Quotes by Scholars - Page 5

The Qur’ān began by criticizing two closely related aspects of that society: the polytheism or multiplicity of gods which was symptomatic of the segmentation of society, and the gross socioeconomic disparities that equally rested on and perpetuated a pernicious divisiveness of mankind. The two are obverse and converse of the same coin: only God can ensure the essential unity of the human race as His creation, His subjects, and those responsible finally to Him alone. The economic disparities were most persistently criticized, because they were the most difficult to remedy and were at the hear of social discord—although tribal rivalries, with their multiple entanglements of alliance, enmity, and vengeance, were no less serious, and the welding of these tribes into a political unity was an imperative need. Certain abuses of girls, orphans, and women, and the institution of slavery demanded desperate reform.
Fazlur Rahman
The purpose of man's creation is that he do good in the world, not substitutehimself for God and think that he can make and unmake the moral law at his ownconvenience and for his own selfish and narrow ends. This is the difference betweenphysical laws and the moral law—the one is to be used and put to service; the othermust be obeyed and served. For God says
Fazlur Rahman
↑ top up position down↓ bottom“The corruption of religious leaders, who were expected to be the source of spiritual force and regeneration, is the last step in the decay of a community.
Fazlur Rahman
The simple truth is that nowhere in human history is there another manwho combined so uniquely and effectively in his person both the idealist and realist factors as did Muħammad (Peace be upon him)
Fazlur Rahman
For the Qur’ān, it is neither strange nor out of tune nor blameworthy for a prophetthat he is not always consistent as a human. It is nevertheless as a human that hebecomes an example for mankind, for his average level of conduct is still so high that it is a worthy model for mankind.
Fazlur Rahman
Nature exists for man to exploit for his own ends, while the end of man himself is nothing else but to serve God, to be grateful to Him, and to worship Him alone.
Fazlur Rahman
The successful are those who can be saved from their own selfishness.
Fazlur Rahman
The idea behind verses about the sealing of hearts appears to be the psychological law that if a person once does a good or an evil deed, his chances of repeating that kind of action increase and of doing its opposite proportionately decrease. With constant repetition of an evil or of a good action, it becomes almost impossible for a person to do the opposite, or even to think of it, so much so that while men's hearts become "sealed" and their eyes "blinded" if they do evil, their doing good produces such a state of mind that the devil himself can have no sway over it. Nevertheless, actions which create a psychological habit, however strong their influence may be, must not be construed as absolute determinants, for there is no "point of no return" for human behavior: genuine repentance (tauba) can turn an apparently wholly evil man into a paragon of virtue; on the other hand, although this is much more rare, an apparent paragon of virtue (even a prophet!) can turn into a near devil enmeshed in carnal pleasures .
Fazlur Rahman
The removal of God from human consciousness means the removal of meaning and purpose from human life.
Fazlur Rahman
If Allah wants to send me a message,he'll do so on the faces of my brothers and sisters.
Michael Muhammad Knight
If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones.
Michael Muhammad Knight
They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen.
Michael Muhammad Knight
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
I'm a spiritual person, she said. "I believe in Allah, you know, though I don't always call It 'Allah' and I pray the way I want to pray. Sometimes I just look out at the stars and this love-fear thing comes over me, you know? And sometimes I might sit in a Christian church listening to them talk about Isa with a book of Hafiz in my hands instead of the hymnal. And you know what, Yusef? Sometimes, every once in a while, I get out my old rug and I pray like Muhammad prayed. I never learned the shit in Arabic and my knees are uncovered, but if Allah has a problem with that then what kind of Allah do we believe in?
Michael Muhammad Knight
[Islam] is the dynamic conviction that a person's spiritual and worldly responsibilities are one and the same, that an individuals duty to the community is indistinguishable from his or her duty to God.
Reza Aslan
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
History proves beyond any possibility of doubt that no religion has ever given a stimulus to scientific progress comparable to that of Islam. The encouragement which learning and scientific research received from Islamic theology resulted in the splendid cultural achievements in the days of the Umayyads and Abbasids and the Arab rule in Sicily and Spain. I do not mention this in order that we might boast of those glorious memories at a time when the Islamic world has forsaken its own traditions and reverted to spiritual blindness and intellectual poverty. We have no right, in our present misery, to boast of past glories. But we must realize that it was the negligence of the Muslims and not any deficiency in the teachings of Islam that caused our present decay. Islam has never been a barrier to progress and science. It appreciates the intellectual activities of man to such a degree as to place him above the angels. No other religion ever went so far in asserting the dominance of reason and, consequently, of learning, above all other manifestations of human life.
Muhammad Asad
The Islamic Reformation is already here. We are all living in it.
Reza Aslan
Islam’s all about knowledge, right? Muslims know everything. We seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. We seek knowledge even if it be in China, Yusef, EVEN IN CHINA! And we’ve reduced our religion to fuckin’ academics. The guy who knows Islam best is the one who really hits the books hard, learns his shit. Muslims brag about having no priests but we’re getting molested by scholars. Yusef Ali, books are not Allah. Even a book by or from Allah is not Allah.
Michael Muhammad Knight
A Muslim just follows Allah. Sunni-Shiah? That's farga, the groups—Allah discourages this in the Quran, you know, never ever form the groups.
Michael Muhammad Knight
They were Muslims, man, but not your uncles. They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen. Iman, think about it like that, iman! It's supposed to be all about having no fear of death, right? And we got that part down, we've done that and we have plenty of Muslims who aren't afraid to die. Mash'Allah--but now Muslims are afraid to fuckin' live! They fear life, yakee, more than they fear shaytans or shirk or fitna or bid'a or kafr or qiyamah or the torments in the grave, they fear Life... You got all these poor kids who think they're inferior because they don't get their two Fajr in, their four Zuhr, four Asr... they don't have beards, they don't wear hejab, maybe they went to their fuckin' high school proms and the only masjid around was regular horsehit-horseshit-takbir-masjid and they had to pretend like they were doing everything right...well I say fuck that and this whole house says fuck that--even Umar, you think Umar can go in a regular masjid with all his stupid tattoos and dumb straghtedge bands? Even Umar, bro, as much as he tries to Wahabbi-hard-ass his way around here, he's still one of us. He's still fuckin' taqwacore.
Michael Muhammad Knight
So long as Muslims continue looking towards Western civilization as the only force that could regenerate their own stagnant society, they destroy their self-confidence and, indirectly, support the Western assertion that Islam is a "spent force".
Muhammad Asad
By imitating the manners and the mode of life of the West,the Muslims are being gradually forced to adopt the Western moral outlook: for the imitation of outward appearance leads,by degrees, to a corresponding assimilation of the world-view responsible for that appearance.
Muhammad Asad
Radicals have value, at least; they can move the center. On a scale of 1 to 5, 3 is moderate, 1 and 5 the hardliners. But if a good radical takes it up to 9, then 5 becomes the new center. I already saw it working in the American Muslim community. For years women were neglected in mosques, denied entrance to the main prayer halls and relegated to poorly maintained balconies and basements. It was only after a handdful of Muslim feminists raised "lunatic fringe" demands like mixed-gender prayers with men and women standing together and even women imams giving sermons and leading men in prayer that major organizations such as ISNA and CAIR began to recognize the "moderate" concerns and deal with the issue of women in mosques. I've taken part in the woman-led prayer movement, both as a writer and as a man who prays behind women, happy to be the extremist who makes moderate reform seem less threatening. Insha'Allah, what's extreme today will not be extreme tomorrow.
Michael Muhammad Knight
...to imitate Western civilization in its spirit, its mode of life and its social organization is impossible without dealing a fatal blow to the very existence of Islam as an ideological proposition.
Muhammad Asad
...we must learn -once again- to regard Islam as the norm by which the world is to be judged.
Muhammad Asad
I passed by General Zia's tomb and knew that I never would have become Muslim if I was raised in this country [Pakistan]. As a rebellious American adolescent, I had chosen Islam because it was the religion of Malcolm X, a language of resistance against unjust power. But in Pakistan, Islam was the unjust power, or at least part of what kept the machine running. Pakistan's Islam was guilty of everything for which I had rebelled against Reagen-Falwaell Christianity of America.
Michael Muhammad Knight
During his hajj, Malcolm [Malcolm X] fell into a new Islam with the same blind faith that he had given to Elijah. Since he lived just a year after his hajj, Mecca became the neatly presented and cinema-friendly conclusion to his lifelong thread of transformations: but he finally found the Truth and then Allah took him home. But if he lived longer, I think he would have called out the Arabs.
Michael Muhammad Knight
Religion is like an art gallery. One painting will speak to you more than another, and there's no need to explain or defend your taste.
Michael Muhammad Knight
I remembered the malangs of Shah Jamal, the dirty, shirtless renouncers with ratty beards and dreads and bare chests covered in necklaces of prayer beads, throwing around their arms in Charlie Manson dances and whipping out their old ID cards to say look, I used to be someone and now I'm no one, I'm so lost in Allah that I've thrown away the whole world. Would that qualify them as Sufis? I didin't know how to measure it. Whether the malangs were Sufi saints or just drugged-out bums didn't really matter. The lesson I took from them was that you're never disqualified from loving Allah, never. And I could see again that what I went through was nothing new, not even anything special in the history of Islam, not a clashing of East and West; it was always there. And that made me feel more Muslim than ever, because fuck it all, CNN, this is Islam too.
Michael Muhammad Knight
To understand the extreme lengths to which the Sufis were prepared to go in reading esoteric meanings into the quite simple language of their Scriptures, it is necessary to remember that the Koran was committed to memory by all deeply religious men and women, and recited constantly, aloud or in the heart; so that the mystic was in a state of uninterrupted meditation upon the Holy Book. Many passages which would otherwise pass without special notice were therefore bound to arrest their attention, already sufficiently alert, and to quicken their imagination, already fired by the discipline of their austerities and the rigor of their internal life.
A.J. Arberry
A sincere call to the Almighty can change what you may have thought was impossible to change. Never lose hope.
Mufti Ismail Menk
There is one thing only which a Muslim can profitably learn from the west, the exact sciences in their pure and applied form. Only natural sciences and mathematics should be taught in Muslim schools, while tuition of European philosophy, literature and history should lose the position of primacy which today it holds on the curriculum.
Muhammad Asad
Courtesy with them is tariqa and following them is haqiqa.
Imam Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Ja'far
It was inevitable, as soon as legends of miracles became attached to the names of the great mystics, that the credulous masses should applaud imposture more than true devotion; the cult of the saints, against which orthodox Islam ineffectually protested, promoted ignorance and superstition, and confounded charlatanry with lofty speculation. To live scandalously, to act impudently, to speak unintelligibly—this was the easy highroad to fame, wealth, and power.
A.J. Arberry
It's rather simple. God deliver us from people who know so little that they will kill for what little they know.
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Sufism (tasawwuf) is not wearing clothes that you patched; it is not weeping when the singers sing their songs; and it is not dancing, shouting, experiencing ecstatic states, or passing out as if you’ve gone mad. Rather, Sufism is to become whole without any impurities; to follow the truth, the Qur’an, and this religion; and to be seen in a state of awe, broken and remorseful about all of your sins.
Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi
All these schools of though gradually transformed into legal institutions, the diversity of ideas and freedom of opinion that characterized their early development gave way to rigid formalism, strict adherence to precedent, and an almost complete stultification of independent though
Reza Aslan
Certainly the shahadah contained an important theological innovation, but that innovation was not monotheism. With this simple profession of faith, Muhammad was declaring to Mecca that the God of the heavens and the earth required no intermediate whatsoever, but could be accessed by anyone.
Reza Aslan
No one speaks for God - not even the prophets (who speak about God)
Reza Aslan
Ka'b ibn Malik reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Two hungry wolves loose among sheep do not cause as much damage as that caused to a man's deen by his greed for money and reputation.
Muhammad al-Tirmidhi
Ibn Mas'ud reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Shall I tell you who is unlawful for the Fire - or the one for whom the Fire is unlawful? It is unlawful for everyone who is easy, flexible, modest and uncomplicated.
Muhammad al-Tirmidhi
The earth isn’t spinning because you told it to do so. Your intestines aren’t digesting by your command. You’re made up of a trillion cells who don’t ask your permission before offering their rakats. And we think submission is applying strict discipline to our worship? We think surrender is about not eating a pig? It’s just not that small to me. i can’t fit my deen into a neat little box, because to me everything comes from Allah. Birds sing Allah’s name. to say Allah is in this book and not that… do you know who you’re talking about? the Allah that made you from a clot and clothed in flesh… Allah is too big and open for my deen to be small and closed.
Michael Muhammad Knight
Westward on the high-hilled plainsWhere for me the world began, Still, I think, in newer veinsFrets the changeless blood of man....There, when hueless is the westAnd the darkness hushes wide,Where the lad lies down to restStands the troubled dream beside.There, on thoughts that once were mine,Day looks down the eastern steep,And the youth at morning shineMakes the vow he will not keep.
A.E. Housman
I have heard your orators speak on many questions. One among them the so-called vital question of money which is above all things the most coveted commodity but I, as a Jainist, in the name of my countrymen and of my country, would offer you as the medium of the most perfect exchange between us, henceforth and forever, the indestructible, the unchangeable, the universal currency of good will and peace, and this, my brothers and sisters, is a currency that is not interchangeable with silver and gold, it is a currency of the heart, of the good life, of the highest estate on the earth.
Virchand Gandhi
June suns, you cannot store themTo warm the winter's cold,The lad that hopes for heavenShall fill his mouth with mould.
A.E. Housman
For when the mind becomes bound to a passion of the wandering senses, this passion carries away man's wisdom, even as the wind drives a vessel on the waves.
Juan Mascaró
Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
A.E. Housman
Terence, this is stupid stuff:You eat your victuals fast enough;There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,To see the rate you drink your beer.
A.E. Housman
Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. . . Hysterical optimism as a sin against knowledge.
Richard M. Weaver
One physician may gravely exaggerate an illness and give up hope altogether. Another may ignorantly declare that there is no illness and that no treatment is necessary, thus deceiving the patient with false consolation. You may call the first one pessimistic and the second one optimistic. Both are equally dangerous.
Walpola Rahula
Wishes are sometimes just stories that have nowhere to go.
Yvette Christiansë
We are each born into a situation—a particular body (its race, sex, health...), a set of ancestors, a community, a nation—and born into the stories told of each of these.
Lewis Hyde
[Tea-masters] have given emphasis to our natural love of simplicity, and shown us the beauty of humility. In fact, through their teachings tea has entered the life of the people.
Kakuzō Okakura
No woman deserves to be disrespected; to be beaten up, to be called bitches or sluts. Assaulted or insulted. Even if she's a hooker.
Imam Shah
Are women human yet? If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York's brothels...? Would our genitals be sliced out to "cleanse" us...? When will women be human? When? ~ Half The Sky
Catherine Mackinnon
My larger point is that since each of us struggles daily with good and bad impulses, we might want to restructure our social institutions in order to make it a little easier to be good.
Richard D. Kahlenberg
The reason I could never be an atheist is because when they get together they have literally nothing to talk about.
R. Joseph Hoffmann
We allow ourselves to be blown by the winds because we do know what we want: our hearts know it, even if our thoughts are sometimes slow to follow- but in the end they do catch up with our hearts and then we think we have made a decision
Muhammad Asad
The opposite of hope is despair, and when we despair, it is because we feel there are no choices.
Warren G. Bennis