Quotes & Sayings About Islamic Life

Two kinds of people live a life without care: one kind are extremely worthy of praise, the other kind are extremely worthy of criticism. The first are those who care nothing for the pleasures of the world and the second (i.e. those who are deserving of criticism) care nothing for haya or modesty. — Ibn Hazm

Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with economic position or status in life. — Brigitte Gabriel

I swear that ever since the first day You brought me back to life,
The day You became my Friend,
I have not slept -
And even if You drive me from your door,
I swear again that we will never be separated -
Because You are alive in my heart — Rabia Basri

Ironically, even as Khomeini empowered some women, he also found ways of oppressing their entire gender. The regime replaced the shah's secular law with an Islamic law, which allowed men to marry up to four wives, to divorce them whenever the husbands wished, and to retain custody of children. The law put the value of a woman's life at half of that of a man's life, and the value of her testimony at half that of a man's testimony.
Thus women in Iran became watchdogs and scapegoats, both the foot soldiers of the new regime and its victims. Newly empowered, they were also newly oppressed. Theirs was a paradoxical plight - and at the time, no one could have foreseen how it would one day make women a force of enormous change in Iran. — Nazila Fathi

Radical Islamic fundamentalists harbor contempt for our democratic way of life and, given the opportunity, will stop at nothing to accomplish their goal of bringing our country to its knees. — Paul Weyrich

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

So often we experience things in life, and yet never see the connections between them. When we are given hardship, or feel pain, we often fail to consider that the experience may be the direct cause or result of another action or experience. Sometimes we fail to recognize the direct connection between the pain in our lives and our relationship with Allah SWT — Yasmin Mogahed

Turkey is immersed in a profound social and political conflict between secularists, who have been in power since the republic was founded, and an insurgent Islamic-based movement that seeks to increase the role of religion in public life. — Stephen Kinzer

Stop trying to make this life into what it cannot and never was intended to be: jennah. Only then will it stop breaking your heart. — Yasmin Mogahed

Live for this life as though you live in it forever and live for the life to come as though you die tomorrow — 'Amr Ibn Al-'As

I cannot understand the logic of those who have been deliberately and mischievously propagating that the Constitution of Pakistan will not be based on Islamic Sharia. Islamic principles today are as much applicable to life as they were 1300 years ago. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

If you could hear the angels pen your deeds... what would you be doing with your life? — Aisha Mirza

We need spirited, energetic and strong young people whose hearts are filled with life, enthusiasm, zeal and dynamism; whose souls are full of ambition, aspiration and vigor and have great goals, rising and aspiring to reach them until they eventually arrive at their destination. — Hassan Al-Banna

No one who appreciates the shortness of this life and the eternality of the next can ever say, 'I'm bored' — Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

To me, jennah is the place where you get to be with the people you love, including those you can't always be with in this life. And being with them forever. — Yasmin Mogahed

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

Al-Qa'idah was set up to wage a jihad against infidelity, particularly to encounter the onslaught of the infidel countries against the Islamic states. Jihad is the sixth undeclared element of Islam. The first five being the basic holy words of Islam, prayers, fast, pilgrimage to Mecca, and giving alms Every anti-Islamic person is afraid of it. Al-Qa'idah wants to keep this element alive and active and make it part of the daily life of the Muslims. It wants to give it the status of worship. We are not against any Islamic country nor we consider a war against an Islamic country as jihad. — Osama Bin Laden

It is perhaps because of the Iranian concept of the home and garden (and not the city or town it is in) as the defining center of life that Iranians find living in a society with such stringent rules of public behavior somewhat tolerable. Iranian society by and large cares very little about what goes on in the homes and gardens of private citizens, but the Islamic government cares very much how its citizens behave once they venture outside their walls. — Hooman Majd

Every Islamic value I had been taught instructed me to put myself last. Life on earth is a test, and if you manage to put yourself last in this life, you are serving Allah; your place will be first in the Hereafter. The more deeply you submit your will, the more virtuous that makes you. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Islamic State's ideology exerts powerful sway over a certain subset of the population. Life's hypocrisies and inconsistencies vanish in its face. Musa Cerantonio and the Salafis I met in London are unstumpable: No question I posed left them stuttering. They lectured me garrulously and, if one accepts their premises, convincingly. To call them un-Islamic appears, to me, to invite them into an argument that they would win. If they had been froth-spewing maniacs, I might be able to predict that their movement would burn out as the psychopaths detonated themselves or became drone-splats, one by one. But these men spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar. I even enjoyed their company, and that frightened me as much as anything else. — Graeme Wood

Joy and sorrow are the light and shade of life; without light and shade no picture is clear. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Be careful of what we say or do on this earth as every word and every action has a return. — Aisha Mirza

Your life in every way should become a beacon of guidance and it should become a means for Dawah. — Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi

We sometimes just have to let things be.

There are times in life that things happen, and we just cannot control them. There are times when we don't want things to happen, but they do. Things that we don't want to know, we learn. Times in which people we can't live without, we have to let go.

The greatest learning is accepting what has, what is, and what will be. Remaining focussed on where we want to go, and how we want to get there. It might not go the way we planned, or the way we hoped it would be. No one said life would be easy, but at least we keep trying, and working hard at making it the best life it can be. — Aisha Mirza

Work for your terrestrial life in proportion to your location in it, and work for your afterlife in proportion to your eternity in it. — Al-Ghazali

God gave Moses a calendar that began in spring. (Ex 12:2) God Himself emphasized the importance of Israel's new calendar at Ex 23:16; Le 23:34 and De 16:13. God's calendar was for marking, and keeping, God's holy days. Using a foreign calendar became illegal. Ignoring Israel's new calendar could cost an Israelite their life. (Nu 15:32-35)
Yet, the Jewish calendar is not the only calendar. There are plenty of calendars to choose from: Assyrian; Egyptian; Iranian; Armenian; Ethiopian; Hindu; Coptic; Mayan; Chinese; Julian; Byzantine; Islamic and Gregorian; just to mention a few. Has the Seventh Day Adventists settled on any one of these calendars? Which one?
pg 5 — Michael Ben Zehabe

Shannen Rossmiller's work in exposing Islamic terrorists has genuinely made our country safer. She has dedicated her life to combating the terrorist threat against the United States and has amazingly been able to infiltrate and actually stop terrorist operations. Our entire country owes her an immeasurable debt of gratitude. — Steven Emerson

Under Zia's regime life for women in Pakistan became much more restricted. Jinnah said, "No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women." But General Zia brought in Islamic laws which reduced a woman's evidence in court to count for only half that of a man's. Soon our prisons were full of cases like that of a thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant and was then sent to prison for adultery because she couldn't produce four male witnesses to prove it was a crime. — Malala Yousafzai

Work for your afterlife as if you will die tomorrow, and work for this life as if you will live forever — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Allah the Exalted loves him who forgoes worldly life, the Angels love him who rejects the vices, and the Muslims love him who gives up greediness in respect of the Muslims. — Uthman Ibn Affan

The heart stays heavy if it remains in a state of unforgiveness. — Aisha Mirza

Everything in this life is only a glimpse of the real thing. Love, beauty, pleasure, even pain in its true essence is only in the next. — Yasmin Mogahed

Man who is created alone should be aware that he will also die alone. Yet during his life, he lives almost addicted to possessions ... the only assets one can take with him when one dies is one's belief or disbelief — Harun Yahya

The Society of Muslim Brothers was founded in 1928 by a young schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna. As a Sunni Islamic revivalist movement, its establishment followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the subsequent end of the caliphate system of government that had united the Muslims for many hundreds of years. Al-Banna, who was just twenty-two years old, believed Islam was not only a religion but a fully comprehensive way of life, based on the tenets of Wahhabism, a strict and repressive form of the religion better known these days as Islamism and espoused by the Saudis, as well as unsavory characters such as Osama bin Laden. — Dan Eaton

We love death more than you love life.' This is civilization's ultimate challenge. Will the lovers of death and destruction overwhelm and defeat those who love life and have created great civilizations that celebrate human creativity and achievement? Will all that is left of three thousand years of human civilization be reduced to rubble and a mindless religio-ideological lockstep?
The Islamic State is not just a challenge to Judeo-Christian Western civilization. It is a challenge to civilization itself--to the very idea of civilization.
And that is why it is doomed to fail. Life will always conquer death in the end. The human spirit will always prevail against the forces that would subjugate and enslave it. — Robert Spencer

Because Muhammad is considered Allah's final prophet and the Quran the eternal, unalterable words of Allah himself, there is also no evolving morality that permits the modification or integration of Islamic morality with that from other sources. The entire Islamic moral universe devolves solely from the life and teachings of Muhammad. — Jake Neuman

There are four types of oceans. Passions are the ocean of sins, the self (nafs) is the ocean of lust, death is the ocean of life, and the grave is the ocean of distress — Umar

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, 'The Intoxication of Life,' 'The Purpose of Life,' 'The Real Cause of Man's Distress,' 'The Journey to the Goal in Life,' and, one of my favorites, 'The Heart of Man.' They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me. — Muhammad Ali

Had there not been five bad qualities, all the people would have been righteous. Contentment with ignorance; love for worldly life; miserliness inspite of much wealth; ostentation in (good) deeds; and pride in their own intelligence. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

The Arab and Islamic nation has lost a great man and one of its fearless men who dedicated his life to the service of the people of this nation and their aspirations. — Saad Hariri

The death of the self lies in the life of the heart — Ja'far Al-Sadiq

We die as we lived. Whatever was most important in life, will consume us at death. Whatever attachments we had will become evident then. — Yasmin Mogahed

Do not fix hopes on your health, and do not laugh away life. Remember how they walked and now all their joints lie separately, and the tongue with which they talked lightly is eaten away by the worms — Al-Ghazali

No one who possesses snow would find any hardship in exchanging it for jewels and pearls. This world is like snow exposed to sun, which continues to melt until it disappears altogether, while the next life is like a precious stone that never passes away. — Al-Ghazali

sometimes we need the world and all the people on her to abandon us so we can turn to the One who will never leave us stranded. — Aisha Mirza

O Lord, have Mercy and Compassion, for if Thou dost not have Mercy, who will have mercy?" The heartfelt prayer of this simple pilgrim epitomizes the quintessential Islamic attitude toward God as the source of compassion and mercy. No matter what one has done in life, one should never lose hope in His Compassion and Mercy, for as the Quran states, "And who despaireth of the Mercy of his Lord save those who go astray" (15:56), and "Do not despair of God's Mercy" (39:53). — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

It is not true that only those people come to Islamic State who have experienced no success in life. Among them are many people who have university degrees, people who were well-established. But they all see the inequities that we Muslims have long experienced and want to fight against them. — Abdul Sattar Abu Risha

The sweetness of this life is found in remembering Allah; the sweetness of the next life will be found in seeing Him. — Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal. What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut free from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family. It is the state of modern life. The — Steven Pressfield

Both Yassi and I know that we have been losing our faith. We have been questioning it with every move. During the Shah's time, it was different. I felt I was in the minority and I had to guard my faith against all odds. Now that my religion is in power, I feel more helpless than ever before, and more alienated.' She wrote about how ever since she could remember, she had been told that life in the land of infidels was pure hell. She had been promised that all would be different under a just Islamic rule. Islamic rule! It was a pageant of hypocrisy and shame. — Azar Nafisi

Get used to a rough life, for luxury does not last forever. — Umar

If someone wants to know what position he enjoys in the eyes of God, he has only to look at what place he gives to God (in his heart and life) — Hakim

Your prayers are your light;
Your devotion is your strength;
Sleep is the enemy of both.
Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you.
If you ignore it, if you waste it,
You will only turn to dust. — Rabia Basri

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. — King Hussein I

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

Neglect not your time, nor use it haphazardly; on the contrary you should bring yourself to account. Structure your litanies and other practices during each day and night. This is how to bring about the spiritual blessing (baraka) in each period. If each of your breaths is a priceless jewel, Be not like the deceived fools who are joyous because each day their wealth increases while their life grows ever shorter. — Al-Ghazali

As a Muslim, I believe in the concept of fate, that there are certain things out of my control. Thus, what chance do I have to stand against kismet? — Aishah Madadiy

O Allah,
You know that the only thing I want in this life
Is to be obedient to Your command.
Even the living sight of my eyes
Is service at your court — Rabia Basri

We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are the most vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win, because they love life and we love death. — Hassan Nasrallah

There is no joy for someone who has no sorrow.
There is no pleasure for the one who has no patience
No bliss for someone with no misery
and no rest for the one with no fatigue.
When someone is a little tired,
he has long rest.
When he endures the difficulty of steadfastness for a time,
that leads him to eternal life.
All that the people of eternal bliss
are in is steadfastness for a time. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

Those of us living in the Islamic Republic of Iran grasped both the tragedy and absurdity of the
cruelty to which we were subjected. We had to poke fun at our own misery in order to survive.
We also instinctively recognized poshlust-not just in others, but in ourselves. This was one reason
that art and literature became so essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity.
What Nabokov captured was the texture of life in a totalitarian society, where you are completely
alone in an illusory world full of false promises, where you can no longer differentiate between
your savior and your executioner. — Azar Nafisi

You have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad (jihad alakbar)."

His followers asked him what that greater jihad was. "The struggle against your passionate soul," he replied.

'So what does this greater jihad entail?' I asked him.

'It is the effort to practise our faith,' Gai replied. 'To pray five times every day is an effort, to veil one's selfish desires and conduct life in accordance with Islamic ethics and laws. The greatest "spiritual warriors" are the saints armed not with weapons but with prayer and prayer beads.' While it all made sense I wanted to know more about the idea that we needed to go out and fight jihad. — Kristiane Backer

Speaking as a Muslim in the West, I see a crisis in religious authority, we need Indigenous Muslim scholarship understanding the Western way of life and is able to use the understanding, using legitimate Islamic sources to bring more scholarship to our way of life in the west. There's a need for that. — Mark Durie

Life in the Islamic Republic was as capricious as the month of April, when short periods of sunshine will suddenly give way to showers and storms. — Azar Nafisi

Neither happiness nor grief are everlasting in this life-but one of the two is everlasting in the next. Which one do you want? — Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi

You will breathe throughout your life, every moment of it, but an opportunity like this comes once in a lifetime, and not even to everyone. Go for it! — K. Hari Kumar

The United States did not choose to fight Islamic extremists. These terrorists chose to fight our way of life. They chose to challenge our existence. — John Boehner

Dhikr is the reason for the life of the heart and leaving it is the reason for its death. — Ahmad Ibn ?Ajiba

What's more, sharia finance is another tool of Islamic separatism; instead of assimilating into American society, Muslims are demanding, and receiving, parallel financial institutions that reinforce the idea that they are unique, not subject to the laws and norms to which the rest of us are subject-a privileged class. At the same time, sharia finance initiatives are giving Islamic interests increased control over Western economic life. — Robert Spencer

That's because international Islamic religious fanatics have the same goal as the Axis fascists - the destruction of our way of life. — David Hackworth

The truth is our country, our people, our liberties, and our way of life are under attack by radical Islamic terrorists who kill and destroy in the name of religion. — Saxby Chambliss

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

Islam is a way of life which opens the heart to the meaning of existence. Thus any increase of outward splendor is usually a sign of a decrease in inward illumination — Ahmad Thomson

The lack of insight to reality, life and history as well as into God's ways, or sunan in His creation, some people will continue to seek or demand the impossible. They will imagine what does not or cannot happen, misunderstand occurrences and events, and interpret them on the basis of cherished illusions which in no way reflect God's sunan or the essence of Islamic law. — Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

We should think of those who were famous for their good deeds or their bad deeds; did their fame raise them one single degree in the sight of Allah. Did it win them a reward that they had not already won by their actions during their life? — Ibn Hazm

Praying is a pure action. — Lailah Gifty Akita

O people who take pleasure in a life that will vanish, falling in love with a fading shadow is sheer stupidity — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

We will be asked, "what did you love most in this world? What did you spend life doing? What did you run after? Will it last? The things that you chased, will they last? Will they help you, or will they hurt you when the illusion of this life has passed?" — Yasmin Mogahed

The life of this world and the hereafter, in the heart of a person are like the two scales of a balance,
when one becomes heavier, the other becomes lighter — 'Abd Allah Ibn 'Amr Ibn Al-'As

While the Western society gives total freedom to the individuals to do whatever "consenting adults" please, which admittedly is better than having the government poke into your private life and your bedroom, like in Islamic countries, there are no moral compasses to tell what is right from wrong. The very notion of right and wrong has come under question. The motto is "if it feels good do it". Hedonism rules! — Ali Sina

This life is not real. I conquered the world and it did not bring me satisfaction. — Muhammad Ali

I have never in my life encountered a religion as oppressive, cold, and stiff as Progressivism. I've never known a faith more eager to burn heretics at the stake. Even a fundamentalist Iranian Muslim would flinch if he came face to face with a western liberal's rigid dogmatism. I imagine that even a Saudi Arabian Islamic cleric would take one look at how American left wingers react when anyone deviates ever so slightly from their established orthodoxy, and say to himself, 'man, these people REALLY need to chill. — Matt Walsh

I think virtue is the quintessence of perfection, and the One who created it definitely stands beyond that value. Virtues like honesty, loyalty and courtesy, do not have to be completely defined by their relation to extrinsic things. Even if they are not realized by actions, their good value remains. — Aishah Madadiy

Whoever desires Paradise, proceeds towards goodness; whoever fears Hell, refrains from the impulses of passions; whoever believes firmly in death, detests wordly life; and whoever recognises the worldly life, the trials and tribulations (of life) become slight for him. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

In the intricate paths of life when difficulties and hardships confront a man, and the darkness of difficulty and suffering becomes long, it is patience only that acts like a light for a Muslim, that keeps him safe from wandering here and there, and saves him from the muddy marsh of disappointment, desperation and frustration. — Al-Ghazali