Middle East Religion Quotes & Sayings

The size of the Earth has been known for more than two thousand years, although the number was lost or disputed when the Earth went from being round to being flat again in the Middle Ages (under the prodding of Christian heaven-watchers, the Greek philosophers' [Eratosthenes 276-194 BC] work was erased in Europe and preserved only by Muslim scientists in the Middle East and North Africa). — Marq De Villiers

Muslims are the main victims of Islamist inspired terrorism around the globe. ISIS have and other Islamist extremism group have killed thousands of Muslims across the middle east, including some Sunnis who have refused to pledge loyalty. Its members have executed imams who have denounced their activities. Their sectarianism has even spawned deadly attacks on civilians simply because they are shi'i. These extremists have determinedly created divisions to wipe out the 'grey zone' of reason and tolerance. They have conflated religion and politics and thereby poisoned Islam. — Tony McMahon

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

I must try desperately to absorb all information I can about the Middle East. I want to excel. I want to speak articulately about the politics of the Middle East and its religion. — Amanda Lindhout

The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion mixes explosively with (and gives strong sanction to) both. Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today. Without a doubt it is the prime aggravator of the Middle East. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different now. 'All is changed, changed utterly. — Richard Dawkins

The Saudis, and in some cases the CIA, had encouraged and funded their foreign jihads, and these men had seen combat, lived hard in the mountains, did what their religion asked them to do. Then they came home to Egypt and were rewarded with a death sentence. The result was the creation of a standing army of jihadis who couldn't go home. They would go on to found al-Qaeda, which became something of a jihadi veterans association. History is always obvious in retrospect, but in this case the rise of al-Qaeda should have been fairly easy to predict. — Richard Engel

Policy makers beware: unless you are ready to admit that you are facing an essentially theological problem in the Middle East, do not go about prescribing solutions, for you may actually make matters worse - particularly by creating the false impression that economic, sociological, or political programs can fix what is, in fact, a delusion of faith — Robert Reilly

Repeatedly and frankly we have announced that in Irans national security doctrine there is no room for atomic and chemical weapons as we consider them against Islamic laws. Irans Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei) in this connection had issued a decree that mass destruction weapons are prohibited by the Muslim religion. [ ... ] Therefore we support the idea of a Middle East free from weapons of mass destruction[.] — Ali Larijani

I think it's important that we do it [defeat ISIS] in concert with other nations in Europe, the Middle East, elsewhere if necessary. And that means you've got to work with people. You don't insult them. You don't insult their religion. And it means we have to see our entire country, all of the people in it, as part of our first line of defense. — Hillary Clinton

No white group has founded a major religion on this planet. The major religious were started in the Orient and the Middle East, not in Greece and Rome. I always knew you racists didn't have a prayer. — Jane Elliot

Is it really Allah's will, that none shall thrive, except the chosen hive? Islam is the one true religion, not a system of oppression. Islam is the one true religion, not a veil to persecution. Safa's tears fall. Still they fall. Fall on you. Fall on me. Safa's tears call. Still they call. Out to you. Out to me. Safa's tears weep. Still they weep. Weep for you. Weep for me. — Christian F. Burton

It should not be strange that the values cherished by all the three major religions are the same, since they originate from a common source. For example, Islam, the predominant religion in the Middle East, accepts as an integral part of its religious teachings both the Old and the New Testaments. If this commonality of moral traditions among the world's major religions does not say something about the universality of religion, it does say something about the universality of mankind ... — King Hussein I

Ramadan typically brings a spike in violence in Middle East. I get grumpy when I don't eat - but I don't blow things up. Religion of peace? — Katie Hopkins

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

People say nothing can solve the Middle East problem. Not mediation, not arms, not financial aid. I say there is Something. Atheism. Suddenly everyone would be looking at each other thinking, 'What the fuck were we doing? That was insane! Why are we all wearing these ridiculous hats? Were we drunk? — Frankie Boyle

Christians have ... identified their opponents, whether Jews, pagans, or heretics, with forces of evil, and so with Satan ... Nor have things improved since. The blood-soaked history of persecution, torture, murder, and destruction perpetrated in the name of religion is difficult to grasp, let alohne summarize, from the slaughter of Christians to the Crusades to the Inquisitiion to the Reformation to the European witchcraze to colonialization to today's bitter coflict in the Middle East. — Elaine Pagels

In the Middle East, Iraq , Sudan , the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, and many other places in the world , religion has been so divisive that people have killed one another, believing they were doing the work of God . — John C. Danforth

By the time of the arrival of Islam in the early seventeenth century CE, what we now call the Middle East was divided between the Persian and Byzantine empires. But with the spread of this new religion from Arabia, a powerful empire emerged, and with it a flourishing civilization and a glorious golden age.
Given how far back it stretches in time, the history of the region
and even of Iraq itself
is too big a canvas for me to paint. Instead, what I hope to do in this book is take on the nonetheless ambitious task of sharing with you a remarkable story; one of an age in which great geniuses pushed the frontiers of knowledge to such an extent that their work shaped civilizations to this day. — Jim Al-Khalili

Secularism in the Christian world was an attempt to resolve the long and destructive struggle of church and state. Separation, adopted in the American and French Revolutions and elsewhere after that, was designed to prevent two things: the use of religion by the state to reinforce and extend its authority; and the use of the state power by the clergy to impose their doctrines and rules on others. This is a problem long seen as purely Christian, not relevant to Muslims or for that matter to Jews, for whom a similar problem has arisen in Israel. Looking at the contemporary Middle East, both Muslim and Jewish, one must ask whether this is still true
or whether Muslims and Jews may perhaps have caught a Christian disease and might therefore consider a Christian remedy. — Bernard Lewis

The Bolsheviks were atheists but they were hardly secular politicians in the conventional sense: they stooped to kill from the smugness of the highest moral eminence. Bolshevism may not have been a religion, but it was close enough. Stalin told Beria the Bolsheviks were "a sort of military-religious order." When Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, died, Stalin called him "a devout knight of the proletariat." Stalin's "order of sword-bearers" resembled the Knights Templars, or even the theocracy of the Iranian Ayatollahs, more than any traditional secular movement. They would die and kill for their faith in the inevitable progress towards human betterment, making sacrifices of their own families, with a fervour seen only in the religious slaughters and martyrdoms of the Middle Ages - and the Middle East. They — Simon Sebag Montefiore

Religion, is a mistake of geography. If you where born in America you are Christan, if you where born in the middle east you are Muslim, China Buddha, and before that Zeus, Thor, and people believed that the earth was flat and the sun went around the earth, though they where wrong & not only that but all of these things have no evidence. — Richard Dawkins

Iran is a country that talks about, denies the Holocaust, promises to wipe out Israel, is engaged in terror throughout the world. This is a regime that is giving vent to the worst impulses that you see right now in the Middle East. They deny the rights of women, deny democracy, brutalize their own people, don't give freedom of religion. — Benjamin Netanyahu

Rising demand for oil exposed Europe, and later America, to oil shocks - serious interruptions in supply. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, an oil shock creats ripples, or effects, felt everywhere.
Oil shocks have two causes. The first is natural, because existing oil fields may not yield enough to satisfy demand. Scarcity results in higher prices for oil products, reducing our standard of living. Natural scarcity was not a problem in the world's major producing areas until recently.
The second cause of oil shocks is political. Political shocks happen when governments of oil-producing countries reduce or halt supply to gain the upper hand in dealings with other governments. This is the case in the Middle East, where oil has often mixed with politics, religion, and blood. The reasons for this have shaped the history of recent times. — Albert Marrin

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