Toby Lester Quotes & Sayings

The only real source of historical information about pre-Islamic Mecca and the circumstances of the Koran's revelation is the classical Islamic story about the religion's foundation ... — Toby Lester

The prominent Egyptian government minister, university professor, and writer Taha Hussein ... devoted himself to the study of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up concluding that much of that body of work had been fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to lend outside support to Koranic mythology ... [T]he Iranian journalist and diplomat Ali Dashti ... repeatedly took his fellow Muslims to task for not questioning the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life, much of which he called myth-making and miracle-mongering. — Toby Lester

A good painter has two chief objects to paint: man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard. - Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1490) — Toby Lester