem world received that gift of light and power. – H. G. Wells

From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary… To us it seems that West-European civilization is civilization; but this is a narrow view. – Bertrand Russell

From the 9th to the 15th centuries, the area which is now modern Spain was home to the greatest peaceful agglomeration of cultures ever known in the post-literate worldEven more remarkable than the flowering of art itself was the confluence of cultures that produced it: under the rule of Islam, Muslims, Jews and Christians lived and worked together in relative harmony. – Maya Beiser

From the Muslims I learned from the extraordinary pluralism of the Koran, the fact that the Koran endorses every single one of the major world faiths, but I was particularly enthralled by the Sufi tradition, the mystical tradition of Islam, which is so open to other religious faiths. – Karen Armstrong

General Zia-ul-Haq, a dictator and unscrupulous political actor, used Islam as a pretext for waging war in Afghanistan and adopting an aggressive stance towards India. By advancing a more orthodox version of Islam, he was able to hold on to a repressive regime and quell any opposition. – Asma Jahangir

God gives the weak a weapon for self-defense that the strong, despite his military and nuclear arsenals, can do nothing against. There are clerics who condemn this and even say that these are suicide operations that are not allowed in Islam. – Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Greek philosophy departs from the assumption that we can understand the world autonomously using our rational faculties. Islam is not saying this. – Tariq Ramadan

Growing up, I came to love Egypt and respect Islam, but I never thought to go beyond the surface. Back in Canada, many of my father’s Egyptian friends questioned his decision not to raise his only child more strictly in the faith. I was not taught salat, the Muslim ritual of prayer, nor did I study Arabic. – Shereen El Feki

Had Elijah Muhammad tried to introduce an orthodox form of Arab-oriented Islam, I doubt if he would have attracted 500 people, but he introduced a form of Islam that would communicate with the people he had to deal with. He was the king to those who had no king, and he was the messiah to those some people thought unworthy of a messiah. – John Henrik Clarke

Hamas murders not only Israelis, but also Palestinians whose political stance is different from that which its group promotes; that is, its radical religious outlook in which Islam is the solution to the world’s problems. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

Having embraced Islam, I felt as if I were born again! I found in Islam the answers to those queries which I had failed to find in Christianity. Particularly, it was only Islam that provided satisfactory answer to the question relating to the birth of Christ. For the first time I was convinced about the religion itself. I pray my family members might appreciate these facts. – Jermaine Jackson

Here lies the hypocrisy…although never call into question…they conceal extent of their thinking and the persecution they endured. All were hunted down, assassinated, hung or poisoned in the name of Islam. Why do we never learn this? Is Islam so fragile that it might crumble under the slightest criticism? Could God himself be afraid of words and debate?… – Waleed Al-Husseini

Here’s the broader inconvenient truth for both Clinton and women’s rights that Trump is more than willing to tell voters: Islam, as it is practiced in most countries around the world, suppresses women’s rights – the only issue is the degree of severity of the repression. – Peter Navarro

Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler. – Mohamed El-Baradei

History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races, is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated. – De Lacy O’Leary

Hitler was obviously a dictator. And he was Christian. And I think that he persecuted the Jews, there’s no doubt about that. And he did that for nationalistic reasons, which would be prohibited in Islam. – Anjem Choudary

How can we be so confident that we are correct about the religion of Islam that it is really different in this insidious way and people 50 years from now, people aren`t going to back on. – Steve King

How can you respect a religion that forces women into polygamous marriages, mutilates their genitals, forbids them to drive cars and subjects them to the humiliation of ‘instant’ divorce? In fact, none of these practices are Islamic at all. Anyone wishing to understand Islam must first separate the religion from the cultural norms and style of a society. – Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood

How did the Turks become Muslim? They became Muslim through the Sufis. The Arabs never conquered the Turks. There were people in early Islam who were speaking like Hallaj, who spoke about the Truth, about reaching the Truth, about being one with the Truth, and not only they were not killed, but they were great heroes of their own culture, and there is a university in Turkey named after one [Sufi Saint.] – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

(“God is great”). Conversations about the practical impossibility of God’s existence and the science-based irrationality of an afterlife slid seamlessly into xenophobia over Muslim immigration or the practice of veiling. The New Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists rather than appraisals based on intellect, rationality and reason. “Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.” – Sam Harris

I always found it ironic when a Saudi official bashes Islamists, given that Saudi Arabia is the mother of all political Islam – and even describes itself as an Islamic state in its ‘Higher Law.’ – Jamal Khashoggi

I am a Muslim, because it’s a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time. – Malcolm X

I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I hope I am a “Muslim” as “one surrendered to God,” but I believe that embedded in the Quran and other expressions of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other occidentals have still much to learn, and ‘Islam is certainly a strong contender for the supplying of the basic framework of the o­ne religion of the future.’ – William Montgomery Watt

I am not saying that I want to ban Islam. I want less Islam in Europe because it doesn’t allow any room for debate. – Geert Wilders

I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad… until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people. – Mohammed Omar

I am somebody who believes that every political direction is valid, as with every religion. The basis of Christianity is perfect, just like the basis of Islam. But then the leaders change the direction, and lose the quality. – Demis Roussos

I am sure that the Japanese, the Chinese and the peoples of Islam will always be closer to us than, for example, France, in spite of the fact that we are related by blood (…) – Adolf Hitler

I am totally against the idea that a Muslim woman should not have the same opportunities as a Muslim man to learn, to open up, to work, help shape the future. To close Islam down to a sexist approach is totally intolerable and ridiculous. It’s not Islam. – Hussein of Jordan

I as a Muslim believe deeply in the differences that are within Islam. But I also take seriously the idea that we have to come to know one another. – Eboo Patel

I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam. – Maajid Nawaz

I become more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of Hussein, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers and his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. – Mahatma Gandhi

I beg Osama to stop warring. He is a Muslim, and Islam means peace. Nobody wins in a war… I wish I were tapped in the problem about Iraq. I knew Saddam enough that I could have talked him into surrendering. But it’s too late. – Imelda Marcos

I believe in Islam. I am a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion of Islam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah (SWT) as the God. Those of you who are Christian probably believe in the same God, because I think you believe in the God Who created the universe. That’s the One we believe in, the One Who created the universe – the only difference being you call Him God and we call Him Allah. – Malcolm X

I believe Islam is superior. And will not be surpassed. So I believe that the law of God is much superior to man-made law. – Anjem Choudary

I believe Islam was truly spread by example. So whatever good a Muslim does publicly will be seen – the same is true for the bad. – Cat Stevens

I believe that everybody has the right to believe what they want to believe and to knock somebody’s faith and religion is foolish, whatever it may be – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism. – Nicolas Cage

I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. – Barack Obama

I believe we don’t need to widen the divide between the West and Islam. Rather, we need to build dialogue to encourage tolerance and respect. – Shirin Neshat

I believe what I practice has to do with something deeper than religion, that it embodies all religions, including Judaism. And Christianity. And Islam. – Madonna Ciccone

I can bear my own sorrows, but the sorrows arising from the calamities visiting Islam and Muslims have crushed me. I feel each blow delivered to the Muslim world as delivered first to my own heart. – Said Nursi

I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became. – Maajid Nawaz

I can say with a level of confidence that Islam is not a religion of war, only because the majority of Muslims don’t subscribe to that perspective, not because there’s something inherent in the text that tells me it’s a religion of peace. – Maajid Nawaz

I can’t talk about Christianity if I don’t know it. You can’t talk about Muslims or Islam if you don’t know it. – Ghostface Killah

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion. – Yann Martel

I come from an African-American family that is predominantly Muslim. I have had to covertly operate in parts of the Middle East and Africa. I’ve lived a Muslim life and prayed in Mosques, Husseiniyahs, and shrines where needed. One must respect Islam to understand Islam. I’ve read the Quran through and through a half dozen times. – Malcolm Nance

I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear. – Barack Obama

I converted Dec. 31, 1999. It was a Friday. That was my second time going to the mosque. The woman who is my wife now… was basically raised Muslim – and she was at that point where she was deciding or trying to come to terms with her own relationship with Islam and how to embrace that for herself. – Mahershala Ali

I definitely subscribe to the idea that 9/11, to use an overused phrase, was a wake-up call. There was a year-long national teach-in on Islam – everyone read books and suddenly talked about Islam, and that was very productive. But there’s no doubt that moment has passed. – Bruce Feiler

I determined to make my peace with Islam, even at the cost of my pride. Those who were surprised and displeased by what I did perhaps failed to see that … I wanted to make peace between the warring halves of the world, which were also the warring halves of my soul. – Salman Rushdie

I did not come into contact with any Muslim before I embraced Islam. I read the Qur’an first and realized no person is perfect, Islam is perfect, and if we imitate the conduct of the Holy Prophet… we will be successful. – Cat Stevens

I did not disregard my culture, if I did, it was the white American culture, and I accepted my true culture, when I accepted Mohammed Ali, because this is a black name, Islam is the black man’s religion, and so I would like to say, that I would like to clarify that point that I reclaimed my real culture, and that’s being a black man and wearing a black name with a black body, and not a white name, so I would never say that I didn’t disown my culture. – Muhammad Ali

I did not lose this election, or had a bad result compared with what we might have got because of Islam. – Imran Khan

I do not feel that the West has really become less condescending toward foreign cultures than the Greeks and Romans were: it has only become more tolerant. Mind you, not toward Islam—only toward certain other Eastern cultures, which offer some sort of spiritual attraction to the spirit-hungry West and are, at the same time, too distant from the Western world-view to constitute any real challenge to its values. – Muhammad Asad

I do not understand how people can look at the rapid spread of extremism all across the globe and not understand that it is – that it isn’t coincidental to the concurrent rapid spread of a very conservative strain of Islam that is paid for out of Saudi Arabia. – Chris Murphy

I do regard Islam to be a religion of peace in the same sense as Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are. – Mahatma Gandhi

I do understand that America is a predominantly Christian country. A lot of morals and values are based in Christianity as opposed to Buddhism, which it’s not, or Judaism, which it’s not, or Islam, which it’s definitely not. So I’m not going to lie to myself and just be like, ‘Well you know, everybody’s equal.’ Because we’re not. – Lupe Fiasco

I don’t align myself with the West of the Muslim world. I align myself with what I perceive to be just and in accordance with my principles – the principles that I live my life by which are universal principles and that are embodied in the religion of Islam. – Hamza Yusuf

I don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘moderate Islam.’ I think it’s better to talk about degrees of belief and degrees of practice. – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I don’t find any difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalists. I believe religion is the root, and from the root fundamentalism grows as a poisonous stem. If we remove fundamentalism and keep religion, then one day or another fundamentalism will grow again. I need to say that because some liberals always defend Islam and blame fundamentalists for creating problems. But Islam itself oppresses women. Islam itself doesn’t permit democracy and it violates human rights. – Taslima Nasrin

I don’t have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam. – Wole Soyinka

I don’t know that Islam has ever been a subject of anything that I’ve written. I think Muslims have often been, but those are two very different things. – G. Willow Wilson

I don’t recognize any law but the Sharia of Islam. There is no compromise. – John Walker Lindh

I don’t think Islam has really been understood as a product of globalization. It might be one of these instances where globalism and tribalism ultimately go hand in hand. – Franklin Foer

I don’t think we’re at war with Islam. I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims. I think we’re at war with jihadists. – Hillary Clinton

I don’t want to change Islam, but if there is to be a European Islam, it must incorporate European values. – Wolfgang Schauble

I don’t agree with those who think that the conflict is simply between two religions, namely Christianity and Islam… To me, the key conflict is between irrational blind faith and rational, logical minds. – Taslima Nasrin

I doubt that religion can survive deep understanding. The shallows are its natural habitat. Cranks and fundamentalists are too often victimised as scapegoats for religion in general. It is only quite recently that Christianity reinvented itself in non-fundamentalist guise, and Islam has yet to do so. – Richard Dawkins

I draw a distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism. Islamism emerged in its modern form in the 1920s and is driven by a belief that Muslims can be strong and rich again if they follow the Islamic law severely and in its entirety. This is a response to the trauma of modern Islam. – Daniel Pipes

I find the concept of intelligent design rather dishonest. One should openly stand up for the existence of Allah, should sincerely stand up for religion, for Islam. Or, if one is a Christian, one should honestly stand up for Christianity. – Harun Yahya

I focus on Islamic applied ethics in many fields, and here I am saying that coming back to the Qu’ran and the sunnah as our reference point does not mean that we depend for our ethics on ‘Islam as opposed to the others’. – Tariq Ramadan

I found it really disturbing to see a novelist writing a diatribe about Islam and Muslim radical extremists, blurring the distinction between the two. – Pankaj Mishra

I found the speech, after listening to it in context, vile in manner, repugnant, malicious, mean-spirited and spoken in mockery of individuals and people, which is against the spirit of Islam. While I stand by the truths that he spoke, I must condemn in the strongest terms the manner in which those truths were represented. – Louis Farrakhan

I had been fascinated with Islam since college – particularly how it could inspire such fervor in our modern age and move a significant number of its followers to horrific acts of violence. That invisible hand moved me to study more and more about Islam. – Brad Thor

I had gone to – that was my second time going to the mosque. And then at that time we met [with my wife], she was Muslim and – but was at a point where – because her father is an imam and her mother, though, is a convert, but she was basically raised Muslim. And she was at that point where she was deciding or trying to come to terms with her own relationship with Islam and how to embrace that for herself. So I was sort of trying to come walk toward it. – Mahershala Ali

I had this desire to understand Islam better and then focus on the beauty of Arabic and Islamic cultures. And one of the first things to emerge was Arabic calligraphy, which was instantly inspiring. – Craig Thompson

I have a lot of respect for aspects of Islam, but I would not choose to live in a theocratically organised Muslim society. – John Rhys-Davies

I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism. – Muhammad Iqbal

I have always endeavoured, as my double duty of believer and sovereign dictated, to follow the precepts of the sacred Book of Islam: precepts of balance, justice and moderation. Although my religious education was very literal, in that I learnt to understand the precepts of the Koran precisely according to the text, we have seen that on several occasions throughout my life, I have felt myself to be very particularly in the hands of the Almighty. – Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capability to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age… I have studied him – the wonderful man, and in my opinion far from being an Anti-Christ he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. – George Bernard Shaw

I have assured His Majesty that our war is against evil, not against Islam. There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know – that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion. The exact opposite of the teachings of the al Qaeda organization, which is based upon evil and hate and destruction. – George W. Bush

I have clearly said we faced terrorist enemies who use Islam to justify slaughtering innocent people and we have to stop them and we will. We have to defeat radical jihadist terrorism. – Hillary Clinton

I have learned so much more about Islam in conversation with Jews and Christians and Hindus. I feel like that is part of the beauty of life on Earth – that we discover and develop what it means to be Muslim or Christian or Jewish not in isolation from others, but precisely in relationship with others. – Eboo Patel

I have never said that the terrorists’ interpretation of Islam is the accurate or correct one. But I have pointed out that the terrorists portray themselves quite successfully among Muslims as the exponents of true and pure Islam, and moderates have mounted no successful response as yet. – Robert Spencer

I have no expertise of other religious traditions so I’m not going to opine on them, but in Islam the more you know about the religion, the more likely you’re going to go to hell. Many people will find that paradoxical because we tend to think of religion as a way of making ourselves feel better and a way of damning and excluding infidels or reprobates or heretics or what have you. It was very hard for me to find an Islam that belongs to me and doesn’t feel like it’s been imposed on me. – Haroon Moghul

I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today. … I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much-needed peace and happiness. – George Bernard Shaw

I have studied him – the wonderful man – and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ he must be called the saviour of humanity. – George Bernard Shaw

I have to be honest with you. Islam is on very thin ice with me… Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We’re in crisis and we’re dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it’s now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it? – Irshad Manji

I have travelled a great deal – to Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt – and can very well differentiate between moderate Muslims and Islam. – Geert Wilders

I have very carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet (PBUH). I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to conclusion that Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under the most agonising Pain. – George Bernard Shaw

I haven’t come to you only to take, I haven’t come to you empty handed: I bring you poetry as great as yours but in anther tongue, I bring you black eyes and golden skin and curly hair, I bring you Islam and Luxor and Alexandria and Lutes and tambourines and date-palms and silk rugs and sunshine and incense and voluptuous ways. – Ahdaf Soueif

I know people who support Hamas, but they never got involved in terrorist attacks, for example… they follow Hamas because they love God and they think that Hamas represents God. They don’t have knowledge, they don’t know the real God, and they never studied Christianity. But Hamas, as representative for Islam, it’s a big problem. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

I know the Muslim psychology. It is all pomposity and bravado. I give you my word that if Islam is ridiculed publicly and systematically, it will be defeated. Shame is a great motivator as well as deterrent. Do not underestimate the power of ridicule. This is serious stuff not a laughing matter. – Ali Sina

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. – Muhammad Iqbal

I love my job… but I find myself awkwardly straddling the divide between British Islam and the British media. I get pretty exhausted of having to constantly endure a barrage of lazy stereotypes, inflammatory headlines, disparaging generalisations, and often inaccurate and baseless stories. – Mehdi Hasan

I love what I live, and I live Islam, so I applied it to everything I do. I applied it to my rhymes, and I felt that I wanted the people to know what I knew. – Rakim

I love working with younger people. I feel like we need to catch up with them. In South Asian art it’s important to address the fact that the majority of what we see is Hindu, and based in Hinduism, and that it has a social and cultural history. Islam and Muslim culture are often now figured as these outside invaders who came into India, and this is in the service of a more right-wing nationalist discourse that is Islamophobic. And that’s part of the worldwide Islamophobia moment that we’re having right now. – Chitra Ganesh

I made the film to bring the story of Islam, the story of 700 million of people, to the West. – Moustapha Akkad

I make a clear distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and Islam, recognizing that there are many moderate Muslims. – Geert Wilders

I mean there is an assumption made that Islam is about submission, and I think that the submission that we have is to God. – Haleh Afshar, Baroness Afshar

I must rebel against the idea that millions of Indians, who were Hindus, the other day, changed their nationality on adopting Islam as their religion. – Mahatma Gandhi

I never was in the Nation of Islam… I mean, what I call myself is a natural Muslim, ’cause it’s just me and God. You know, going to the mosque, the ritual and the tradition, it’s just not in me to do. So I don’t do it. – Ice Cube

I often think that woman is more free in Islam than in Christianity. Woman is more protected by Islam than by the faith which preaches Monogamy. In Al-Quran the law about woman is more just and liberal. It is only in the last twenty years that Christian England, has recognized the right of woman to property, while Islam has allowed this right from all times. – Annie Besant

I realised that the idea of enforcing sharia is not consistent with Islam as it’s been practised from the beginning. In other words, Islam has always been secular, and I had been totally ignorant of the fact. – Maajid Nawaz

I realize that many elements of the Buddhist teaching can be found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam. I think if Buddhism can help, it is the concrete methods of practice. – Nhat Hanh

I really want to bring the message of love that is Islam to people; bring something new to that familiar face. – Youssou N’Dour

I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself. – Alexis de Tocqueville

I suppose that the media and their portrayal of Islam and the almost tribal separations and divisions of the Muslims are the greatest issues confronting Muslims in the United Kingdom. – Cat Stevens

I think confronted with the modern world or with the rest of the world, I think people are becoming aware that the Western and Islamic civilizations have more in common than apart. It was a German scholar, C. H. Becker, who said a long time ago that the real dividing line is not between Islam and Christendom; it’s the dividing line East of Islam, between the Islamic and Christian worlds together on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other. I think there is a lot of truth in that. – Bernard Lewis

I think I came to see Islam, or at least one part of Islam, as an important defense mechanism against the commercialization of the world. – Peter Jennings

I think Islam has been hijacked by the idea that all Muslims are terrorists; that Islam is about hate, about war, about jihad – I think that hijacks the spirituality and beauty that exists within Islam. I believe in allowing Islam to be seen in context and in its entirety and being judged on what it really is, not what you think it is. – Aasif Mandvi

I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself. – Azar Nafisi

I think it’s been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning. – P. J. O’Rourke

I think it’s horrible that we Turks are always seen under the aspect of Islam first. I am constantly asked about religion, and almost always with a negative undercurrent that makes me furious. – Orhan Pamuk

I think Muslims have become the new Negroes in America. They are being mistreated at airports, by the Immigration – everywhere. Islam is a religion of peace. They are wrong. – Jermaine Jackson

I think my faith as a Muslim is very important. One of the core values is that you are always trying to build consensus. So when it comes to figuring out if something is permissible or not in Islam, it’s usually a discussion, and people have to come to a consensus in order for something to be approved. – Ilhan Omar

I think my love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned. – Richard Dawkins

I think race has been a burden for black Americans. Being Muslim has also been a challenge because so many people do not understand Islam. – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I think religion is very personal. I definitely identify as Muslim. I consider myself practicing, but I don’t think people who observe me from the outside would think of me as devout, and that doesn’t bother me because one of the beauties of Islam is the fact that it is personal: you read the Koran, and what you believe is what you believe. – Maysoon Zayid

I think that globalization is partly responsible for the spread of the hostile, radical forms of Islam. – Franklin Foer

I think that one of the things that is happening in the so-called “clash of civilizations” is that the confidence that was once obvious in the Western Judeo-Christian tradition has been weakened tremendously. There’s a feeling that there’s a cynical, corporate layer that’s really driving it – one that’s ready to compromise – and that the real confident energy around the world is coming from Islam, that the believers take their own faith at face value and with great confidence and in far greater numbers. – James Toback

I think that rather than condemning Islam, Islam needs to be studied by those who are sincere. – Louis Farrakhan

I think the approach to Islam as a tradition is helpful. Tradition helps us to focus on questions about authority and temporality, and about the language used in relation to the two. – Talal Asad

I think the important point which I’ve been trying to get across is that Islam, from the very beginning, is strongly, clearly opposed to autocratic dictatorial government. The idea which we so often hear expressed in the Western world, that’s how they are, that’s how they will always be and they can’t do anything else. – Bernard Lewis

I think there is a lot of continuity between the Jewish and the Islamic traditions. We know this historically, though people don’t want to talk about that – especially Muslims. There is a common source for both Judaism and Islam, or let’s say that Islam finds its source in Judaism. The commonalities of practice and sensibility, ethos and mythos, create a lot of overlap. – Ayad Akhtar

I think there is no reason for us to bring to Islamism or political Islam the fear and ignorance of Western commentators and their hysterical vocabulary. – Pankaj Mishra

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths. – Jimmy Carter

I think there’s some pretty amazing language in the Bible. The thing that’s always been interesting to me about religion is that compared to the more modern spirituality, the West Coast pseudo-Buddhist thing that people go for these days, actual Buddhism and Islam have been looking at these philosophical questions, at really hard questions, for a long time. There’s a lot of stuff that philosophy doesn’t talk about, and in the secular world, a lot of times, people don’t talk about these ideas, and that was always really interesting for me. – Win Butler

I think we need to recover the depth, the subtlety, the generosity of imagination, the respect for wisdom that so marked Islam in its great ages. – Prince Charles

I think what we are seeing is a vicious circle: by covering the controversies and the conflicting realities, it creates a much distorted perception of Islam and Muslims. When a minority is being taken as a majority, it creates a wrong image. – Tariq Ramadan

I used to fast during Ramadan because I admired the people fasting around me. What made me convert was that I had that certainty that Islam was for me. I felt this relationship with God, and that enlightened my life. I had that conviction in my heart that that was my religion. – Nicolas Anelka

I want to ask those who are aiding terror, what do you get by taking innocent lives? Islam is a religion of peace; you are maligning its name. – Sheikh Hasina

I want to be the first to bless you on what God has blessed you with – fighting in the heart of the Muslim world that was a battleground for large historic Islamic wars and what is now the place of Islam’s greatest war in the present era. – Bill Vaughan

I wanted to know the best of one who holds today undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind. … I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for his pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. – Mahatma Gandhi

I was an atheist, I was open-minded, and I began to read in that direction, in the direction of Islam, and everything that I read about it appealed to me. – Malcolm X

I was raised as a Catholic and as an Ismaili. My father felt that I should have some training in Islam, but my mother was a Catholic, so really, I was raised with both. – Yasmin Aga Khan

I was sixteen when I converted to Islam. Beyond the fraternal aspect, my conversion did not change my life. I was already living by the same principles – being righteous, having values. – Nicolas Anelka

I was sort of born into a Subud cult that has ties to Islam and Indonesia and Middle Eastern spiritualism. My parents were kind of trial-and-error when it came to religion. – Sufjan Stevens

I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam. – Muhammad Abduh

I will not stop fighting against Islam until I have achieved freedom for our country. – Geert Wilders

I would like to say that that even the teachings of the Koran cannot be exempted from criticism. – Mahatma Gandhi

I would never regard Islam with anything but horror and fear because it is fundamentally committed to conquering the world for Islam. – Antony Flew

I write as someone who has no more time for repressive Islam than he does for repressive Christianity or Judaism, but at least look at the face in the hijab – and try to imagine the one beneath the niqab – before you depersonalise its wearer. – Will Self

I’m a Muslim. I’ve been a Muslim for 20 years. . . . You know me. I’m a boxer. I’ve been called the greatest. People recognize me for being a boxer and a man of truth. I wouldn’t be here representing Islam if it were terrorist. . . . I think all people should know the truth, come to recognize the truth. Islam is peace. – Muhammad Ali

I’m a person of faith, and the language that I use to define my faith, the symbols and metaphors that I rely upon to express my faith, are those provided by Islam because they make the most sense to me. – Reza Aslan

I’m afraid that a lot of things that people believe about Islam are totally different from the religion that most of us recognize. I was really fortunate that I got to know Islam before it became a headline. – Cat Stevens

I’m asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first place? My question for non-Muslims is equally basic: Will you succumb to the intimidation of being called “racists,” or will you finally challenge us Muslims to take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam? – Irshad Manji

I’m concerned that Islam has not just been politicised but that it’s becoming an identity. This is like turning religion into a football match; it’s a distraction from the real thing. – Leila Aboulela

I’m gonna be a respectable dude. When people talking to me, I’m gonna show everybody respect. I just wanted to do that, I needed some kind of balance and I think that Islam was perfect for me. It ain’t nothing different than Christianity, we all believe in Jesus, we all believe in God, it’s just that Islam really helped me balance out who I am. Cuz if I can go all day without making Salaat or asking for forgiveness or giving thanks, you know, I would probably be a lunatic. So that’s what gave me balance. – The Jacka

I’m not a perfect Muslim; I think none of us are perfect human beings. I do the five pillars of Islam, you know, I pray five times a day. – Sania Mirza

I’m not an expert on Islam, but I think there are lots of noble religions whose basic principles could stand considerably more observation in the world of business. – John C. Bogle

I’m not criticizing how people experience what they might call spirituality. I am interested in looking critically at something else – at how people use their language to articulate theories about something they call religion, to say, for example, that “in Islam religion and politics necessarily go together,” or to insist that “violence has no place in religion,” to universalize it. – Talal Asad

I’m not talking about reforming #Islam..it is to reform the #Muslim minds & the Muslim understandings of the texts. – Tariq Ramadan

I’m proud, and Islam did it. And after these things that I heard in church, a preacher and watching this and that, I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t pinpoint it. – Muhammad Ali

I’m the first person to say don’t equate between terrorism and Islam. But at the same time, I’m not going to pretend that there isn’t a threat from some British Muslim homegrown extremists. – Mehdi Hasan

I’m thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins. – Antony Flew

I’ve always maintained there is no incompatibility between Islam and democracy. The Europeans in general confuse Islam and Islamism. Islamism is a political movement that instrumentalises the religion to get to power, which has nothing to do with religion. Islam here in Tunisia is a religion of openness, of tolerance. – Beji Caid Essebsi

I’ve been to Africa three times. All right? You can’t bring Western reasoning into the culture. The same way you can’t bring it into fundamental Islam. – Bill O’Reilly

I’ve made it clear, Madam President, that the war against terrorism is not a war against Muslims, nor is it a war against Arabs. It’s a war against evil people who conduct crimes against innocent people. – George W. Bush

I’ve not experienced racism from other players. Not once. You experience ignorance but that’s not the same at all, and I’m always happy to discuss things. If that helps people learn about Islam, to learn there’s nothing to fear, then great, that’s all part of my role. – Moeen Ali

I’ve said repeatedly that where we see terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda or ISIL, they have perverted and distorted and tried to claim the mantle of Islam for an excuse, for basically barbarism and death. These are people who kill children, kill Muslims, take sex slaves – there’s no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things that they do. – Barack Obama

I’ve written a book entitled ‘Islam: the Challenges of Democracy,’ because it is a challenge. It requires careful interpretation of the Islamic tradition and Islamic theology, and there’s a lot in there that would support democratic ideals. – Khaled Abou El Fadl

I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India and Islam. – Muhammad Iqbal

I, too, am interested in identity and Islam, which is what people expect of us. But one must not write what is expected. It’s important for North African writers to show they have other things to say. – Leila Slimani

If a big number of young pupils felt secularism was an attack on them, it was because the term had been misused and deformed in the public debate for years by the extreme right and the right as an attack on Islam. The term had often been misused to point out how Muslims were different to others, and that is clearly problematic. – Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

If a Muslim becomes a non-Muslim and propagates his/her new religion, then it is as good as treason. There is a Death Penalty in Islam for such a person. – Zakir Naik

If a rock falls on another rock on the other side of the moon, how does Islam explain it? Who Cares? – Nuh Ha Mim Keller

If all Henry Kissinger contributed to the Middle East were a regional arms race, petrodollar addiction, Iranian radicalization, and the Tehran-Riyadh conflict, it would be bad enough. His legacy, however, is far worse than that: He has to answer for his role in the rise of political Islam. – Greg Grandin

If Allah has written for you happiness, no one can steal that from you, and if He has written for your heart to break, then no-one can mend it but He, so always put your trust in Allah. – Aaidh ibn Abdullah al-Qarni

If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam. – George Bernard Shaw

If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men. – Friedrich Nietzsche

If Islam is to be reconciled with modernity, these voices must be encouraged until they swell into a roar. – Salman Rushdie

If Islam opposes terrorism, then Saudi Arabia should announce that no one supportive of ISIS or Al Qaeda is welcome in Mecca to make Hajj. – Bob Enyart

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

If Jews in the name of their religion were killing Americans, then I think that would be an appropriate comparison. But as far as I know, there’s only one religion that’s doing that, and it is a segment of the religion of Islam that’s doing that. – Steve King

If my children do not behave according to Islam, if they do not pray for instance, I will punish them. – Abu Bakar Bashir

If people are given a TV-educated idea of what Islam is, I have the opportunity to push back on that and say ISIS does not speak for the Muslim world, and in fact, you have people right here in front of you who are much more representative than homicidal maniacs. – Keith Ellison

If people in Russia do not take the path of traditional, pure Sufi Islam, Russia will lose out. All the other denominations, like Wahhabism, are new inventions for our country – we have never had it, and we will never accept it. – Ramzan Kadyrov

If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which Muslim countries’ freedom will remain a distant dream. – Salman Rushdie

If the cops come upon a mass murder attack that is clearly instigated by Islamic doctrine, they are not permitted to conclude that it is terrorism because they have been directed by their superiors in law enforcement to maintain that Islam is against terrorism. – Rush Limbaugh

If the culprits are Muslim, they have twisted the teachings of Islam. Whoever performed, or is behind, the terrorist attacks in the United States of America does not represent Islam. God is not behind assassins. – Muhammad Ali

If the Islamic world is so suffused with rage and hatred of us – for our wars, occupations, drone attacks, support of Israel, decadent culture, and tolerance of insults to Islam and the Prophet – why should we call for free elections, when the people will use those elections to vote into power rulers hostile to the United States? – Pat Buchanan

If the Koran is the soul of Islam, then perhaps the institution of the Muslim family might be described as its body. – Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

If the people of this religion [Islam] are asked about the proof for the soundness of their religion, they flare up, get angry and spill the blood of whoever confronts them with this question. They forbid rational speculation, and strive to kill their adversaries. This is why truth became thoroughly silenced and concealed. … You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: “Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one.” Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter. … By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: “Produce something like it”?! – Attributed to Abu Bakr Muhammad al-Razi

If the Pope spoke out with moral authority against violent Islam, I would be there cheering him on. – Paul Gosar

If the Qur’an was the word of God, it had been dictated on a very bad day. – Christopher Hitchens

If there is one thing that the women and men of the late 20th century who have an awareness and enjoyment of history can be sure of, it is that Islam was not sent from Heaven to foster egotism and mediocrity. – Fatema Mernissi

If there’s a good side of Islam, at the end of the day it serves evil. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

If they analyze the situation as thoroughly as they should, Muslims will realize they are the first targets. What are the fundamentalists really after? Simply taking over Islam and then turning its back on modernity. – Alexander Haig

If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment Islam wouldn’t exist today. – Yusuf al-Qaradawi

If we are true small ‘l’ liberals, it’s our job to seek out feminist Muslims, ex-Muslims, liberal Muslims, dissenting voices within Muslim communities, gay Muslims – we should promote those voices and in doing so, we demonstrate Islam is not a monolith, Muslims are not homogenous, and that Muslims are truly internally diverse. – Maajid Nawaz

If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with the world. – Hooman Majd

If we cling to the institution of Islam, then we tend to defend it against whatever we see as a danger to it, so because of this we see now that many people are defending states, defending territories, defending everything institutional in the belief that they defend Islam. – Abdurrahman Wahid

If you are a Christian, you are in danger. If you decided to abandon your faith and become an atheist, you also are to be liquidated according to their concept. You are in danger if you decide to become a Muslim. It is not going to save you anyway because they believe traditional Islam is hostile to their goals. – Vladimir Putin

If you are religious at all, it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false (knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan), you are the victim of childhood indoctrination. – Richard Dawkins

If you ask a Saudi Imam why women in Saudi Arabia can’t drive, he’ll say, ‘Because Islam demands it.’ But that’s absurd, because – first of all – Islam demands no such thing; and secondly, the only country in the world in which women can’t drive is Saudi Arabia. The inability to understand the difference between a cultural practice and religious belief is shocking among self-described intellectuals. – Reza Aslan

If you convert to Islam after a couple of decades of being a black man in the U.S., the discrimination you receive as a Muslim doesn’t feel like a shock. – Mahershala Ali

If you have a billion Muslims, 900 million of them were not brought into Islam by any kind of invasion, but most of them through the Sufis, because human beings are such that they are affected by people of spiritual character. Certainly when they display nobility and hospitality and gentility and love and are not selfish or aggressive, and they are honest. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

If you want to make a decision in life on what to do, but if you’re trying systematically, through spiritual practice, through meditation, through the invocation of the name of God, to walk closer and closer in this life to Him, you need someone to guide you. And God has made it possible in Islam for this guidance to exist. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

If you want to practice Islam in the inconsequential, semi-secular sense, fine. – Steven Crowder

If you’re a soldier or marine in an Arab country, Islam is the solution. And you need to show respect. – David Brooks

If you’re someone who doesn’t have Muslim friends, and your only experience of Islam is what you see on the news – the angry man with a beard doing or saying something terrible – then you may inadvertently associate that with Islam and think that is what it’s all about. – Sadiq Khan

In 2003, as a 21-year-old convert to Islam, I moved from Colorado to Cairo to see what life was like in a Muslim country. – G. Willow Wilson

In a World where people are surrounded by darkness, ignorance and fear, it is a sign of hope to be celebrating Islam’s message of peace and light, and the last great Messenger, born and chosen to deliver them to all mankind. – Cat Stevens

In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education. – Barack Obama

In any show, not everybody is completely with us on all the topics we talk about. We talk about Hindutva, and we talk about the problems with Islam also. If there are Muslims in the audience, laughing at the jokes on Hindutva, they will have to confront the jokes on Islam too. – Varun Grover

In distinguishing between Islamic teachings and social taboos, we must remember that Islam forbids injustice; Injustice against people, against nations, against women. It shuns race, color, and gender as a basis of distinction amongst fellowmen. It enshrines piety as the sole criteria for judging humankind. – Benazir Bhutto

In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that’s happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition. – Salman Rushdie

In fact many Hindu yogis and Sufis met, they became friends, they spoke about the knowledge and love of God; about all the similarities that exist. And then the simplicity of Islam, the fact these people practiced what they preached brought many, many Hindus into Islam. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

In fact, for a period stretching over seven hundred years, the international language of science was Arabic. For this was the language of the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, and thus the official language of the vast Islamic Empire that, by the early eighth century CE, stretched from India to Spain. – Jim Al-Khalili

In Great Britain, an author published a book in which he claimed that Jesus Christ had children. Such statements don’t trigger civil unrest and bloodshed in Europe. But write similar statements about Islam in Syria and you might see bloody uprisings. – Bashar al-Assad

In Islam religion and politics cannot be separated. Unlike other religions, Islam is political by its very nature. – Ali Sina

In Islam tolerance means that Christians and Jews are allowed to live under the protection of Muslims but never as citizens with the same rights. What Muslims call tolerance is nothing other than discrimination. – Bassam Tibi

In Islam, Jesus is a prophet, and if you look at Mohammed and Jesus and Moses, it’s not like Moses is better than Jesus and Jesus is better than Mohammed. They’re all so highly respected and honored and followed, and they’re all there for a reason. – Haaz Sleiman

In Islam, rules are important, like the Prophet said innal halaala bayyinun, wa innal haraama bayyinun [“what is halal is clear, what is haram is clear”]. The goal is not to diminish the importance of rules, but to have the right priorities. – Tariq Ramadan

In Islam, the legislative power and competence to establish laws belong exclusively to God Almighty. – Ruhollah Khomeini

In Islam, the word of the Prophet is final. No true Muslim can disown these verses or say that they would rewrite the offensive verses of the Koran. If they do, then they would have to run for their lives. – Subramanian Swamy

In Islam, there is no priesthood and each person stands before God, like in the daily prayers, without an intermediary. That’s in contrast to Christianity, where during the Eucharist, a priest has to officiate and the priest functions as a link – at least in Catholic Christianity – between the laity and God. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

In Islam, we believe Jesus is a prophet and respect him and follow his teachings and put him beside the Prophet Muhammad – a lot of people don’t know that. – Haaz Sleiman

In Islam, we believe that it is God himself who is the ultimate guide – Al Hadi – one of the names of God is Al Hadi, the Guide. But at the same time, God has provided within the Islamic revelation the possibility of spiritual guidance through human beings, because then everyone can have direct access to God. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation. – Aga Khan IV

In Islamic societies, politicians can manipulate almost everything. But thus far, no fundamentalist leader has been able to convince his supporters to renounce Islam’s central virtue – the principle of strict equality between human beings, regardless of sex, race, or creed. – Fatema Mernissi

In Mohammedanism the limited principle of the Jews is expanded into universality and thereby overcome. Here, God is no longer, as with the Asiatics, contemplated as existent in immediately sensuous mode but is apprehended as the one infinite sublime Power beyond all the multiplicity of the world. Mohammedanism is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the world, the religion of sublimity. – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

In most Muslim countries Islam is still the ultimate criterion of group identity and loyalty. It is Islam which distinguishes between self and other, between insider and outsider, between brother and stranger. – Bernard Lewis

In my book, the Arab Awakening, I talk about the fact that we have to move from this. All the contemporary ideologies of political Islam have been based on the nation state. The nation state is very problematic but I’m not sure if we have an alternative political model. – Tariq Ramadan

In my opinion, Islam is an outdated religion. It’s not modern. And therefore, there’s too much space for violence. – Matteo Salvini

In popular culture, there isn’t any other conception of Islam and Muslims other than what you see on the news… When you go to a theme park, you see Muslims riding roller coasters and eating ice cream. Why doesn’t anybody think of those Muslims when they think of Muslims? – Kumail Nanjiani

In some remote regions of Islam it is said, a woman caught unveiled by a stranger will raise her skirt to cover her face. – Raymond Mortimer

In the Christian world, as you remember, Christianity is in the 21st century, Islam is in the 15th century. I don’t mean to say that Islam is backward; I mean to say that there are certain experiences that it hasn’t gone through. Christianity had the great religious wars of the 17th century. Islam, fortunately for the Muslims, did not have that. Christianity worked out a system of toleration. Islam was always more tolerant of Christendom. – Bernard Lewis

In the early centuries of Islam, the great schools of Islamic jurisprudence were built upon the above principles. Basic to all their legal systems they developed the doctrine that liberty is the fundamental basis of law. – Aly Khan

In the early days I had a very black-and-white view of everything. I think that’s kind of natural for anyone who’s just embraced Islam – or any religion – as a convert. It was important for me to duck out of the fast and furious life I’d been living as a pop star. I was in a different mood. – Cat Stevens

In the eyes of history, religious toleration is the highest evidence of culture in a people. It was not until the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they became more tolerant, and it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that they declined in tolerance and other evidences of the highest culture. – Marmaduke Pickthall

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the major international question was the relation between Islam and democracy. – Noah Feldman

In the hours of its political degradation, Islam has achieved some of its most brilliant spiritual conquests: on two great historical occasions, infidel barbarians have set their feet on the necks of the followers of the Prophet, – the Saljūq Turks in the eleventh and the Mongols in the thirteenth century,- and in each case the conquerors have accepted the religion of the conquered. Unaided also by the temporal power, Muslim missionaries have carried their faith into Central Africa, China and the East India Islands. – Thomas Walker Arnold

In the long term, the United States could greatly benefit Islam by uniquely freeing the religion from government constraints and permitting it to evolve in a positive, modern direction. But that’s the long term. – Daniel Pipes

In the Muslim-majority countries you can’t do without Islam, we can’t do without their culture, in which way they are going to come back to this Islamic reference to find a way to deal with the true challenges and not the superficial political questions. – Tariq Ramadan

In the past 30 years, officials of the Iranian regime and its apologists have labeled criticism, especially with regard to women’s rights, as anti-Islamic and pro-Western, justifying its brutalities by ascribing them to Islam and Iran’s culture. – Azar Nafisi

In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I never will be guilty of that again – as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites made blanket indictments against blacks. – Malcolm X

In the story [“The Pyramid and the Ass”] there’s this war against the so-called Buddhist Terrorists. As we find out, they’re not really terrorists at all, just good folks trying to liberate people from technology and fight against an American government/corporation trying to coopt our souls. The inherent racism and Buddhist-phobia in the story plays into the present demonizing of Islam – and of our loss of knowledge about the great, spiritual history of the Sufis, for example, or the cultural heritage from the middle east. – Alexander Weinstein

In the U.S., the FBI or the people I met from the Department of Justice might be ignorant about Islam or about the East more generally, but I felt they were less willing to make blanket judgments about Muslims. This caution was less evident with some of the authorities I met in India. – Amitava Kumar

In the West, anything that must be hidden is suspect; availability and honesty are interlinked. This clashes irreconcilably with Islam, where the things that are most precious, most perfect and most holy are always hidden: the Kaaba, the faces of prophets and angels, a woman’s body, Heaven. – G. Willow Wilson

In this work (peace building), the role of religion is fundamental. It is not possible to build bridges between people while forgetting God, … But the converse is also true: it is not possible to establish true links with God while ignoring other people. Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam. – Pope Francis

In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam. – Siraj Wahhaj

In Turkey religion not only affects society but is affected by it, which is why Turkish Islam differs from Arab Islam. It’s a more modern, more rational, more self-confident society. – Andrew Mango

India’s Muslims know that India is the only country in the world where Islam’s all 72 sects are found. No other nation, not even Muslim countries, have all the 72 sects of Islam. – Rajnath Singh

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die…. – Winston Churchill

Indonesia is the world’s third-largest democracy. And we also have the world’s largest Muslim population. This demonstrates that democracy and Islam are not incompatible. Terrorism is not associated with any religion. – Joko Widodo

Iran is not in any sort of routine groupings. It’s not an Arab country. It’s not part of the Indian subcontinent. So it’s in a neighborhood where it has some unique characteristics. We are a country which embraced Islam, learned Arabic, but didn’t change its language or its culture… That’s what keeps us unique. – Mohammad Javad Zarif

Iran is obviously part of the problem. They sponsor Hezbollah. They encourage a radical brand of Islam. – George W. Bush

Ironically, the first thing that appealed to me about Islam was its pluralism. The fact that the Koran praises all the great prophets of the past. – Karen Armstrong

Is Islam a religion of peace? I’m sure for some of the practitioners, but it’s been hijacked by people who have an ideology that wants to destroy western civilization, and they’re barbarians. – Jeb Bush

Is Islam a tribe or is it a force of globalization? Islam has certainly been studied as a local, tribalistic phenomenon. But Islam is also theoretically a universalist idea, its spread has been facilitated by modern technologies, and it’s an identity that people can slip into and out of fairly easily. I don’t think Islam has really been understood as a product of globalization. It might be one of these instances where globalism and tribalism ultimately go hand in hand. – Franklin Foer

Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal that the art of martyrdom? A nation with martyrdom knows no captivity. Those who wish to undermine this principle undermines the foundations of our independence and national security . . . The message of the (Islamic) Revolution is global, and is not restricted to a specific place or time . . . Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world. – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

ISIS is attempting to rebrand Islam as an ideology that justifies violence and brutality. It rejects the kind of global order our nation has sacrificed so much to achieve.. – Will Hurd

ISIS is not Islam. No, I’m not saying that. The government says that. The left, the media says it. ISIS is not Islam. You’ve heard Obama say that. ISIS is making a mockery of Islam. In fact, what you really need to understand about the way our government looks at Islam, they look at Islam as anti-terror as well. Islam is anti-terrorism. Therefore, no terrorism can actually be Islamic.. – Rush Limbaugh

ISIS is very similar to the Kharijites, who were a toxic off-shoot of Islam. It’s not Islam; it’s a perversion of Islam, and to label these militant externalities as Islam is to legitimize their actions.. – Hamza Yusuf

ISIS may be a perversion of Islam, but Islamic it is, just as Christian beliefs about the sanctity of the unborn child explain why some Christian fundamentalists attack abortion clinics and doctors.. – Peter Bergen

ISIS rules Muslim apostates every day and then beheads them. Poorly educated guys get Islam for Dummies, petty criminals who think they’re suddenly changing their lives because they see the light. The best way to fight them is to show them they don’t know Islam at all, and that they are in fact working for the other side. – Malcolm Wrightson Nance

Isis wants to destroy the knowledge that Islam is a beautiful, scientific and intelligent culture, and we are way ahead of them. – Frankie Boyle

Islam brings hope and comfort to millions of people in my country, and to more than a billion people worldwide. Ramadan is also an occasion to remember that Islam gave birth to a rich civilization of learning that has benefited mankind. – George W. Bush

Islam is a faith that brings comfort to people. It inspires them to lead lives based on honesty, and justice, and compassion. – George W. Bush

Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion. – George W. Bush

Islamists and their sympathizers hate us, and they will not stop hating us until we convert to ancient Islam. There is no middle ground or accommodation. – Pete Hoekstra

It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own. – Muhammad Iqbal

It gives [a man] the incentive to develop his dormant potential so that when he becomes a part of the brotherhood of Islam, and is identified collectively in the brotherhood of Islam with the brothers in Islam, at the same time this also gives him the, it has the psychological effect of giving him the incentive as an individual to develop all of his dormant potential to its fullest extent. – Malcolm X

It is apparent that Christianity and Islam must come, and come immediately, to a closer understanding, and it is equally apparent that their unity if achieved, will be the most effective defensive measure against Communist expansion. – Aly Khan

It is important that the Muslim leaders, scholars, and intellectuals are much more vocal and explain what Islam is. – Tariq Ramadan

It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, o­ne of the great messengers of the Supreme. And although in what I put to you I shall say many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feel whenever I re-read them, a new way of admiration, a new sense of reverence for that mighty Arabian teacher. – Annie Besant

It is like using a smoke screen, the same thing for an individual. The topic here is Islam. If French politicians are no longer talking about Islam, they know they will have to talk about something else, which brings the spotlight on their inefficiency. They will have to talk about domestic social and economic issues and they will have to justify their foreign policy, which is obviously something they need to avoid at all costs. – Tariq Ramadan

It is not difficult to destroy Islam. Islam is the pumped up ego of a megalomaniac psychopath. Muhammad was a narcissist madman. Just as a huge balloon can be deflated by a small needle, all it takes to make Islam explode is to ridicule its loony inventor and its brainless followers. – Ali Sina

It is not enough to say, ‘We are Muslims and have an ideology or our own’: we must also be in a position to show that our ideology is vital enough to withstand the pressure of the changing times, and to decided in what way the fact of our being Muslims will affect the course of our lives: in other words, we must find out whether Islam can offer us precise directives for the formation of our society, and whether its inspiration is strong enough in us to translate these directives into practice. – Muhammad Asad

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. – Aly Khan

It is not permissible for a Muslim to buy products of the countries that are in a state of war with Islam and Muslims, for example, Israel. – Ali al-Sistani

It is not right to associate the fight against international terrorist networks with an imaginary crusade against Islam. – Omar Bongo

It is not the intention of Islam to force its beliefs on people, but Islam is not merely ‘belief’. As we have pointed out, Islam is a declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men. Thus it strives from the beginning to abolish all those systems and governments which are based on the rule of man over men and the servitude of one human being to another. When Islam releases people from this political pressure and presents to them its spiritual message, appealing to their reason, it gives them complete freedom to accept or not to accept its beliefs. – Sayyid Qutb

It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. – Zbigniew Brzezinski

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. – Annie Besant

It is the Muslim community that has the best chance of stopping and checking and pushing back on people who are trying to politicize their own faith. So this attack on Islam is an attack on a great faith. It undermines the people who are trying to rescue this faith from these horrible people. It endangers every human being on earth because it accelerates the radicalization of some and emboldens the worst elements of that faith. So this fight is a fight I think that we have to take on. – Van Jones

It is the Muslim’s conception of himself as the khulifa of Allah on the earth that makes him the vortex of human history. Only as God’s khulifa, and hence only in proper commitment to the vision of Islam, may man act responsibly in the totality of space-time. – Ismail al-Faruqi

It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet. – Hassan al-Banna

It is the responsibility of people like me and people who believe in the true Islam to stand up and say, that blasphemy is not punishable by death. – Pamela Geller

It is this desire to see civil society remain a strong and united force within the U.K. that has encouraged me to chair Citizens U.K. Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life. – Dominic Grieve

It is time we admitted that we are not at war with “terrorism.” We are at war with Islam. – Sam Harris

It is true that the Muslim world is not totally mistaken when it reproaches the West of Christian tradition of moral decadence and the manipulation of human life. … Islam has also had moments of great splendor and decadence in the course of its history. – Pope Benedict XVI

It is unfair to label me anti-Islam. I am an atheist and a secular humanist. – Taslima Nasrin

It may happen that the enemies of Islam may consider it expedient not to take any action against Islam, if Islam leaves them alone in their geographical boundaries to continue the lordship of some men over others and does not extend its message and its declaration of universal freedom within their domain. But Islam cannot agree to this unless they submit to its authority by paying Jizyah, which will be a guarantee that they have opened their doors for the preaching of Islam and will not put any obstacle in its way through the power of the state. – Sayyid Qutb

It might be comforting to assume that intolerance is an aberration within Islam but discrimination against Christians or any other non-Muslim is in fact integral to orthodox Muslim teaching, and the more profound issue to the serious-minded is not the existence of sectarianism but its extent. – Michael Coren

It occurs to me to wonder: do I believe in any god, or even positively not believe, as James does? I believe in systems and methods. I believe in the beauties of philosophy and poetry. I believe that the work we do and leave behind us is our afterlife; and I believe that history lies, but sometimes so well that I can’t bring myself to resent it. I believe that truth is beauty, but not, I’m afraid, the reverse. It doesn’t seem sufficient to sustain one in life’s rigorous moments. Perhaps I shall embrace Islam. Its standards for poetry seem very high. – Emma Bull

It seems like whenever you write about Muslims, people assume that you’re writing about the Quran, you are writing about the Prophet Muhammad. There’s no sense that Muslims are capable of individualism, that they’re capable of making mistakes that are somehow not connected to Islam. – G. Willow Wilson

It seems to me that Islam and Christianity and Judaism all have the same god, and he’s telling them all different things. – Billy Connolly

It seems to me that this debate, whether Islam is a religion of peace or not, really, it’s irrelevant for outsiders. It’s for Muslims to decide whether it’s a religion of peace or not. – Chuck Todd

It was in high school…My questions and doubts only multiplied as it became clear to me that the teachings of Islam were impossible to follow in everyday life. Do the faithful exercise free choice or their actions determined by divine will? This existential question tugged me constantly….It soon became clear to me no one could help me with my questions… – Waleed Al-Husseini

It was the duty of the faithful to conquer as much of the world as possible for Islam. … The Arabs, although they conquered a great part of the world in the name of a new religion were not a very religious race; the motive of their conquests was plunder and wealth rather than religion. – Bertrand Russell

It was the first religion that preached and practiced democracy; for, in the mosque, when the call for prayer is sounded and worshippers are gathered together, the democracy of Islam is embodied five times a day when the peasant and king kneel side by side and proclaim: “God Alone is Great.” I have been struck over and over again by this indivisible unity of Islam that makes man instinctively a brother. – Sarojini Naidu

It was thought that to rally Islam against godless communism would be doing the Soviet Union a very bad turn indeed, and that, in fact, transpired. In 1985, a group of mujahedeen came to Washington and was greeted by President [Ronald] Reagan, who called them “freedom fighters.” – Edward Said

It was through the Hindu religion that I learnt to respect Christianity and Islam. – Mahatma Gandhi

It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other. – Ian O’Doherty

It’s almost impossible to say anything against Islam in this country, because you are accused of being racist or Islamophobic. – Richard Dawkins

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

It’s always hard to talk about the culture that you are from, especially with Islam, it is a very sensitive subject and I don’t want to be seen to be adding to the problems of Islam and the west. – Jacques Myard

It’s not Islam, it’s extremism in general, that is such a crock and that does a disservice to the people of America to make us sound like we’re a bunch of idiots that we can’t see what’s going on in front of us and we’re too weak to tell the truth. – Michael T. Flynn

It’s not religious war, but Al-Qaeda always use religions, Islam – actually, as a pretext and as a cover and as a mantle for their war and for their terrorism and for their killing and beheading and so on. – Bashar al-Assad

It’s not that we have two different kinds of Islam. I acknowledge the fact that we have two kinds of people. There are moderate Muslims and non-moderate Muslims. But there is really only one Islam, and this is the Islam of the life of Muhammad, of the Quran, of the Hadiths, of the Sunnah. – Geert Wilders

It’s perfectly OK that there are certain people who do not accept Islam at all. Therefore, to announce that I am a Muslim can rub some people the wrong way. But my aim is to show that those governments that violate the rights of people by invoking the name of Islam have been misusing Islam. They violate these rights and then seek refuge behind the argument that Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy. But this is basically to save face. In fact, I’m promoting democracy. And I’m saying that Islam is not an excuse for thwarting democracy. – Shirin Ebadi

It’s probably incorrect to say that Islam is ‘a religion of peace’, as some politicians like to say. Overstatements like that don’t clarify anything. – Jay Parini

It’s seen as xenophobic to be worried about Islam, but they appear to disproportionately allow intolerance to blossom in their communities. – Gavin McInnes

Its unadulterated belief in the oneness of God and a practical application of the truth of the brotherhood of man for those who are nominally within its fold are two distinctive contributions of Islam. – Mahatma Gandhi

Im quite confident that when you spew out hateful [anti-islam]rhetoric, you green-light people who are - who have violent and who are dangerous, and thats why we have to watch what we say. Words do matter. – Steve King

Jihad is holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community. – John O. Brennan

Judaism, Christianity & Islam are innovations on fragments from the periphery of the African cultural and spiritual system. – James Small

Just as ‘Islam’ literally means ‘peace,’ none of the 99 names of Allah mean violence. Similarly, every religion in the world stands for peace, compassion, and brotherhood. – Sushma Swaraj

Koran says whoever believes in God in the last day shall be saved. It is a religion whose very name, Islam, comes from the word Shalom, which means peace. It’s about establishing peace. We greet each other with peace be upon you, which the Jews do in greeting each other. – Feisal Abdul Rauf

Let me put it this way: There is nothing in Islam that is fundamentally against the quest for knowledge. – Ahmed Zewail

Let me say this loud and clear. There is a world of difference between terrorist acts and the Islamic Shari’a. Islam is not only a religion, but a way of life. And at its heart lie the sacred principles of tolerance and dialogue. – Hussein of Jordan

Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise. – James Buchan

Like fundamentalist Judaism and medieval Christianity, Islam is totalist. That is to say, it makes a total claim on the individual. – Martin Amis

Look at all the misery in the Middle East, for example. All these countries have Islam in common, and far too few dare to criticize Islam as an ideology, and what it’s doing to these countries. I know I might get punched in the face for saying these things, but my conviction is that less religion in the world would be better. – Bjorn Ulvaeus

Look at Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution and the slogans that they used: anti-imperialism; anti-colonialism; the struggle of the have-nots against the haves; the state monopoly over economy, which was very much patterned after the Soviet Union. All of these things did not come out of Islam. Islam is not that developed. – Azar Nafisi

Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries. – Zbigniew Brzezinski

Look at Senegal, about 90% of the Muslims in Senegal are Tijani or Qadiri Sufis. Among them, they have very great teachers who have written poems about al-Hallaj, and they have not been killed. In fact, it’s Sufism that brought Islam through all of Senegal, right under our noses the last couple of centuries. And you can go down the same line through Indonesia and Malaysia. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Make the land of Islam a burning fire that burns their faces and feet wherever they pass. – Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

Many Muslims consider the United States hostile to Islam and to Arab interests. In fact, the United States saved tens of thousands of Muslims in the Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. – Antony Blinken

Many Muslims in Saudi Arabia believe that the core values of Islam, namely acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty and basic human equality before God, are themselves compatible with liberty, equality and free political choice. – Noah Feldman

Many of Islam’s apologists insist that suicide bombing is not Islamic because the Koran forbids suicide. Mmm-hmm. So where are all the Muslims gathering in mass demonstrations to vehemently condemn this practice that slanders their religion? Why does contemporary Islam promote ‘martyrdom’ as the highest duty of Muslims? Why are photographs of suicide bombers plastered everywhere in Beirut? Because Islam is what Islam does. – Jamie Glazov

Many people have criticized Islam for being just automatic, having no individuality, just surrendering your will to God, but we Muslims know very well that every moment of the day we have to practice the fact that to surrender one’s self to God is an act of free will. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Many people in Europe and the U.S. dispute the thesis that we are living through a clash of civilisations between Islam and the west. But a radical minority of Muslims firmly believes that Islam is under siege, and is committed to winning the holy war it has declared against the West. – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Many people question their religious identity today, not necessarily by thinking of converting to Judaism or to Islam: it’s just that technologies seriously challenge the status of the human being. All technologies converge toward the same spot, they all lead to a Deus ex Machina, a machine-God. – Paul Virilio

Many spiritual teachers – in Buddhism, in Islam – have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment. – Bell Hooks

Maybe some people may have thought or imagined that Islam drains all creativity. In fact, when you look at history, you discover that the golden age of Spain is what actually produced what we call the guitar. – Cat Stevens

Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe; it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills, trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages, the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500s did the net direction of flow begin to reverse. – Jared Diamond

Moderation is part of faith, so those who accuse Muslim schools of fostering fanaticism should learn a bit more about Islam. – Cat Stevens

Modern society places an emphasis on individual responsibility, whereas Islam places an emphasis on collective responsibility and the family. – Pim Fortuyn

Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength. – Karen Armstrong

Money and riches don’t mean nothing to me. I don’t care nothing about being no rich individual. I’m not living for glory or for fame; all this is doomed for destruction. You got it today, tomorrow it’s gone. I got bigger things on my mind than that. I got Islam on my mind. – Muhammad Ali

Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is _______ (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or Heresy. The word Islam means “submission”. The basic posture of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done. – Timothy Leary

Moses has revealed the existence of God to his nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent. – Napoleon Bonaparte

Moses led his people through the wilderness and he wasn’t permitted to enter the Promised Land. Jesus was crucified. Mohammad founded a state which soon became an empire, so that Islam from the very beginning is involved with government, with politics. And therefore there is a very clear strong political tradition in Islam. – Bernard Lewis

Mosques where sharia law prevails – they exist in France. Refusing to see that means that we do equate Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. We have to denounce and eradicate it. – Marine Le Pen

Most Muslims do not ‘choose’ Islam in the way that they choose to become doctors or lawyers, nor even in the way that they choose to become fans of Coldplay or Radiohead. Most Muslims, like people of any faith, are born into their religion. – Mohsin Hamid

Most victims of ISIL are, in fact, Muslims. So it seems to me that to refer to ISIL as occupying any part of the Islamic theology is playing on – a battlefield that they would like us to be on. I think that to call them – to call them some form of Islam gives the group more dignity than it deserves, frankly. – Jeh Johnson

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others. – Alexis de Tocqueville

Muhammad divided the world in two sectors. One he called Dar us Salam (House of Peace) and the other, Dar al Harb (House of War). All countries, where Islam is not the ruling authority, are Dar al Harb. It is the duty of the Muslims to wage Jihad in Dar al Harb, overthrow the governments and force people into submission. This is the only kind of peace that Islam recognizes. – Ali Sina

Muhammad established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ by commanding his followers to lay down their lives. – Blaise Pascal

Muhammad professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other – beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods. – Alexis de Tocqueville

Muhammad said, “…fight everyone in the way of God and kill those who disbelieve in God…” – Ibn Ishaq

Muhammadan law in its relation to women, is a pattern to European law. Look back to the history of Islam, and you will find that women have often taken leading places – on the throne, in the battle-field, in politics, in literature, poetry, etc. – Annie Besant

Mujahedeen, by the way, don’t represent Islam in any formal sense. They’re not imams or sheiks. They are self-appointed warriors for Islam. – Edward Said

Muslim leaders around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and al Qaeda promote. To speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect, and human dignity. – Barack Obama

Muslims are not bloodthirsty people. Islam is a religion of peace that forbids the killing of the innocent. Islam also accepts the Prophets, whether those prophets are Mohammed, God’s peace and blessing be upon Him, or Moses or the other prophets of the Books. – Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service one can render him. – Ernest Renan

Muslims are the first victims of Islam. To liberate a Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him! – Ernest Renan

Muslims around the world deserve to see birthplace of Islam represent the ethics of Islam. – Jamal Khashoggi

Muslims have different meanings for the same words that we use. They are so convinced of the “truth” of Islam that they do not perceive Jihad/terrorism, or dhimmitude as violence. – Ali Sina

Muslims naturally saw Christendom as their arch rival. One point that is really important to bear in mind, particularly in addressing an American audience, and that is that the Islamic world has a very strong sense of history. In the Muslim world, history is important and their knowledge of history is not always accurate but is very detailed. There is a strong historical sense in the Muslim world, a feeling for the history of Islam from the time of the Prophet until the present day. – Bernard Lewis

Muslims who convert to Christianity are not protected. That carries capital punishment. He would be given the opportunity to repent, and the Sharia court would need to determine if he was really a Muslim in the first place, did he know what he was doing, and once all of that has been determined, there is capital punishment for that in Islam. – Anjem Choudary

My aim is to show that those governments that violate the rights of people by invoking the name of Islam have been misusing Islam. – Shirin Ebadi

My brother, this “religiosity” is not the standard by which true men of God are measured. In all the rituals that Islam has, deeply imbedded in those rituals are principles of truth. And sometimes we get lost in the religiosity; we get lost in the “symbol,” but we miss the substance of the truth that is buried in the ritual! – Louis Farrakhan

My career divides in two: before and after 9/11. In the first part I was trying to show that Islam is relevant to political concerns. If you want to understand Muslims, I argued, you need to understand the role of Islam in their lives. Now that seems obvious. – Daniel Pipes

My faith in Islam is not unlike my faith in the game of basketball: Both require immense determination, focus, passion and discipline. – Enes Kanter

My family is very feminist, and they consider that Islam is not a super feminist religion, which I know people can argue about. But that’s – anyway that’s how I was brought up, so it would be odd for me to suddenly just up and start wearing a headscarf. – Elif Batuman

My father saw Islam as a way to connect with the community. He never went to prayer services except for big communal events. I am absolutely certain that my father did not go to services every Friday. He was not religious. – Maya Soetoro-Ng

My favourite spectator sport is watching people who should know better searching for something, and often claiming to find it, where it never could be. Women claiming to find feminism in Islam is a good one. – Julie Burchill

My love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned. – Richard Dawkins

My mom and my aunties are really devout Christians. My mom married a Muslim when I was 12, so I got teachings from both sides and then other sides because I wanted to find out which way to go. So not only Christianity and Islam, but Confucianism, Shintoism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Judaism. I tried to read everything. – Tech N9ne

My mother’s family is Christian: her father was a Baptist lay preacher, and her brother, in a leap of Anglican upward mobility, became a vicar in the Church of Wales. But my mother converted to Islam on marrying my father. She was not obliged to; Muslim men are free to marry ahl al-kitab, or people of the Book – among them, Jews and Christians. – Shereen El Feki

My passion was reading newspapers – and I became curious, in particular, about Islam and the Arab world. – Federica Mogherini

My personal belief is we should not bow to any object. But Islam was aware of this human weakness and fulfilled that need through Haj to kiss a stone. A stone is a stone but the vacuum was filled and it became the holiest object. I have performed Haj and seen the devotion of people braving stampedes only to kiss that stone. – Asghar Ali Engineer

My view on Islam is that it is not so much a religion as a totalitarian political ideology with religious elements. – Geert Wilders

My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines. – Mahatma Gandhi

Nature hates vacuum. Once a society is depleted of moral values, it creates a vacuum that will be filled by doctrines that hold to such values, even though those values are draconian and oppressive. In fact the more a society is devoid of morality, the more promising prudish and unpermissive doctrines look. Licentious societies create a spiritual vacuum that legalistic religions such as Islam fill. – Ali Sina

Neither the sword nor the work of an ecclesiastical order can account for Islam’s continuous gains in new following. The phenomenon of growth, therefore, must be attributed in the last analysis to its powers of appeal and ability to meet the spiritual and material needs of peoples adhering to cultures totally alien to the founders, the desert Arabians, but at a level of religious and sociopolitical development familiar to them at the time of their conversion. Continued growth can be explained also in terms of Islam’s willingness to tolerate views and practices stemming from alien cultural norms brought into Islam by the converts which a more rigid system of religion would not countenance. Flexibility at this, the crucial stage, of conversion is an important factor contributing to Islam’s success. What would ordinarily be deemed heretical at the instance of conversion inevitably drifts or is lured towards orthodoxy. The spread of Islam into Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa presents a vivid example of its dynamism while its ability to survive in areas once dominated by communism is a testimony to its remarkable resilience. – Caesar E. Farah

Ninety percent of the comic books I’ve written in the past had little or nothing to do with Islam. – G. Willow Wilson

No idea is above scrutiny. No idea whatsoever. To criticize, to scrutinize and to satirize my own religion [Islam] is not Islamophobia. – Maajid Nawaz

No one in al-Nahda believes that jihad is a way to impose Islam on the world. But we believe that jihad is self-control, is social and political struggle, and even military jihad is only a way to defend oneself in the case of aggression. – Rashid al-Ghannushi

No one is attacking Islam, as such. We accept that there is a large French-born Islamic population in France who have a right to be here. The FN is not a racist or Islamophobic party. – Marion Marechal-Le Pen

No other religion in history spread so rapidly as Islam . . . The West has widely believed that this surge of religion was made possible by the sword. But no modern scholar accepts that idea, and the Qur’an is explicit in support of the freedom of conscience. – James A. Michener

No plasticity exists in the Quran. This book is believed by Muslims to be the verbatim words of God. How can you change the word of God? Other religions are living. They are changing and evolving. Islam is fossilized. It allows no change. It can’t be reformed. – Ali Sina

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. – Winston Churchill

No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish. – Salman Rushdie

Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. – Zbigniew Brzezinski

North Eurasia is one of the best examples of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Islam and Christianity. This is a rare thing in today’s world, even in its most liberal parts. – Nursultan Nazarbayev

Not counting the brand of Sunni Islam practised by the so-called Islamic State, there is probably no religion in the world that comes in for more flak than Scientology. – Louis Theroux

Now that they talk about Islam as being a violent faith, when you look at the history of Christendom, the Crusades and the many wars of religion that were fought, the cruelty of Christians in burning what they believed to be witches and burning heretics, and then very recently they were responsible for the Holocaust… it was Christians. – Desmond Tutu

Obama has no power to change American policy because there are people who specialize in drawing these policies, which have been and still are hostile towards Islam. – Muqtada al Sadr

Obviously there are divisions within the West and divisions within Islam – there are different sects, different communities, different countries. So neither one is homogenous at all. But they do have things in common. – Samuel P. Huntington

Obviously, there’s always a battle over philosophical leanings and persuasions, but the bottom line here is that Americans need to understand that this is an ideology in jihadist terrorism that is dangerous beyond words, and we need the moderate Muslim voices to be heard here if this is to be diminished in Islam itself. – Trent Franks

Of all religious systems, Islam alone declares that individual perfection is possible in our earthly existence. – Muhammad Asad

Of course slavery and the Muslims were deeply implicated in the slave trade, Islam was an Imperialist religion which destroyed Christianity in the Near East, yet nobody mentions those facts. – Ibn Warraq

Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur’an. You don’t have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about Nazism. – Richard Dawkins

On the basis of both values and interests, the natural relationship between Islam and the United States is one of friendship. – Jimmy Carter

Once enough Americans reacquaint themselves with Americanism, we should promote it to all countries just as the Left promotes leftism and Muslims promote Islam. One need not be American to affirm Americanism. – Dennis Prager

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

One of the basic principles when you dealing with mathematics and Islam: Seek knowledge. – Gza

One of the big problems in this field is that there’s so much mystification that surrounds talk of the Shari’a, whether its saying that Islam is all about peace or whether its people saying that Islam is all about Jihad and all about suicide bombs. People will make statements which don’t seem to be backed up by any sort of historical context. – Sadakat Kadri

One of the challenges that happened in Europe is that in accepting many Muslim people they didn’t explain to them that those countries have particular values like equality of all people before the law. Islam does not accept people are equal before the law. – Mark Durie

One of the main things that I read about it that appealed to me was in Islam a man is honored as a human being and not measured by the color of his skin. – Malcolm X

One reason which I find particularly fascinating about Israel is this. There is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. There is a Jewish culture, a Jewish religion, but there is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. The Jews were a component basically of two civilizations. In the Western world, we talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition and you talk about the Judeo-Islamic tradition because there were large and important Jewish communities living in the lands of Islam. – Bernard Lewis

One unanswered question is whether a Euro-Islam that combines Islam with democracy will be possible in the future. We mustn’t confuse desire with reality. – Walter Kasper

Only if you have some knowledge of the human sacrifices, the vicious temple rites, the degrading superstitions and customs that were practiced . . . can you realize how much the modern world owes to the Hebrew prophets, whose monotheism and moral teachings entered into Christianity and Islam. – Carlton J. H. Hayes

Orthodox Islam, like orthodox interpretations of the other Abrahamic faiths, views homosexuality as sinful and usually defines marriage as only ever a heterosexual union. This isn’t to say that there is no debate on the subject. – Mehdi Hasan

Osama bin Laden’s hijacked planes not only attacked the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They also attacked Islam as a faith. They attacked the values of tolerance and coexistence that Islam preaches. – Jamal Khashoggi

Others have questions about how it is that God and human beings can both be speaking through the one document such that you can see and read the personalities of the human authors with their individual vocabularies and literary genres, and yet this is nevertheless the word of God. How can that be? This is quite a contrast with Islam, for example, which holds that the Koran has been dictated in Arabic by God and as a result Mohammed is nothing more than the one who memorizes the word so as to pass it on. There is nothing of human contribution. – D. A. Carson

Our culture has few taboos that can’t be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing. This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force. – Ross Douthat

Our enemy is not Islam. Islam is not the enemy of America; Americans are not the enemy of Islam. Our real enemy is extremism and radicalism. – Feisal Abdul Rauf

Our relationship with the followers of Islam has taken on great importance, since they are now significantly present in many traditionally Christian countries, where they can freely worship and become fully a part of society. We must never forget that they “profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, who will judge humanity on the last day”. – Pope Francis

Our socialism does not include extreme materialistic concepts, since Indonesia is primarily a God-fearing, God-loving nation. Our socialism is a mixture. We draw political equality from the American Declaration of Independence. We draw spiritual equality from Islam and Christianity. We draw scientific equality from Marx. – Sukarno

Our success in America will involve two circles: Black Nationalism and Islam–it will take BN [Black Nationalism] to make our people conscious of doing for self & then Islam will provide the spiritual guidance. BN [Black Nationalism] will link us to Africa and Islam will link us spiritually to Africa, Arabia & Asia. – Malcolm X

Our use of the phrase ‘The Dark Ages’ to cover the period from 600 to 1000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe. […] From India to Spain, the brilliant civilisation of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilisation, but quite the contrary. […] To us it seems that West-European civilisation is civilisation, but this is a narrow view. – Bertrand Russell

Pakistanis can’t trust. They’ve seen in history that people, particularly politicians, are corrupt. And they’re misguided by people in the name of Islam. They’re told: ‘Malala is not a Muslim, she’s not in purdah, she’s working for America.’ – Malala Yousafzai

Palestinians were religious in many ways, but they did not subscribe to political Islam, historically. – Hanan Ashrawi

People everywhere talk about Islam and the West. Presumably that has some relationship to reality, that these are entities that have some meaning and they do. Of course the core of that reality is differences in religion. – Samuel P. Huntington

People have to be exposed to Muslims, just experience Muslims; talk to them. Reach out, read about Islam, try to find out about it. – Hamza Yusuf

People in the United States don’t like to hear it, but puritanical Islam has been on the rise because of our unequivocal policy of absolute support for Israel, regardless of what Israel does – even if they invade Lebanon and bombard a major city like Beirut, full of civilians. Israel has atomic bombs, but we go nuts if any Arab country or Iran develops even nuclear capabilities. – Khaled Abou El Fadl

People sometimes have a bad image of Islam but that is an image of what people are doing with Islam. – Demba Ba

Pluralism and tolerance are pillars of modern society. That has to be accepted. But pluralism doesn’t just mean diversity. It means that we share the same rules and values, and are still nevertheless different. Islam doesn’t have this idea. And Islam also has no tradition of tolerance. – Bassam Tibi

Political correctness is a major defect of the western ethos. Some Western countries have even passed blasphemy laws that would put you in legal hot waters if you say anything negative about Islam. This means that the truth about Islam cannot be said but Muslims are given total freedom to spread their religion with lies. Islam thrives were truth is suppressed. That is one reason that westerners convert to Islam. They are lied to. How do you expect a society to survive when truth is banned and lies are allowed? – Ali Sina

Political Islam’s parallel societies and radicalizing tendencies have no place in our country. – Sebastian Kurz

Politicians have made up their own version of Islam to avoid having to deal with the reality of Islam because it’s just too daunting, frightening, scary, whatever, and they don’t want to deal with it. – Rush Limbaugh

Prayer has never made you right, because right now our world of Islam is filled with abject hypocrisy in its religiosity. – Louis Farrakhan

Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I’ve had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam… and I’m not happy to be right in all of those cases. – David Brin

President Bush’s war on Iraq is viewed broadly in Islamic communities as an attack on Islam, and thus the President has alienated a large part of one fifth of the world’s population. – John Olver

Qatar does not have much history, it’s a new emirate. So I couldn’t draw on the history of the country; its history is really just being a desert. But I thought, the one thing I must learn about for this project is the Islamic faith. So I read about Islam and Islamic architecture, and the more I studied the more I realized where the best Islamic buildings were. – I. M. Pei

Race does not come into it. It is pure religion and culture. Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam. That would have been a fair comparison. – Richard Dawkins

Ramadan is an important part of Islam, and when you are observing it, God is happy with you and you have to have a big celebration. – Kolo Toure

Rather than being a ‘perversion’ of Islam, it is truer to say that the version of Islam espoused by ISIS, while undoubtedly the worst possible interpretation of Islam, and for Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere obviously the most destructive version of Islam, is nevertheless a plausible interpretation of Islam. – Douglas Murray

Regardless of what I think about Islam or Wicca or any other religion, the fact is that it’s a group of people. Every faith has its ceremonies. And since it’s made up of people, every faith also has its assholes. – Jim Butcher

Religion is defined by the relationship between God and man. And Islam is the submission and the acknowledgment of the human being to the creator. – Feisal Abdul Rauf

Religion is very important to me. I respect the rules of Islam, and I pray five times a day, always. – Sadio Mane

Religion is very important to me. One of my aims is to try to show that you can have faith and play cricket. There can be a lot of negativity and misunderstanding of Islam. – Moeen Ali

Religion teachers for Islam instruction are being trained now in Münster and Erlangen. This has to happen quickly. My goal is to achieve relevant results within two years. – Wolfgang Schauble

Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. – Salman Rushdie

Respecting other people’s cultures is well and good, but I draw the line at where some branches of Islam, what they do to women. It’s indefensible. – Jello Biafra

Respond to cruelty with kindness, and do not punish for an error. – Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Sulami

Reviling a Muslim is disobedience to God, and fighting with him is infidelity. – Elijah Muhammad

Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. – Lawrence M. Krauss

Secular intellectuals may wax eloquent about ‘true Islam’ being humane and peaceful, on TV programmes, but it is clear that they have not read any authoritative translations of the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith. – Subramanian Swamy

Sense of justice is one of the most wonderful ideals of Islam, because as I read in the Qur’an I find those dynamic principles of life, not mystic but practical ethics for the daily conduct of life suited to the whole world. – Sarojini Naidu

Sharia is the most oppressive system on earth. It encourages people to lie, if it’s for the benefits of Islam. It doesn’t allow Muslims to leave Islam, and there’s a death penalty in all the schools of Sharia against those that leave Islam. Sharia defines what jihad is. – Mark Durie

Sharia law is a Malignant law, it’s totally based on the interpretation of the Koran and the Hajid, and the way Islam and the profit lived. – Mark Durie

Since the attachment to the cult of Islam is psychological, the solution must also be psychological. We have all the logical proof that Islam is false. But logic has its limitation. Brainwashed people dismiss logic and pride themselves in their blind faith. Psychological warfare is extremely powerful. The Muslim bravado must be destroyed by humiliations and ridicule. – Ali Sina

So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. – Barack Obama

So many Muslims would tell you that they felt like that you had to – you fold it into yourself because people were looking at you and recognizing you as being the culprit even though, look, I’m American. I don’t believe that the teachings of Islam justified those actions. – Mahershala Ali

So much of Islam is Judeo-Christianity. It’s impossible to divorce them. Islam is 600 years after Christ. Thousands of years after Judaism. Christ, Moses, Abraham – they are all in the Koran. – Fatema Mernissi

So when I heard that we don’t have our names, we don’t speak our true Arabic language, we were robbed of Islam, our true religion, and we’ve been made deaf, dumb, and blind in slavery.And Elijah Muhammad was taught by Allah, who we refer to as God, to teach us the truth that will free us.And when I heard it, I’ve been free ever since. I have no racial problems, I don’t go where I’m not wanted. – Muhammad Ali

Some of the comments that have been uttered about Islam do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans. Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion, a religion that respects others. Ours is a country based upon tolerance and we welcome people of all faiths in America. – George W. Bush

Some people in the west have responded to the terrorist attacks by trying to look for everything that is positive in Islam. I think that was a strong response after 9/11, was to try to reach out as positively as possible. – Mark Durie

Some think of Islam as an expedient jobs program that moves the female half of the population out of the way. – William Langewiesche

Some Westerners […] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise. – Samuel P. Huntington

Some, indeed, dream of an Islam in the future, rationalised and regenerate. All this has been tried already, and has miserably failed. The Koran has so encrusted the religion in a hard unyielding casement of ordinances and social laws, that if the shell be broken the life is gone. A rationalistic Islam would be Islam no longer. The contrast between our own faith and Islam is most remarkable. There are in our Scriptures living germs of truth, which accord with civil and religious liberty, and will expand with advancing civilisation. In Islam it is just the reverse. The Koran has no such teaching as with us has abolished polygamy, slavery, and arbitrary divorce, and has elevated woman to her proper place. As a Reformer, Mahomet did advance his people to a certain point, but as a Prophet he left them fixed immovably at that point for all time to come. The tree is of artificial planting. Instead of containing within itself the germ of growth and adaptation to the various requirements of time and clime and circumstance, expanding with the genial sunshine and rain from heaven, it remains the same forced and stunted thing as when first planted some twelve centuries ago. – William Muir

Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam. – Richard Dawkins

Sons of Islam everywhere, the jihad is a duty – to establish the rule of Allah on earth and to liberate your countries and yourselves from America’s domination and its Zionist allies, it is your battle – either victory or martyrdom. – Ahmed Yassin

Southeast Asia is an area in which there is a form of Islam which is both devout and progressive, and therefore to be supported. It’s an area in which I see a congruence of American interests and local interests: to have tolerant societies and become more prosperous. – Dennis C. Blair

Subconsciously, Islam took over me so it was like eighty or ninety percent of the fabric of the person I was. – Rakim

Submit to Islam and be safe. Or agree to the payment of the Jizya (tax), and you and your people will be under our protection, else you will have only yourself to blame for the consequences, for I bring the men who desire death as ardently as you desire life. – Khalid ibn al-Walid

Subtract miracles from Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, or Toaism, and you have essentially the same religion left. Subtract miracles from Christianity, and you have nothing but the cliches and platitudes most American Christians get weekly (and weakly) from their pulpits. – Peter Kreeft

Sufis have always been those that have tried to purify the ethics of Islam and society. And they don’t have their hands cut off from the external action at all. For example, the bazaar in which the Sufis were very strong always dominated economic life in Islamic world. They could give a much more sane and Islamic form of activity when the economic life of Islam moved out of the bazaar to new parts of Islamic cities with modernized Muslims, who took it in another light and it became very, very anti Islamic, and much against many of the most profound practices of Islamic societies. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Suicide attacks are the actions of losers who have nothing left to lose. In this case, Islam serves as a mask, a cover for desperation and nihilism, but not for religion. – Walter Kasper

Swaraj will favour Hinduism no more than Islam, nor Islam more than Hinduism. – Mahatma Gandhi

Talk to me 20 years ago and I had a complete sense of illegitimacy as an American Muslim. I felt like I wasn’t authentic. But I don’t understand and I don’t believe or subscribe to this idea that I don’t have a right to speak as a Muslim because I’m an American. Being Muslim is to accept and honor the diversity that we have in this world, culturally and physically, because that’s what Islam teaches, that we are people of many tribes. I think the American Muslim experience is of a different tribe than the Saudi Muslim world, but that doesn’t make us less than anyone else. – Asra Nomani

Talk with your daughters, Play with your sons. You need to be a better friend to them than anyone else. This society offers lots of evil friends. Before they make those kinds of friends, they need to find their best friend in you. – Nouman Ali Khan

Terrorism is perpetrated by individuals and cannot be blamed on any one religion, be it Sikhism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity. – Jagmeet Singh

Terrorists are not following Islam. Killing people and blowing up people and dropping bombs in places and all this is not the way to spread the word of Islam. So people realize now that all Muslims are not terrorists. – Muhammad Ali

That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters. – Mark Twain

That Islam you see on TV does not represent me, I’m too busy waging jihad against myself, My own nafs are my enemy. I’m sorry that Muslim and Muslim lands do not represent Islam, Our religion is perfect, but we on the other hand. – Boonaa Mohammed

That there’s no link between Islam and Christianity and Judaism. There wouldn’t be Islam if there wasn’t Christianity or Judaism, because it’s all one long line of revelation. Seeing it from that point of view it makes you ask yourself why Muslims sometimes separate themselves from that large family that leads to Abraham and, even before that, to Adam. The only answer is that we’re conditioned to do it by thinking, Hey, I do things better than he does. – Cat Stevens

That was unfortunate. I should have compared religion with religion and compared Islam not with Trinity College but with Jews, because the number of Jews who have won Nobel Prizes is phenomenally high. – Richard Dawkins

The Arab spring confirmed that peaceful change is possible and so reinforced the vision of political Islam. The impact of this went beyond the Brotherhood to include the Salafist tendency in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya that had questioned the democratic path. – Wadah Khanfar

The biggest terrorist is the God of the Quran. I know this is very dangerous and this will offend many people. The more you follow the steps of the prophet of Islam and the God of Islam, the more you get close to being a terrorist. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it’s Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity. – E. O. Wilson

The black people in this country are taught that their religion and the best religion is the religion of Islam, and when one accepts the religion of Islam, he’s known as a Muslim. – Malcolm X

The bombers were enemies of Islam and enemies of the country. We will do everything and anything needed to stop them. – Khaleda Zia

The Bush administration does not desire to see Islam practiced in its pristine purity. – Louis Farrakhan

The caricature of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion is horrendously incomplete. Remember that those standing up to Muslim fanatics are mostly Muslims. – Nicholas Kristof

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. – Henri Pirenne

The clash of civilizations or the clash between Islam and the West may be cliches. But there is an even bigger cliche around: that this clash actually goes on within Islam, between reformists and fanatics. – Pankaj Mishra

The concept of God in Jewish orthodoxy is one where you’re having constant quarrels with God. Where I come from, in Islam, the only concept of God is you submit to Him and you obey His commands; no quarreling allowed. – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The conclusion that I have come to is that actually, no religion, whether it’s Islam, Christianity or any idea based on scripture or texts, is a religion of ‘anything,’ really. – Maajid Nawaz

The condition of women in Islamic societies as a whole is far from desirable. However, we should acknowledge that there are differences. In certain countries, the conditions are much better and in others much worse. For example, the conditions women face even in Egypt differ a whole lot from what their Iranian counterparts deal with. The condition of women in Pakistan is far different from that in Saudi Arabia. This shows that you can have different interpretations of Islam. – Shirin Ebadi

The conflict is not between Christianity and Islam or between East and West – instead, it is between stupid people and other stupid people. – Terry Pratchett

The contribution of Islam to history and modern civilization is the product of the efforts of peoples of many races and tongues which came to accept its way of life. – Aly Khan

The core of my life is Islam, my religion. Without that, I have no strength, no belief in God or in myself. – Naseem Hamed

The coverage of Islam in the media is becoming more sophisticated, and there is more access to knowledge. – Leila Aboulela

The demand that Islam makes of women is to not attract attention to yourself, and if you are in a secular society, that attire does exactly that, and it is a political symbol, no longer religious. – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The demonization of Islam and immigrants shows that perception of difference remains one of our biggest problems, and maybe always will be for a species that began in small groups competing with other groups for resources. These apparently competing forces for sameness and difference sometimes even seem to be mutually reinforcing. The homogenizing force of globalization tends to make many people feel they are on the losing side, economically and culturally, and it is they who are most easily turned against those “others” who are demonized by demagogues. – David Wong

The difference must be distinguished between worship and respect. Islam orders you to obey and respect, as long as you are not worshiping anything other than God… Islam is a religion of peace. You don’t attack. You explain. – Hakeem Olajuwon

The distinction between the religious and secular orders is a fundamental aspect of Christianity. This distinction is an innovation compared to Islam and Judaism, and it is an advantage that has helped shape Europe. – Walter Kasper

The divides are not Islam and western society, the divide is between people who have different values. We must promote connections between people who want to contribute to human values. People who share that commitment can collaborate across cultural divides. – Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im

The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself. – Robert M. Pirsig

The dogmatic and, therefore, invulnerable core in Islam is understandably simple: acknowledgement of faith, prayer, charity and fasting. Almost everything else is open to interpretation and modification in space and time. – Tariq Ramadan

The early Mussalmans accepted Islam not because they knew it to be revealed but because it appealed to their virgin reason. – Mahatma Gandhi

The enemy is not just terrorism. It is the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism, by Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion, and distorts both. – John Cornyn

The entrenched beliefs many westerners profess about Islam often reveal more about the West than they do about Islam or Muslims. – Hamza Yusuf

The evil lot who did that thing on September 11 did it because they wanted to create a war between America and Islam. And by invading Iraq, we gave them what they hoped for. – Billy Bragg

The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line. – William S. Burroughs

The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue. – Arnold J. Toynbee

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war. – George W. Bush

The fact of simultaneously being Christian and having as my mother tongue Arabic, the holy language of Islam, is one of the basic paradoxes that have shaped my identity. – Amin Maalouf

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. – Winston Churchill

The fact that this organisation is called the Islamic State reveals something even deeper. In fact, it implies that every single Islamist party in Egypt, Iraq or Tunisia are not really representing Islam and Muslim people. Nowadays, political Islam is going through a crisis, however this crisis is necessary, for it will lead to a changing way of thinking. In order to make it out of this dead-end, reviewing political Islam becomes mandatory. – Tariq Ramadan

The fastest way to heal a broken heart is to find someone better to love, and love more. Know that sometimes heartbreak happens just to push you to God. – Yasmin Mogahed

The first thing Islam does is to destroy the self image of the believers. It convinces them that without Islam they are worthless creatures only fit for hellfire. It tells them that their culture is Jahiliyyah (ignorance) and their ancestral religion was taaghoti (satanic). They are made to despise their identity and selfhood and seek their glory in their submission to Islam and slavery to its deity who was Muhammad’s own alter ego. – Ali Sina

The founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of o­ne spiritual empire, that is Muhammed. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he? – Alphonse de Lamartine

The French have a very deep knowledge of Islam in many areas, and we can exchange views. – Tony Tan

The fundamental difference between Islamic government, on the one hand, and constitutional monarchy and republics, on the other, is this: whereas the representatives of the people or the monarch in such regimes engage in legislation, in Islam the legislative power and competence to establish laws belong exclusively to God Almighty. – Ruhollah Khomeini

The fundamental question I believe is, ‘Is political Islam in our best interest?’ If not, what is our policy to authoritatively support the countervailing forces? – Jim Mattis

The giving of the Quran is in Islam what the incarnation of Christ is to Christianity. If this is so, then Quran-burning is parallel to Christ-crucifying. – John Piper

The God of Islam is not the same God of the Judaeo-Christian faith. The God that we worship in Christianity is a God that has a Son. To Islam, that is blasphemy, to say that God has a son. Therefore, they do not worship the God that we worship. – Franklin Graham

The god of Islam tells his people, “Beat your wife. Go kill infidels. Go Kill Christians and Jews.” This is in the Koran; it has been for 1400 years. Their god tells them to kill everybody who doesn’t believe in the god of the Koran. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

The government of the United States of America has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims. – John Adams

The great majority of Americans do not know much about Islam but nonetheless fear it as violent, expansionist and alien to their society. The problem to overcome is not hatred, but ignorance. – Tariq Ramadan

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. – Gore Vidal

The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith. – Karen Armstrong

The highest goal of Islam is to lead the soul to the ‘Abode of Peace’ by guiding us to live a virtuous life and to establish inner harmony with the help of Heaven. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The Holy Koran tells us, ‘O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.’ – Barack Obama

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us the religion of Islam, which is a religion of peace. – Malcolm X

The idea is that they wouldn’t want to deal with militant Islam but an Islam and Muslims who are committed to progress, committed to development, who like peace and are moderate in their ways. So that’s what we are doing here. – Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

The idea that you can separate jihadi terrorism from Islam is exactly what got us in the mess we are today, with 65 million refugees around the world and with ISIS controlling territory in multiple countries. – Sebastian Gorka

The interesting part of my spiritual life is studying as much as you can. Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism and Shamanism and Judaism, Christianity – you try to learn what the precepts are, what the religion is, and ultimately, it’s based in the same thought, it’s based in the same outcome, you know. – Goldie Hawn

The Iranian people were converted to Islam not very much longer after the conquest of the Arab world by Islam, but they refused to adopt the Arabic language, and it’s a great point of pride to them that Persian culture and the Persian language and Persian literature survived the conversion to Islam. And the conversion to Islam also was for most of them not the Sunni majority form, but the Shia one. So there’s a great discrepancy between Iranian society and many other of what we think of as Arab Muslim States and systems. – Christopher Hitchens

The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion. – John Keegan

The Islam that we know is a faith devoted to the worship of one God, as revealed through The Holy Qu’ran. It teaches the value and importance of charity, mercy, and peace. – George W. Bush

The Islamic State is a threat to both the moderate Islam headed by Mr. Saad al-Hariri and, of course, for Hezbollah. There is a convergence, an anxiety of a common enemy… which is good. – Walid Jumblatt

The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it…Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity. – H. G. Wells

The Islamic world is suffering not only because of external oppression but also because of the loss of its own dignity, of its own heritage, of its own practice of Islam, of its weakening of its own ethics, and many things which are internal to Islam not just external. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The issue is, the Arabs have many allies. Among the worst reactionaries in the world. No religion out of which so much murder comes as there is in certain parts of Islam. – Manfred Gerstenfeld

The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud’s pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir’s big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else … If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar. – Michael Muhammad Knight

The Jihad is not just a way of testing yourself but also means using violence to spread Islam. – Bassam Tibi

The kind of power mothers have is enormous. Take the skyline of Istanbul – enormous breasts, pathetic little willies, a final revenge on Islam. I was so scared I had to crouch in the bottom of the boat when I saw it. – Angela Carter

The Koran and Islam is about submission, justice and compassion. All people of the “book” – which means the Torah, Koran and Bible are accorded equal respect under Islam. – Greg Mortenson

The Koran calls for belief and consequent obedience. It is, surely, calculated to inspire fear, indeed abject terror, rather than love. – Antony Flew

The Koran claims for itself that it is “mubeen,” or clear. But if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesnt make sense. Many Muslims and Orientalists will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is just incomprehensible. – Gerd R. Puin

The life of Islamic philosophy did not terminate with Ibn Rushd nearly eight hundred years ago, as thought by Western scholarship for several centuries. Rather, its activities continued strongly during the later centuries, particularly in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam, and it was revived in Egypt during the last century. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The loftiest in status are those who do not know their own status, and the most virtuous of them are those who do not know their own virtue. – Al-Shafi‘i

The main bone of contention is whether Islamic injunctions are legal or moral categories. When Muslims say Islam commands daily prayers or bans alcohol, are they talking about public obligations that will be enforced by the state or personal ones that will be judged by God? – Mustafa Akyol

The majority of the world’s Muslims do not believe that terrorism is a legitimate strategy or that Islam is incompatible with democracy. – Gijs de Vries

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. – Prince Charles

The message of Islam asks you to be intellectually, spiritually, socially, and politically independent. – Tariq Ramadan

The more we can do to support and promulgate the intellectual traditions of the Abrahamic faiths – of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – the better armed we will be to fight fundamentalism. – Jon Meacham

The most important things in life can’t be seen with the eyes. Ideas can’t be seen. Love can’t be seen. Honor can’t be seen. This isn’t a new concept. Judaism and Christianity and Islam and Buddhism and Taoism have all taught for thousands of years that the highest forms of reality are invisible. God is invisible, and he created the universe. Our souls are invisible, and they give life to our bodies. Angels are invisible, and they’re the most powerful of God’s creatures. – Anthony DeStefano

The Muslim Brotherhood is a global movement whose members cooperate with each other throughout the world, based on the same religious worldview – the spread of Islam, until it rules the world. – Mohammed Mahdi Akef

The Muslim contribution to the future of America is to not only speak out as Muslims, but to also speak out as citizens in the name of our common values. Our main contribution is to reconcile the American society with its own values, those that are not in contradiction to Islam. We have a duty of consistency. – Tariq Ramadan

The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years. – Norman Tebbit

The Muslims have got Islam as a legacy, hence they fail to recognize its value. – Marmaduke Pickthall

The nation of Dubai banned the movie Charlie’s Angles because it’s “offensive to the religion of Islam.” Apparently, the religion of Islam is offended by anything without a plot. – Jon Stewart

The next decade cannot be a decade of confrontation and contention. It cannot be east vs. West. It cannot be men vs. women. It cannot be Islam vs. Christianity. That is what the enemies of dialogue want. – Benazir Bhutto

The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own. – Tahir Shah

The Pagan model of religion because, in the Pagan model, there were lots and lots of Gods and Goddesses. They were all incredibly beautiful and there were statues of them everywhere, which is the equivalent of magazines, or whatever, today. And they were fallible, which is different from being mono-, you know, Jewish or Islam (where) you have the infallible, monotheistic God. – Rachel Weisz

The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions, and most others, are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust for women’s bodies. – Polly Toynbee

The people have said yes to change and reform. The majority of the Palestinians have said yes to the slogan, ‘Islam is the solution.’ The people also voted in favor of our policy of resistance and against the occupation. Our policy is designed to defend Jerusalem, achieve the right of return for all refugees and the release of our prisoners. – Ismail Haniyeh

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

The point in the report is that you shouldn’t say to somebody just because they’re Jewish, you must have an opinion on Israel. Any more than you say to anyone who is a Muslim you must have an opinion on any vile action that’s been taken by misquoting the good name of Islam. I just ask people to be respectful and inclusive in their debate. – Jeremy Corbyn

The politicized version of Shia Islam that we see in the Islamic Republic post-1979 clearly is very conservative, but, there are other things one could say about Ayatollah Khomeini’s concept of a Shia state because that in itself is a blasphemy as far as most Shia clerics are concerned. There’s a theory that he developed in the early 1960s in the town of Najaf talking about – well not liberalism, necessarily, but flexibility though. – Sadakat Kadri

The Pope was more critical of Christianity than Islam during his visit (to Bavaria). He said on several occasions that the secular world influenced by Christianity must face the idea that it may not be as attractive as it once was. The leaders of other faiths might also be well-advised to admonish their own now and then and not always direct their criticism at others. – Wolfgang Schauble

The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you. – Sam Harris

The principal tenet of Jainism is non-harming. Observant Jains will literally not harm a fly. Fundamentalist Jainism and fundamentalist Islam do not have the same consequences, neither logically nor behaviorally. – Sam Harris

The problem is not Hamas, the problem is not people. The root of the problem is Islam itself as an idea, as an idea. And about Hamas as an organization, of course, the Hamas leadership, including my father, they’re responsible; they’re responsible for all the violence that happened from the organization. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

The problem is sitting in the birthplace of Islam, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where this interpretation of Islam has gone out into the world over the last four decades, creating militancy groups from Indonesia, to now, San Bernardino, California, vicious attack. We have to take back the faith. And we have to take it back with the principles of peace, social justice, and human rights, women’s rights, and secularize governance. – Chuck Todd

The problem is that Islam does not have a pope, so there’s no one guy to say, ‘This isn’t kosher’…Not that he would. – Fareed Zakaria

The problem of Islam as a political force is an essential one for our time and for the years to come, and we cannot approach it with a modicum of intelligence if we start out from a position of hatred. – Michel Foucault

The problem with Islam is that it’s a law, not a religion, and it’s incompatible with our values, our rights, and our freedoms. – Matteo Salvini

The problem with multiculturalism is it’s kind of arrogant. The arrogance is the assumption that everyone will buy into our values, because they have to be Superior. What is different about Islam is it’s not just a type of food you ate or the way you dress, it’s a total system of life driven by values… – Mark Durie

The Prophet defeated the enemies of Islam even when he and his followers were small in number. – Abu Bakar Bashir

The Prophet was taken by the order of God to heaven, which is a prototype of all spiritual realization in Islam. But, he had a guide; Gabriel, the angel, was his guide. He took him to heaven. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The Qur’an not only lacks any earthly punishment for someone who abandons Islam, it even includes verses that imply that such a change of heart should be a matter of free choice. – Mustafa Akyol

The radical elements in Islam are very dangerous. They want to achieve a return to the Islamic purity of the Middle Ages. – Brent Scowcroft

The reason Ataturk, Kemal Ataturk was and is so highly reputed, is he was attempting to modernize… That’s not the right word. Well, it is. For lack of a better way of saying it, he was trying to make Islam compatible with the modern twentieth century world. – Rush Limbaugh

The reason that Islamist militants can assert that jihad is necessary against the perceived enemies of Islam is that there is sufficient ammunition in the Quran to buttress their beliefs. The same could also, of course, be said for the Old Testament, which is full of scenes of violent death visited on the enemies of God. – Peter Bergen

The recent past is full of diverse examples of writers – Mahfouz in Egypt, Pamuk in Turkey, and more interestingly, Pasternak in the Soviet Union – who have conducted their arguments with their societies and its political arrangements through their art in subtle, oblique ways. They didn’t always have the license to make bold pronouncements about freedom, democracy, Islam, and liberalism, but they exerted another kind of moral authority through their work. – Pankaj Mishra

The religion of Islam actually restores one’s human feelings, human rights, human incentives, human, his talent. – Malcolm X

The religiosity of Muslims deserves respect. It is impossible not to admire, for example, their fidelity to prayer. The image of believers in Allah (God) who, without caring about time or place, fall to their knees and immerse themselves in prayer remains a model for all those who invoke the true God, in particular for those Christians who, having deserted their magnificent cathedrals, pray only a little or not at all. – Pope John Paul II

The religious philosophy that they had adopted, in my opinion, was the only thing and is the only thing that can remove the white from the mind of the white man and the negro from the mind of the negro. I have seen what Islam has done with our people, our people who had this feeling of negro – and it had a psychological effect of putting them in a mental prison. – Malcolm X

The religiously observant is lumped in with the nominal Muslim, the nominal Muslim is lumped in with the non-Muslim and the radical. If we want to make sense of this mess and stop pushing Muslims into the arms of the extremist, we need to make meaningful distinctions between the religion of Islam that a billion Muslims follow and see as a guidance as a peaceful righteous moral life and the puritanical Islam of a minority which so captures the media’s attention. – Reza Aslan

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. – John Keegan

The rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been a disaster for the public image of Islam – and a boon for the Islamophobia industry. – Mehdi Hasan

The rise of Islam is perhaps the most amazing event in human history. Springing from a land and a people like previously negligible, Islam spread within a century over half the earth, shattering great empires, overthrowing long established religions, remolding the souls of races, and building up a whole new world – world of Islam. The closer we examine this development the more extraordinary does it appear. The other great religions won their way slowly, by painful struggle and finally triumphed with the aid of powerful monarchs who converted to the new faith. Christianity had its Constantine, Buddhism its Asoka, and Zoroastrianism its Cyrus, each lending to his chosen cult the mighty force of secular authority. Not so Islam. Arising in a desert land sparsely inhabited by a nomad race previously undistinguished in human annals, Islam sallied forth on its great adventure with the slenderest human backing and against the heaviest material odds. Yet Islam triumphed with seemingly miraculous ease, and a couple of generations saw the Fiery Crescent borne victorious from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas and from the desert of Central Asia to the deserts of Central Africa. – Lothrop Stoddard

The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways. – William Hardy McNeill

The role of religions in the domination and destruction of African civilizations was ruthless… Islam was as guilty as all the rest. – John Henrik Clarke

The singularity of Islam is its universality. As American citizens and as Muslims, you need to show there is something specific, namely our moral singularity. We believe there is one God and this one God is pushing us to reach universal values by liberating ourselves from our ego and by serving humanity. We must be involved in this by all means necessary, in a nonviolent way, through the legal, media, economic and cultural systems. We cannot achieve this if there is no courage, if we are not ready to sacrifice. – Tariq Ramadan

The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’… is an umbrella term for a variety of movements: in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam. – James Clapper

The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. – George W. Bush

The threat to Russia isn’t liberal Europe or America. It is nonliberal Islam and nonliberal China. Russia has to change. It can’t be otherwise. It will take time. You have to be patient. – Adam Michnik

The tolerance within the body of Islam was, and is, something without parallel in history; class and race and color ceasing altogether to be barriers. – Marmaduke Pickthall

The Transportation Security Administration has probably converted more people to Islam than any religious order in the last 100 years. It doesn’t matter how you choose to self-identify or even if your religiosity is private; when you get to the airport you know how you’re going to be treated based on your name. Possibly also because of the colour of your skin and the colour of your passport. – Haroon Moghul

The trouble with Islam is deeply rooted in its teachings. Islam is not only a religion. Islam (is) also a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force. – Wafa Sultan

The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks. – Malcolm X

The true Islamic concept of peace goes something like this: “Peace comes through submission to Muhammad and his concept of Allah” (i.e. Islam). As such the Islamic concept of peace, meaning making the whole world Muslim, is actually a mandate for war. It was inevitable and unavoidable that the conflict would eventually reach our borders, and so it has. – Vernon Richards

The truth is nobody was a Muslim until Public Enemy came out. Then, everybody was Muslim this and Muslim that. It’s a bandwagon thing. Islam is a way of life… it’s a religion. It’s not just something you put on a record. – KRS-One

The truth is that Islam is not like any other faith. It is the religious equivalent of fascism. – Fraser Anning

The U.S. always needs an enemy. It comes and goes. Today it is Islam. According to this plan or ideology of the born-again Christians who formed an alliance with Zionism, Islam is the monster. – Walid Jumblatt

The U.S. is friends with dictatorial regimes, then invades places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what happens afterwards is a catastrophe. In the place of their leaders, fundamentalist movements that use the name of Islam spring up, and all that’s left is terror and bloodshed. – Ayman Odeh

The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam. – Feisal Abdul Rauf

The United States of America or the Western countries, they don’t have a problem with Islamists as long as they are neoliberal capitalists and promoting the economic order. And the best example is the petro-monarchies. The petro-monarchies, they don’t want democracy. They say there is no democracy in Islam. But they are within the economic system. – Tariq Ramadan

The values of Islam are expressed by Muslims clearly. September 11 changed the world, and put Muslims on the spotlight. – Karen Armstrong

The very idea that you could have separation between mosque and state from Islam’s perspective is the imposition on them of Christian practice. Islam doesn’t really have a place for state. They are a universalistic faith like Christianity, but they think there is no country that bounds Islam. – Stanley Hauerwas

The Wahhabi movement is a form of radical Islam that people here say did not exist before in Bosnia, where Islam had co-existed with other major religions and was much softer and more liberal. – Jasmila Zbanic

The West has been calling for years for the forces of moderate Islam to stand up to the very small percentage but very large number of radical Muslims all around the world. When countries – the U.A.E. or Egypt or Jordan – do that, we need to highlight it, we need to celebrate it, and we need to continue to encourage it. – Tom Cotton

The Western front is the important one in this war – the intersection between Islam and a liberal democratic tradition so mired in self-loathing it would rather destroy our civilization just to demonstrate its multicultural bona fides. – Mark Steyn

The Western world needs to ally themselves against the evil that is political Islam. To unite with its practitioners would be to unite with evil. Anyone who sees that as a virtue is simply enabling evil and, by proxy, is evil themselves. – Steven Crowder

The whole religion of Islam is based on reward and punishment and reward and punishment, and it becomes a part of how you think of everything. Even yourself. – Kumail Nanjiani

The word “democracy” is a Western word obviously. It doesn’t exist in Arabic. Democratiya is a loan word. We in the Western world make the great mistake of assuming that ours is the only form of good government; that democracy means what it means in the Anglo-American world and a few other places in the West, but not many others. Muslims have their own tradition on limited government. Now in Islam, there is a very strong political tradition. Because the different circumstances, Islam is political from the very beginning. – Bernard Lewis

The word ‘Islam’ means ‘peace.’ The word ‘Muslim’ means ‘one who surrenders to God.’ But the press makes us seem like haters. – Muhammad Ali

The world of Islam is a world completely distinct from ours. Muslims have a different set of values. They look at the world through the contorted mirror of Islam and everything they see is warped. That is the only reality they know. Islam is their only point of reference. Therefore when they commit the most dastardly acts such as murder of school children, they genuinely don’t know that what they are doing is evil. – Ali Sina

The worst form of slavery is when the slave believes he is free. This is how women under Islam feel. – Wafa Sultan

Their plan is to return the entire world – not just the Middle East – to the days of the caliphate and either convert all of us so-called infidels into born-again Islamic believers or kill us. – David Hackworth

There are common denominators that unite all members of al-Nahda: There is no one in al-Nahda who doubts about Islam There is no one in al-Nahda that believes in extremist views of Islam. – Rashid al-Ghannushi

There are fear mongers who talk about Islam as somehow it is an incubator of hate… remember Christians, like the Westboro Baptist Church, are just as capable of promoting intolerance. – Louis Theroux

There are hard texts in each tradition which we must confront and ask ourselves, ‘Can we reinterpret those texts to allow us to live peaceably, and respectfully, with people of other faiths?’ That is a job only Jews can do for Judaism, only Christians can do for Christianity, and only Muslims can do for Islam. But sometimes the sight of someone in one faith wrestling with that faith can empower you to wrestle with another faith. – Jonathan Sacks

There are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country. It’s fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have. Obama’s father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him. – Feisal Abdul Rauf

There are many interpretations of Islam within the wider Islamic community, but generally we are instructed to leave the world a better place than it was when we came into it. – Aga Khan IV‎‎

There are many nice, peaceful Muslims, but the Netherlands is far too tolerant regarding the statements of the radical wing of Islam. – Els Borst

There are many ways people think of God, and thousands of flavors of Christianity, Judaism, Islam… but they’re always looking at something that’s not measurable or you can’t really see or control. – Anthony Levandowski

There are Muslims, who are moderate Muslims. And there’s more of them than there are radicalized Muslims and are using Islam in its misinterpreted ideology. – Michael T. Flynn

There are no grounds for discrimination in Europe, regardless of whether on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, or religion. On the other hand, there is equally no place for radical thought and political Islam. – Sebastian Kurz

There are only three integral views of the world: the religious, the materialistic, and the Islamic. They reflect three elemental possibilities (conscience, nature, and man), each of them manifesting itself as Christianity, materialism, and Islam. – Alija Izetbegovic

There are serious mistakes – among them the one saying that Jesus came as a messenger for other people other than the sons of Israel… Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Other people who are not sons of Israel have nothing to do with that religion… It is a mistake that another religion exists alongside Islam. There is only one religion which is Islam after Mohammed… All those believers who do not follow Islam are losers. – Muammar al-Gaddafi

There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe – without swords, without guns, without conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. – Muammar al-Gaddafi

There are so many errors and misstatements in that list that I won’t even begin to name them. Obama was right about one thing, though – Islam has always been a part of America’s story. – Barack Obama

There are some disturbing messages in the Koran, there were declarations of war against non-believers, there’s a declaration that Islam should be triumphant over other religions, the problem is this is not just in the book, but preached throughout the Islamic world that are preached, we in the West hear about that. – Mark Durie

There are some who believe that secularism and Islam are not compatible. But Muslims should show everyone that this is not the case. It’s up to them to show that you can be French and Muslim and still respect secular rules. – Marine Le Pen

There are strengths in Islamic tradition. Islam actually, as a monotheistic religion, which defined man as a responsible agent by itself, created the idea of the individual in the Middle East and saved it from the communitarianism, the collectivism of the tribe. – Mustafa Akyol

There are very good Christians who are compassionate and caring. And there are very bad Christians. You can say that about Islam, about Hinduism, about any faith. That is why I was saying that it was not the faith per se but the adherent. People will use their religion to justify virtually anything. – Desmond Tutu

There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it. – Jamal Khashoggi

There has always been a confusion in the West about -Islam and about the Middle East and the assumption that the countries are Arab. Iranians very much object to that. They are very proud of their own history, but they have this real inferiority-superiority complex thing about the Arabs and the position of Islam in Iran. One of the reasons why Shi’a Islam is so entrenched in Iran is because it has allowed the Iranians to distinguish themselves from the Arabs, who are mostly Sunni. – Hooman Majd

There have been bombings by extremists. They are not representatives of Islam. They’re not representative of the vast majority of people who love this country, but nonetheless, they exist. – Edward Zwick

There have been huge Muslim demonstrations against cartoons depicting Muhammad and any other perceived insult against Islam. But I am unaware of a single demonstration of Muslims against Muslim terror directed at non-Muslims. – Dennis Prager

There is a coalition of anti-Semitism today, the extreme left, the extreme right and in the middle the huge corpus of Islam. I’m worried, I go around with a very heavy heart. – Elie Wiesel

There is a cottage industry of these Muslim bashers who are training law enforcement personnel, military personnel… and you are breeding a generation of leaders in our society who have this suspicion of Islam and hostility towards American Muslims and Muslims in general. The intention of these trainers is to demonise Islam and to marginalise American Muslims. – Ibrahim Hooper

There is a fundamental difference between the Jewish idea of creation and that of Islam. The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will. – Aga Khan III

There is a group of individuals who are radical jihadists. We need to call them by name. They believe it is OK to kill people in the name of their religion. It is not all of Islam. It is not all Muslims. But there is a subgroup who believe it is OK. In fact, it is their plan and design to kill people. – Tim Pawlenty

There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman. – Andre Malraux

There is an idea that you can take the spiritual teachings of a religion outside of a religion and practice them; these ideas are brought forward. That appears to be easy. You can say, “Oh, well. I don’t have to bother about not eating pork, and not drinking wine, and all you have to do is read the beautiful poetry of Rumi and talk about wine, women and song. Or something like that.” This kind of attitude. This is the antipode of the other attitude which says Islam is nothing but throwing bombs, it has nothing to do with internal or inward purification. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

There is clearly a conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western democracy and a growing minority that does not. – Munira Mirza

There is far more misunderstanding of Islam than there is, I think, of the other religions of the world. So many things are said of it by those who do not belong to that faith. – Annie Besant

There is great potential and deep fragility [in Malaysia] that can be used by any group that stresses on religion, pushing towards Islam, rejecting people and alienating migrants – anything can be used to win the next elections. So these are the signs of fragility that is very much there. – Tariq Ramadan

There is no “true Islam,” just different interpretations. Since I brought up patriarchy, let me make one thing clear. I am not singling out men; I am addressing the issue of inequality of genders. A patriarchy does not only not accept the equality of the sexes, it also has a hard time understanding the principles of democracy and its essence. Women are the victims of this patriarchal culture, but they are also its carriers. Let us keep in mind that every oppressive man was raised in the confines of his mother’s home. This is the culture we need to resist and fight. – Shirin Ebadi

There is no compulsion in Islam. You convert “voluntarily”. But you are free not to convert by accepting subjugation, humiliation, discrimination and constant harassment. What can be more democratic? – Ali Sina

There is no doubt that terrorists acting under the banner of Islam have declared war on us. – Bob Beckel

There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can compete successfully with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to. – Sam Harris

There is no such thing as one Islam. The Koran is ambiguous and Islam is not a monolithic entity. – Walter Kasper

There is one Islam, unreformed, but three sets of Muslims. Medina, Mecca, and. Dissidents, reformers, whatever you want to call them. The first group are the extremists and fundamentalists, the second the great mass of Muslims who just want to live their lives in peace, and the third are reformers. – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There is something endearing about people who give themselves up completely to their faith. But there is likewise something frightening about such a totality, which also is a feature of Islam. – Margrethe II of Denmark

There is something which is going to be one of the main challenges in the Muslim world today, in the Muslim-majority countries in the Arab world, is the religious credibility. How are you going to react to what is said about Islam? So, by touching the prophet of Islam, the reaction should be, who is going to be the guardian? – Tariq Ramadan

There is tension between the values of modern society and the principles of Islam. – Pim Fortuyn

There was this famous clash of civilization thesis from Samuel Huntington, a political theorist. And the idea was that Western civilization is at war with Islam and maybe some of the other civilizations around the world. And I don’t agree with that. But I do think there is such a thing as Western civilization. I think it starts with the Greeks and the Romans. Then it goes through the Enlightenment – or the Reformation, the Enlightenment. It goes through the scientific age. And it somewhat defines some of the cultures and mores of Europe and North America and some other countries. – David Brooks

There’s a common threat facing all of us – Christians, Jews, and Muslims – and that is the Antichrist. It’s a very deep subject, and it’s a horrendous thing to contemplate. Someone will appear who is, in fact, the opposite of what he appears to be. Some people will believe in him, and that’s really frightening. In Islam, there’s a belief that Jesus will return to destroy the Antichrist, which is something many people don’t know about the Islamic faith. – Cat Stevens

There’s a lot of misunderstanding out there, particularly in the difference between religion and culture. For example, I hear people criticise Islam for arranged marriages, but that’s nothing to do with Islam. It is the culture in some places, but it’s actually against Islam. – Moeen Ali

There’s no religion in this country that is more misunderstood, mis-categorized, and misidentified than Islam. – W. Kamau Bell

There’s no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does. – Sam Harris

These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, – is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame. – Thomas Carlyle

These are the themes in life which are consistent in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism – of being grounded in who you are and being engaged in an unjust world. – Cory Booker

These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it. – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

These issues that exist among people that we are Iranian and what we need to do for Iran are not correct; these issues are not correct. This issue, which is perhaps being discussed everywhere, regarding paying attention to nation and nationality is nonsense in Islam and is against Islam. One of the things that the designers of Imperialism and their agents have promoted is the idea of nation and nationality. – Ruhollah Khomeini

These two value systems [islam and U.S constitution] do not clash in any way, and my son is a member of the United States Armed Forces active duty. He`s proud to serve his country. And there are many more people who are exact same thing. – Steve King

They do not understand Islam, and I think that is one area where perhaps I hope one day I will play a role in actually making people understand what we perceive Islam to be. – Imran Khan

They used Akbar’s principles to formulate a version of Islam that could peacefully co-exist with other religions (or so they claimed). An Emperor’s Bequest to Islam, their joint 1,300-page doorstopper, spent twenty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in hardcover alone. The fact that they remained practicing Muslims (albeit the liberal, wine-guzzling kind) put their message in high international demand. – Manil Suri

Things that become important to economies become ritualized and become deified. Because I’m Jewish, I always thought it was interesting that in Judaism, salt seals a bargain, particularly the covenant with God. Some people, when they bless bread, they dip it in salt. Same thing exists in Islam. – Mark Kurlansky

This adoption of companions became a feature of Muslim life, in which the two companions, referred to as “companions in Allah”, shared their spiritual, emotional and material resources. Some of the features of this practice could become the basis for pretty exciting and meaningful companionships. – Farid Esack

This is a book called Women in the Shade of Islam. It’s published by the government of Saudi Arabia. I picked it up in Pakistan, where the Taliban Ladies Auxiliary, and our young wife in California would’ve picked up an item like this. And it puts out that Salafi-Wahhabi ideology that is ultimately the toxic poison that is crossing all these borders. – Dalia Mogahed

This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran’s ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry? – Azar Nafisi

This is a war for the soul of Islam. And those countries who are opposed to Islam, they are going to have to get deeply involved in a way that is not the case today. We should be supportive of that effort. – Bernie Sanders

This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition. – Polly Toynbee

This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, ‘infidels’, for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world. – Salman Rushdie

This religion (Islam) recognizes all men as brothers. It accepts all human beings as equals before God, and as equal members in the Human Family of Mankind. – Malcolm X

This [terrorists attacks on 9/11] was part of nothing. It was a leap into another realm – the realm of crazy abstractions and mythological generalities, involving people who have hijacked Islam for their own purposes. It’s important not to fall into that trap and to try to respond with a metaphysical retaliation of some sort. – Edward Said

Those who say Islam is a warlike religion must ask if Christianity has been as well. – Wendell Berry

Those who say that the West and Islam are eternally irreconcilable have more in common with the Islam extremists than they might like to think, for it’s the very same argument of course advanced by Al-Qaida. And they do have it wrong. We need to work with mainstream Islam. – Pauline Neville-Jones

Those who say that we want nationality, they are standing against Islam… We have no use for the nationalists. Moslems are useful for us. Islam is against nationality. – Ruhollah Khomeini

Though philosophical Hinduism has no other god but God, it cannot be denied that practical Hinduism is not so emphatically uncompromising as Islam. – Mahatma Gandhi

Though the white man is a kind of Satan, and though the black man is Satan for selling his own children into bondage and assassinating the image of his own mother, because he himself wants to be white’I can assure you that Africa has known no greater Satan than the twins, Arab and Islam. – Kola Boof

Throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. – Barack Obama

Throughout its history, Islam has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations, both ancient and modern. – Shereen El Feki

Throughout the past, there has been a lack of intimacy, affection, and regard for Islam by Christianity. This, to a large extent, has been due to a lack of knowledge of the great human and spiritual ideals for which Islam and the teachings of Islam stand. – Aly Khan

To be brutally frank, I mean Christianity is dying in Europe, and Islam is on the rise. – Steve Bannon

To claim that ISIS is Islamic is egregiously inaccurate and empirically unsustainable, not to mention insulting to the 1.6 billion non-violent adherents of Islam across the planet. – Mehdi Hasan

To me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Muhammad and the utter degradation of women is the outstanding cause for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have kept on developing. – George S. Patton

To try to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy is absolutely crazy. Islam has no understanding of the separation between church and state because they don’t understand Islam to be a church. – Stanley Hauerwas

Today (1950), the hatred of the Moslem countries against the West is becoming hatred against Christianity itself. Although the statesmen have not yet taken it into account, there is still grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return and, with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world Power. – Fulton J. Sheen

Today we’re seeing fundamental conflicts within political Islam, with the fundamentalists on the one side and the moderates on the other. Who gains the upper hand means a great deal to the world. – Zalmay Khalilzad

Today, I join King Abdullah in Paris to stand in solidarity with the people of France in their darkest hour…To stand in unity against extremism in all its forms and to stand up for our cherished faith, Islam. And so that the lasting image of these terrible events is an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy and support between people of all faiths and cultures. – Queen Rania of Jordan

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

Traditional Islam is a mixture of all obedience to Allah, and if that requires militancy, so be it. – Deepak Chopra

Traditional Muslims stand at the foot of the ladder, living in guilt for not really practicing Islam. At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur’an. Moderates are somewhere in between. A moderate Muslim is actually more dangerous than a fundamentalist, however, because he appears to be harmless, and you can never tell when he has taken that next step toward the top. Most suicide bombers began as moderates. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

True Islam taught me that it takes all of the religious, political, economic, psychological, and racial ingredients, or characteristics, to make the Human Family and the Human Society complete. – Malcolm X

Ultimately, I hope Jesus will save Buddhism, Islam and every other religion, including the Christian religion, which often seems to need saving about as much as any other religion does. – Brian D. McLaren

Unfortunately, a certain type of Islam ghettoizes itself and is incompatible with our society. And it amazes me that some within the Catholic hierarchy act as if they do not understand. – Matteo Salvini

Verily, I constantly renew my Islam until this very day, as up to now, I do not consider myself to have ever been a good Muslim. – Ibn Taymiyyah

Verily, the word of Allah teaches us, and we implicitly believe it, that for a Muslim to kill a Jew, or for him to be killed by a Jew, ensures him immediate entry into Heaven and into the august presence of Allah. – Ibn Saud

Wahhabism goes and takes elements from the Islamic tradition that are most oppressive of women, and highlights and enlarges them and makes them the whole of Islam. In my view, that’s a clear corruption of the Islamic tradition. – Khaled Abou El Fadl

Was Islam spread by them through force and coercion? No. They preached Islam by personal example. – Pervez Musharraf

We all sat there laughing and sipping tea peacefully, an infidel and representatives from three warring sects of Islam. And I thought if we can get along this well, we can accomplish anything. The British policy was ‘divide and conquer.’ But I say ‘unite and conquer. – Greg Mortenson

We are a people whom Allah gave might and glory to through Islam, so we will never seek glory through anything else. – Umar

We are being challenged by Islam these years. There are some things for which one should display no tolerance. And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction. – Margrethe II of Denmark

We are free, in the West, to choose; we have real choice to pursue our own desires; we are free to set the goals and contents of our own lives; the West is made up of individuals who are free to decide what meaning to give to their lives-in short the glory of the West is that life is an open book,[1] while under Islam, life is a closed book, everything has been decided for you: God and the Holy Law set limits on the possible agenda of your life. – Ibn Warraq

We are in a conflict, whether we like it or not. I think we have to identify the enemy and call it by its name. And the enemy is an ideology rooted in militant Islam. – Ron DeSantis

We are living in a culture that if you criticize immorality you could be branded as a “bigot”. I am going to lose a lot of support just by saying this. I am not a politician and I am not running a popularity contest. My job is to defend our world from Islam. You asked why the westerners convert to Islam and I must tell the truth as I see it. If that offends anyone, let him be offended. – Ali Sina

We are not a land of Islam, and if French citizens can be Muslims, it’s on the condition to submit to habits and ways of life that the Greek, Roman influence and 16 centuries of Christianity have shaped. – Marion Marechal-Le Pen

We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam. – Barack Obama

We are not at war with the Afghani people, and we are not at war with Islam, which most Americans respect as a religion of peace. – George W. Bush

We are not fighting against the Palestinian people, and we are not at war with Islam. We are fighting against terrorism. – Reuven Rivlin

We are to take no counsel with flesh and blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes; to know that we know nothing, that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems, that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, and say, “It is good and wise,–God is great! Though He slay me, yet I trust in Him.” Islam means, in its way, denial of self. This is yet the highest wisdom that heaven has revealed to our earth. – Thomas Carlyle

We can’t keep thinking of gay people as being ostracised; we can’t keep thinking of Muslim people as being [ostracised] because of the fundamentalism that occurs in Islam. Muslim people have to do something about speaking up about it. We can’t judge a book by its cover. – Elton John

We cannot hope to win the ideological battle against Islam without criticism of Islam, it is essential that we continue to criticize Islam. – Ibn Warraq

We certainly love the Muslim people. But that is not the faith of this country. And that is not the religion that built this nation. The people of the Christian faith and the Jewish faith are the ones who built America, and it is not Islam. – Franklin Graham

We Christians joyfully recognize the religious values we have in common with Islam. I would like to repeat what I said to young Muslims some years ago in Casablanca: ‘We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection. – Pope John Paul II

We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Mohammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That can be the historic future. – Carl Jung

We have a toxic ideology, hopefully very small, within Islam; certainly most people, most Muslims, don’t agree with this violent, jihadist approach. – Jeff Sessions

We have always realized, as Israelis and as Jews, that we are not fighting Islam and thus avoided turning the Temple Mount issue into a war of Jews against Muslims. – Reuven Rivlin

We have been given a role to play. We have been asked to provide, to give lectures on the role of Islamic development and the way we do it here, so the people who are Muslims there would understand what the role of Islam is. – Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

We have different levels of slavery. We’ve got educational slavery. All the major religions of the world, even Christianity and Islam, are engaged in some form of servitude of people. I don’t look favorably on either one although I think properly practiced all religions are basically good. – John Henrik Clarke

We have not ceased to insist that an Islam of tolerance is advantageous to all Muslims, for the Afghans and the whole world and we will always defend it. – Ahmad Shah Massoud

We have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace, and when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there’s only us, because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country. So, we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations. – Barack Obama

We have religious freedom – which is important. But we want everyone in our country to respect our laws, and our laws on Islam say it is not acceptable to have influence abroad on the Muslim community in Austria, and it is not acceptable that Islamic organizations or imams are financed from abroad. – Sebastian Kurz

We have seen violence and terror perpetrated by those who profess to stand up for faith, their faith. Professed to stand up for Islam, but in fact are betraying it. Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. – Barack Obama

We have shown that Islam can rule the world perfectly for 14 centuries, and during this time of Muslim power we did not borrow ideas like democracy from others, so why do we need to learn democracy from them now? – Abu Bakar Bashir

We have to find a way to try and reconcile our beliefs – and Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, has traditionally seen homosexuality as a sin – with the reality of life in modern, pluralistic, secular societies in which gay people cannot be wished away or banished from sight. – Mehdi Hasan

We have to free the Muslim mind from the obsession with limits and rules and forgetting the path and objective. This is truly a liberating process, and for me this is Islam: liberation from the ego, and in this case liberating ourselves from the wrong understanding of the religion. – Tariq Ramadan

We intend to do is invite Barack Obama and the American administration and the general public to think about Islam as an alternative really, we believe that the problems in the world today aren’t necessarily because of people and they need to go back to the divine law and so ours is a call to go back to the divine law and implement Islam. – Anjem Choudary

We know they have nothing to do with Islam because our politicians keep telling us that, and they are all Islamic scholars. (They are, aren’t they?) Yes, the violence is coming exclusively from Muslims, but only because their religion (the one that has nothing to do with Islam) tells them to kill unbelievers, meaning people who don’t follow the religion with a knife to our throat that has nothing to do with Islam. – Pat Condell

We learned at an early age that it was men’s interpretation of our religion that restricted women’s opportunities, not our religion itself. Islam in fact had been quite progressive toward women from its inception. – Benazir Bhutto

We love to think this fundamentalism and terrorism is all about poverty, and, of course, it has a connection. You can see that these people not only are poor but they have no outlets. These governments allow no opposition. So what do people do? They go to Islam. It’s the only organizational institution where they can express their feelings. But it’s not about poverty. I’ve never seen a single demonstration in which the people have come out with signs saying, “Please give us better roads. Please give us new prenatal clinics. Please give us a new sewage system.” – Robert Fisk

We must not be afraid to define our enemy. It is Islamic extremist terrorism. I did not say all of Islam. I said Islamic extremist terrorism. Failing to identify them properly maligns decent Muslims around the world. It also sets up a fear of being politically incorrect that can have serious consequences. And it has. – Rudy Giuliani

We need to deal with three things that are important: first, we need a very deep reconsideration of how we are dealing with the economy. Second, there must be a very deep reconsideration of our way of life. We cannot simply adopt American-style consumer culture. To Islamize that is to de-Islamize Islam.Thirdly, it is important for us to understand the economy and the environment are common challenges for everyone. This is where the singularity of Islamic principles needs to join the universal values that we share with others. – Tariq Ramadan

We need to educate people about the reality of Islam, the logics of Islam. I am sure every free man in this world would fight the ideology of Islam. – Mosab Hassan Yousef

We need to revisit how the Prophet dealt with water, animals, in how he talked about slaughtering, caring for plants and so forth. Respect towards nature is a part of Islam. This is essential but Muslims are not aware. The whole world is talking about global warming and respecting nature but Muslims are not doing enough of that. – Tariq Ramadan

We see in Islam a religion that traces its origins back to God’s call on Abraham. We share your belief in God’s justice, and your insistence on man’s moral responsibility. We thank the many Muslim nations who stand with us against terror. Nations that are often victims of terror, themselves. – George W. Bush

We should be proud that our Prophet came into the world with the message of Islam to change it for the better, and not for the worse, or to keep things as they are. – Abu Bakar Bashir

We should not judge Islam by terrorists. All civilizations and cultures produce terrorists. Every time there is a flag-burning, killing, or provocative films, I’m worried, not because something radical will happen, and this time, some people are killed. We’re very sorry for that. – Orhan Pamuk

We twist ourselves into knots convincing people that Islam is peaceful and varied before we realize that, wait a second, you can be a Muslim while also recognizing that Islam doesn’t even explain half of your behaviors! – Negin Farsad

We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn’t threaten us. It was a holy war, just as we’ve made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant. – Gore Vidal

We will convert the entire world to Islam with our logic. We are confident that the Islamic logic, culture, and discourse can prove their superiority in all fields over all schools of thought and theories. – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world – including in my own country. – Barack Obama

We would be able to deal with Islam if we were allowed to deal with it in the way we think we should. – Viktor Orban

We’ll surely stop the work of all western Christian and eastern religions, and also Islam. – Vladimir Zhirinovsky

We’re going to have to rely on the world of Islam, major Islamic nations, to take the lead in helping promote a very different view of Islam – peace and understanding, as opposed to the radicalization going on. The Saudis and UAE and Qatar and others are going to have to take a leading role in changing hearts and minds in the world of Islam. – Mitt Romney

We’re not at war with all Muslims, we’re at war with a subset of Islam that believes in killing in the name of religion, as jihadis do. – Benjamin E. Sasse

We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. It’s a different God, and I believe it [Islam] is a very evil and wicked religion. – Franklin Graham

We’re taking action against evil people. Because this great nation of many religions understands, our war is not against Islam, or against faith practiced by the Muslim people. Our war is a war against evil. This is clearly a case of good versus evil, and make no mistake about it – good will prevail. – George W. Bush

We’ve got jihadists. That doesn’t mean that all Muslims are problems with respect to terrorism, but there is something going on here. We’ve got a problem dealing with one aspect of one portion of modern Islam – just as hundreds of years ago the world had a problem with Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. – James Woolsey

We’ve got to reach out to Muslim countries. We’ve got to have them be part of our coalition. If they hear people running for president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam, that was one of the real contributions, despite all the other problems, that George W. Bush made after 9/11 when he basically said after going to a Mosque in Washington, we are not at war with Islam or Muslims. – Hillary Clinton

We’ve seen those results in generations of Muslim immigrants – farmers and factory workers, helping to lay the railroads and build our cities, the Muslim innovators who helped build some of our highest skyscrapers and who helped unlock the secrets of our universe. – Barack Obama

Well, the most important thing about Islam is that we have to differentiate between two kinds of Islam. The first one is the institution of Islam… second, the culture of Islam. – Abdurrahman Wahid

Well, today, we are in the struggle brought on to us by the terrorists of Islam. It is a war that we did not choose. It was a war that was declared against us as Americans, against our people, against our Constitution. – Todd Tiahrt

Were the books of Islam all to be lost, excepting only the Ihya’ (a book written by al-Ghazali), it would suffice to replace them all. – Al-Nawawi, Joseph E. B. Lumbard

Western intellectual Islamologists have totally failed in their duties as intellectuals. They have betrayed their calling by abandoning their critical faculties when it comes to Islam. – Wafa Sultan

What has been imposed on religion is not religion itself but the custom of those who have been converted to it. I think that the most atrocious of all of this is Islam. They were in the slave trade before Islam. The Arabs were natural slave traders. They were the people who were called on to conquer us, unfortunately. – John Henrik Clarke

What I want is to talk about how someone raised Muslim struggles with the same stuff that everyone else theoretically could. Obviously, the particulars are different, but everybody can sympathize with being forced to answer for their identity, the colour of their skin or their religion. A lot of people struggle with mental illness or romance or failed marriages – these are all parts of my own struggle. I read them through the lens of Islam because that’s the particular language I grew up in, but the grammar is universal. – Haroon Moghul

What is most necessary for people and what is given us in great abundance, are experiences, especially experiences of the forces within us. This is our most essential food, our most essential wealth. If we consciously receive all this abundance, the universe will pour into us what is called life in Judaism, spirit in Christianity, light in Islam, power in Taoism. – Jacob Needleman

What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air…. It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it…. Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace. – Salman Rushdie

What the printing press is to Christianity in the 16th century, that’s what the Internet is doing to Islam now. It has opened up the monopoly over the interpretation of Islam that used to solely belong to the religious class. – Reza Aslan

What’s happened in the United States is something that has already happened in Europe and that is that Islam is become ‘otherised’, it has become a kind of receptacle into which fears and anxieties about the political or economic situation, about the changing racial landscape of this country are being thrown. – Reza Aslan

What’s right with America and what’s right with Islam have a lot in common. At their highest levels, both worldviews reflect an enlightened recognition that all of humankind shares a common Creator – that we are, indeed, brothers and sisters. – Feisal Abdul Rauf

When 9/11 hit, the second thing I said to myself was, ‘This really is what religious people do.’ Those people flying the plane were very good, very pious, truly faithful believers. There’s no other way to paint them. Of course, they are extremists by definition, but they certainly aren’t going against Islam in any real way. – Penn Jillette

When anyone studies a little or pays a little attention to the rules of Islamic government, Islamic politics, Islamic society and Islamic economy he will realize that Islam is a very political religion. Anyone who will say that religion is separate from politics is a fool; he does not know Islam or politics. – Ruhollah Khomeini

When I do pray, I pray directly to God. In Islam, God has no partners or intermediaries. He alone is the final judge of us all. Islam has no middle men. – Asma Hasan

When I was growing up, we often heard Islam in the form of a slogan: “Islam is the solution,” but no one ever told me that Islam can be a burden… Very few Muslims write about Islam creatively because I don’t think we’re given permission to. I think that’s the bane of modern Islam. It’s been reduced to slogans. – Haroon Moghul

When I was in the US, I felt that the discourse there surrounding Muslims as the other, problematising Muslims and Islam as the other was very similar to what we find in Australia, which is that the image of Islam is a constructed image in the West. We are starting from a point of view that Islam and Muslims – well Islam is a violent, misogynistic, hateful religion and that is where the debate always starts from – that presumption underlies the discourse. – Reza Aslan

When I’m out of town, I always try to get some readings or some type of new information to where I’m learning more about Islam, just to become the best Muslim I can become. – Dave East

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

When it comes to training imams, one needs a partner. But if we want the mosques to preach peaceful coexistence, we will have to do something about it. One goal of the conference is to find a partner for the training of imams and teachers of Islam in schools. – Wolfgang Schauble

When leading evangelicals say terrible things about Islam, evil things about Islam, terrible things about Muhammad, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. – Tony Campolo

When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet’s (Muhammad’s) ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof! – Thomas Carlyle

When someone comes under abuse or attack a characteristic response is to blame yourself, especially if you are locked into a relationship of being attacked regularly, and making apologies for your abuser. It actually affects Christians living in Islamic circumstances more, and one Palestinian Christian spoke about that problem of needing to defend Islam in order to protect yourself. – Mark Durie

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996 after a searing, four-year civil war, they immediately instituted laws which fit their utopic vision of the time of Islam’s founding more than 1,300 years earlier. Afghan women’s lives offered the most visible sign of the imagined past to which Afghanistan’s present was to be returned. – Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

When we are clear enough about our own point of view, we can find help in the methods of Eastern Christianity or in the ways of the Far East, perhaps by consulting the I Ching or through mandala contemplation; we may even find help in the ways of shamanism or Islam. If we are clear about where we stand and the direction we must take, such methods may be useful in order to follow our own way to the end. – Morton T. Kelsey

When we think about Islamic feminism, it is not just about women’s rights. It’s about a more progressive and tolerant expression of Islam in the world for all people. Women’s rights is one aspect of it, it’s not the end-all, but I also think that the women’s issue is the strongest entry point that we’ve got to challenging extremism. You raise a woman’s issue and you get the backs of the conservatives up against the wall faster than just about any other issue in our community. It’s the fastest path that we’ve got to making change happen. – Asra Nomani

When Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster the terrorists’ propaganda. – David Petraeus

Whenever Muslim women protest and ask for their rights, they are silenced with the argument that the laws are justified under Islam. It is an unfounded argument. It is not Islam at fault, but rather the patriarchal culture that uses its own interpretations to justify whatever it wants. It utilizes psychology to say that women are emotional. It utilizes medical science to say that men’s brains are formed in such a way that they are better able to understand concepts. These are all hypotheses. None of this has been proven. – Shirin Ebadi

Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor. – Theodore Roosevelt

Whether you look at Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, wherever a distinction of sex is made, it is to the advantage of men. If you think of religions as if they were novels, the authors are men, and so are the major characters. – Katha Pollitt

While many Islamic countries pay lip service to the idea of freedom of religion, they don’t put up with conversion from Islam to another religion. – Ibn Warraq

While no Muslim worthy of his name would lose his respect for God, the Prophet Muhammad, and other symbols of Islam, he might well refrain from using legal prosecution or violent reaction to those who do not show the same respect. My basis for this claim is nothing other than the holiest source of Islam, the Quran. – Mustafa Akyol

While the West tries to turn its civilization into cultural variety hour, Islam tries to turn Muslim lands into a cultural monolith. The same West that justifies the rap culture thinks that every Muslim terrorist bombing is an expression of economic angst or social alienation. – Ben Shapiro

While there are corporal descriptions of what the afterlife is like in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, what’s going on there is the finite trying to describe the infinite. If God knows everything, started everything and is the only one who knows how it’s going to end, how can any human know what God wants? – Keith Ellison

White people whom I have met, who have accepted Islam, they don’t regard themselves as white but as human beings. – Malcolm X

Who says that it’s easy being a Muslim today? Was it ever easy? To fly the flag in solidarity with Muslims suffering somewhere may well be; to wear the tag, even easier. To be a submitter to the will of Allah, the literal meaning of the word muslim, is an infinitely more difficult kettle of fish. – Farid Esack

Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Mohammedan world, which will shake off the domination of Europeans – still nominally Christian – and reappear as the prime enemy of our civilization? The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam. – Hilaire Belloc

With Islam, there’s the Sharia. There’s the Islamic law which prevails, and as long as it doesn’t distinguish between God and the state, it’s a problem. – Matteo Salvini

With Islamophobic tendencies in Europe and North America it is quite possible that Islamic leaders could be charged with ‘political genocide’. An extremist American pastor in a small Florida church held a trial that convicted the Koran of encouraging the murder of non-Muslims and of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks. It is this sort of outlook that would be encouraged to claim that Islam embodied ‘political genocide’, a development that would have many negative effects on inter-civilisational relations within and among countries. – Richard A. Falk

With the loss of the American dollar as its own currency and its devaluation, I think that people will not even be able to afford bread and milk. They’re facing a real crisis in America and I think the solution is Islam. – Anjem Choudary

Without criticism of Islam, Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. It will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality, originality and truth. – Wafa Sultan

Without Sufism, Islam would not have spread into two thirds of what we call the Islamic world. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Women are not automatically second-class citizens because they live in Islamic countries. We cannot judge the position of women in Islam a right if we take the most conservative Islamic states as representative of the whole. – Prince Charles

Yes, ISIL is a terror-based insurgent army that seeks to establish a Caliphate, but the group’s actual end goal is far from political: ISIL believes that, through jihad, it will bring about the Day of Judgment. This is not true Islam. – Malcolm Nance

Yes, women should be free to cover their faces when walking down the street. But in our schools, hospitals, airports, banks and civil institutions, it is not unreasonable – nor contrary to the teachings of Islam – to expect women to show the one thing that allows the rest of us to identify them… namely, their face. – Maajid Nawaz

You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell. – George Bernard Shaw

You always had a few brothers that was speaking on Islam, like my brother’s uncle. It wasn’t big in my neighborhood, but with certain brothers, it was big. I respected it because Islam is my home. I found my home when Islam came to me. I’ve been living with it ever since. – Ghostface Killah

You can still see the shadow from when the Zeppelin floated over America; it took like Islam in the desert . . . – Michael Herr

You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam. – Siraj Wahhaj

You have an expansionist Islam and you have an expansionist China. Right? They are motivated. They’re arrogant. They’re on the march. And they think the Judeo-Christian West is on the retreat. – Steve Bannon

You know, my goal, once I leave the music business, is like, ‘Man, Lupe didn’t lead us astray.’ It comes directly from Islam: leading people astray is the worst thing you could do. Especially in perpetuity; like, your music continues to go on and live without you. That risk is too great for me; I’m gonna keep it positive. – Lupe Fiasco

You need to understand that Islam is the problem. I am sick and tired of people here in the West asking me to soften my message. I am sick and tired of people asking me, “Are you trying to change 1.3 billion people?” Yes, I am trying! – Wafa Sultan

You notice how liberals keep saying, ‘If only Islam would have a Reformation’ – it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way. – Christopher Hitchens

You ought not to accept the claim that this is a religious practice. I think that’s, frankly, problematic for Islam, for well-intentioned Liberals like you to say that this is a religious practice when the overwhelming consensus of Islamic scholars around the world, and the overwhelming majority of Canadian Muslims, believe this has absolutely – that the niqab as face covering, that this symbol of misogyny has nothing to do with Islam. – Jason Kenney

You see in Islam, you see in Christianity, you see in Africa, in different religions, in Buddhism and Hinduism, there is a strong commitment to refugee protection. – Antonio Guterres

You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion [Islam] too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness? – Adolf Hitler

Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of fairy tales. – Voltaire