Islam Taught Me Quotes & Sayings

There was one thing the experience had taught him. He said he'd learned that when millions of people, a whole political system, countless numbers of citizens who believed in God, said they were going to kill you - just listen to them. — Terry Hayes

He (Mohammed) seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected; he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. — Thomas Aquinas

...What remains to be said is that no portrait of the Prophet's character will do him justice. He was superior to anything we can imagine. Perhaps the description that comes closest to the truth is that he was "the teacher of perfect goodness." May God reward him well for having taught that perfect goodness to humanity. — Adil Salahi

Did my father talk to me? It's true, he didn't say a lot to me, but I knew what had to be done. No need for big speeches. He taught me the fundamentals of our religion: My son, Islam is simple: you are alone responsible for yourself before God, so if you are good, you will find goodness in the afterlife, and if you are bad, you'll find that instead. There's no mystery: everything depends on how you treat people, especially the weak, the poor, so Islam, that means you pray, you address the Creator and don't do evil around you, don't lie, don't steal, don't betray your wife or your country, don't kill- but do I really need to remind you of this? — Tahar Ben Jelloun

I've learned much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life, while Islam has taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me with the power of music. Here's to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly, and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength ... And most of all, I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine. — Sarah Macdonald

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

One thing was for sure: I had no interest in questioning whether Islam was inherently a religion of peace or one of war, whether the terrorists had misappropriated an innocent faith or the liberal Muslims were only in denial of what Islam actually taught. I'd never claim to know what "true" Islam stood for; religions were too big to make it that simple, there was too much history and too many verses, and everyone just took the parts that they wanted anyway. For a prophet's message to become what they call a world religion, it'd have to be big enough to accommodate all kinds of personalities. Good ones, mean ones, greedy ones, kind ones, hard ones, soft ones, and they all own Islam as much as it owns them. The water has no shape; it's shaped by the bottle. I could see that as a Muslim, contrasting Qari Saheb's sweetness with that maniac Rushdie, and I even saw it with Catholics in Geneva, between sweet Gramps and that dickhead monsignor or Fat Ed. — Michael Muhammad Knight

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

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

An unexpected but important additional advantage of living in Kampung Jawa in this respect was the presence nearby, established as recently as 1955, of the Muslim College, Malaya's first national tertiary institution of Islamic higher education. I was able to use its small library, and came to know well Dr Muhammad Abdul Ra'uf and Dr Muhammad Zaki Badawi, Egyptians engaged to lead the college who also taught at the University of Malaya and later became prominent Muslim intellectuals in the United States and Britain respectively. Along with other members of staff, including the charismatic Pan-Malayan Islamic Party politician Dr Zulkifli Muhammad, they did much to extend my knowledge of Islamic education and wider Muslim issues. — William R. Roff

Ottoman provinces were re-formed and cobbled together into states. The region was carved up with little regard to ethnic, religious, or territorial concerns. The flawed and cavalier treaties of World War I explain to a large degree why the Middle East remains unstable and angry today. Every Muslim schoolchild is taught this arc of history and resents it: Islam's golden era of the Arab caliphate, the Crusades, the Mongol devastation, the rise of the Ottomans, World War I, the carving up of the Middle East by Europe, and the poverty, weakness, and wars in the Muslim world of the last century. This is the basic and sad narrative taught at every mosque, and it has the benefit of being broadly accurate. — Richard Engel

The question, therefore, is not whether one should teach philosophy to Muslim students, but rather what kind or kinds of philosophy should be taught and how the subject should be approached. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

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

Separately, they called our English teacher to register their horror at their offspring being taught about witches, which apparently was an insult to both Islam and Christianity. The English teacher instructed us to white-out the word witches and write in weird sisters. — Bill Campbell

Its hatred is directed not only against Hindus of the more diverse traditions - the ones that the British, and Rammohan Roy, taught the Hindus to despise - but also, ironically, against the very monotheisms (Islam and Christianity) that nurtured the Hindu insistence that Hinduism is monotheistic. — Wendy Doniger

Slavish obedience to the clerics, who know how to squeeze every last drop of advantage out of religion, is killing our girls. We must speak-blaspheme, if necessary; be accused of being apostates, if that is what is required. Muslims are taught that Islam put an end to the Arabian practice of burying alive newborn baby girls because they were considered worthless and a burden, but as long as we stay quiet in the face of the abomination of child marriage, we are effectively burying our girls alive today. — Mona Eltahawy

By 1986 the CIA was spending 70 per cent of its entire operations budget funding a Muslim jihad to kill Russians. The whole campaign was managed by a bunch of Islamists who were giving the lion's share of the US money and weapons to people who wanted to kill Americans. The US was happy to use Islam as a rallying cry. The CIA funded the printing of Korans to be distributed throughout the region, and the University of Nebraska produced primary-school textbooks, known as 'the ABC of Jihad', which taught children the alphabet and to count with Kalashnikovs and swords instead of apples and oranges, and were filled with images of Islamic warriors. Alphabet — Christina Lamb