Mosque Quotes & Sayings

The city of Granada, so gloriously provided with architectural reminders of its Islamic heritage, was particularly anxious to show that it was a more ancient and distinguished Christian centre than Toledo or Santiago de Compostela, and it also wanted to outface the upstart royal capital Madrid. These aims were much assisted by the 'discovery' from 1588 onwards of a series of forged early Christian relics (plomos, or lead books) hidden in the minaret of the former main Granadan mosque and in various nearby caves. — Diarmaid MacCulloch

I tried to picture to myself the mosque before the Christians laid their desecrating hands upon it. — W. Somerset Maugham

But Shia scholars would maintain that Muhammad had long before made the divinely guided choice of his closest male relative - his son-in-law Ali - as his successor. He had done so many times, in public, they would say, and if Ali's enemies had not thwarted the Prophet's will, he would certainly have done so again, one last time, as he lay dying in that small chamber alongside the mosque. — Anonymous

In Ghazalia, Mr. Hussein showed his contempt for the majority Shiites in ways large and small. He refused to allow them even one mosque, while the Sunnis had nearly a dozen. To worship, the Shiites had to cross an inconveniently located bridge over the sewage canal to Shula. — Alex Berenson

Come with me, come with me
I'll revisit the solitary mosque near hill brook,
Where men are scarce, come let's see,
I'll hold your hands as I took
The hands of my shiver strains,
Of poignant losses, of miniscule gains,
Come with me across these marsh mellows
Dividing our men into doves and scarecrows!
Come sit with the longing in these abandoned rows
where the frozen eyes burn renunciation stoves,
Let's visit the solitary mosque near hill brook; — Ashfaq Saraf

The illusion of being superior engenders the need to prove it; and so oppression is born. A bishop in Africa told me that, even though there were few Christians in the area, he had built his cathedral bigger than the local mosque. All this to prove that Christianity was a better, more powerful religion than Islam. So we build walls around our group and cultivate our certitudes. Prejudice grows on such walls. How did we, the human race, get to this position where we judge it natural not just to band ourselves into groups, but to set ourselves group against group, neighbour against neighbour, in order to establish some ephemeral sense of superiority? One of the fundamental issues for people to examine is how to break down these walls that separate us one from another; how to open up one to another; how to create trust and places of dialogue. — Jean Vanier

Examining case studies from around the world, Nik learned that failing to disciple the women in a movement had dire consequences in times of persecution. Ahmed said, "We learned that when the persecution becomes severe, and the men are killed or put in prison, our wives would be given over to the mosque or to the tribal leaders. Our children would have no one to teach them the way of Jesus. Within a short time, our movement would cease to exist." Joe added, "Ripken taught us that women are the key to the movement's future. — David Garrison

They may very well be the first ones to see it. They are the ones that going to see radicalization happening at a mosque or hear it in the community or even among their own family members. And the other part is that there is a narrative that ISIS and other jihadists pose that this is a war between Muslims and the rest of the world. — Marco Rubio

It's not just on specific days or times to be conscious of God's presence, but all the time. I can feel holiness inside a mosque, church, synagogue, or temple, yet I can equally sense God in nature or a chocolate shop. I am a wonderful human being because the content of my heart is wonderful, not because I belong to a specific religion or follow society's "wonderful human being person" recipe. — Sadiqua Hamdan

Some in the West suggest that Isam needs a separation of mosque and state. However, in the case of Iran at least what is needed is a separation lof religion and business. — Amir Taheri

While researching 'The Submission,' I went to a protest against the Ground Zero mosque in New York when I was about to give birth to twins. It was about 100 degrees. People thought I was very dedicated. — Amy Waldman

I prefer walking in the street and thinking about God to staying in the mosque and thinking about my shoes. — Ali Shariati

Whether we are at Cafe Gratitude or Carl's Jr, whether we are in a cathedral or in a nightclub, whether we are inside of a mosque or on the metro, every single moment is a sacred moment. A moment far too important for us to miss.

When we miss the people and the experiences and the feelings of our lives, we miss God. We don't get to know the joy of seeing God show up in the world. More profoundly, we don't get to participate in the wonder of God showing up in the world. — Stephen Lovegrove

The real story of the Ground Zero mosque is that the project only became feasible because of the appalling and astonishing fecklessness of the officials who were charged with the reconstruction of the site and the neighborhood all the way back in 2001. — John Podhoretz

Recognize all mankind as one, whether Hindus or Muslims The same Lord is the creator and nourisher of all: Recognize no distinctions between them. The monastery and the mosque are the same, So is Hindu worship and Muslim prayer. Men are all one! — Amardeep S. Dahiya

So, Swami Jesus, will you go on the hajj this year?" Ravi said, bringing the palms of his hands
together in front of his face in a reverent namaskar. "Does Mecca beckon?" He crossed himself. "Or
will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pius?" He drew in the air a Greek letter,
making clear the spelling of his Mockery. "Have you found time yet to get the end of your pecker
cut off and become a Jew? At the rate you're going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on
Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more
religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life. — Yann Martel

There's more than one mosque in the world that used to be a church and before that was a temple. Because it's a lot easier to just change the sign on the top and say under new management than it is to change the whole building. — Bill Maher

My story - the story of the son of Jainulabdeen, who lived for over a hundred years on Mosque Street in Rameswaram island and died there; the story of a lad who sold newspapers to help his brother; the story of a pupil reared by Sivasubramania Iyer and Iyadurai Solomon; the story of a student taught by teachers like Pandalai; the story of an engineer spotted by MGK Menon and groomed by the legendary Prof. Sarabhai; the story of a scientist tested by failures and setbacks; the story of a leader supported by a large team of brilliant and dedicated professionals. This story will end with me, for I have no belongings in the worldly sense. I have acquired nothing, built nothing, possess nothing - no family, sons, daughters. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Don't rush to fellowship at the church, temple or mosque if you don't do so at the house - first. "Charity begins at home". — T.F. Hodge

The mosque was the neighbourhood house of worship, but it was also the place where my high school friends and I came to study. — Ahmed Zewail

I rarely went to the mosque, I never fasted, and I only prayed namaaz on the holy nights because my mom bugged me about it. — Aasif Mandvi

Turn your face toward the sacred Mosque (Koran 2:144,149,150) Commentary: The word "sacred" means that a heart which has not disengaged itself from the sphere of the soul and the sphere of created beings is forbidden to penetrate into this place ... "Wherever you are, turn your face" [toward the sacred Mosque] means, "Wherever you are, in the accomplishment of works of worship or in the ordinary acts of life, contemplate Him - in what you eat, in what you drink, in him or her whom you marry, always knowing that He is at once the Contemplator and the Contemplated ... " — Abdelkader El Djezairi

As I went between the Islamic Society in my college and university, the mosque, the halal takeaway, and visited the homes of my male Muslim friends, it was entirely possible for me to get through my day without interacting in any meaningful way with a single non-Muslim. — Maajid Nawaz

On the banks of the Nile, the Rosetta branch, I lived an enjoyable childhood in the City of Disuq, which is the home of the famous mosque, Sidi Ibrahim. — Ahmed Zewail

Everyone takes part in the mosque for one reason; to have a prayer answered. — Shujoy Chowdhury

He is a boy sleeping against the mosque wall, ejaculates wet dreaming into a thousand cunts pink and smooth as sea shells ... — William S. Burroughs

The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe. — Alan Watts

The coast at the point at which he reached it seemed specially designed by nature for his favorable and auspicious reception. There lay before him what seemed the estuary of a large and beautiful river, free from rocks or other impediments, and with a very gentle current. It had an ample depth of water for his vessels, and was sufficiently broad, even at a considerable distance inland, for them to beat about in. It was encircled by lofty and picturesque hills, the aspect of which reminded him of the "Pena de los Enamorados" near Granada, in Spain; and upon the summit of one of them was what he described as another little hill, shaped like a graceful mosque. — Willis Fletcher Johnson

Six days after 9/11 George W. Bush visited a mosque and said quote, "Islam is peace." — Wolf Blitzer

The Taj, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Cracao Basilica and Polish church are some monuments that hold a special place in my memory. — Shaan

The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist-this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul-a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know. — Margaret Mead

If you look around, you can find a face of God in each thing, because He is not hidden in a church, in a mosque, or a synagogue, but everywhere. As there is no one who lives after seeing him, there is also no one dying after seeing him. Who finds Him, stays forever with him. — Shams Tabrizi

Someone else is going to read for me or go at my place to the mosque, and/or to tell me you shouldn't take anything from the West because the West is the enemy and so on. It is to me to decide. — Fatema Mernissi

This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government. — Bryan Fischer

We were still children and residing in the mosque from morning to evening. We were about to turn into monsters. — M.F. Moonzajer

How much more of the mosque, of prayer and fasting?
Better go drunk and begging round the taverns.
Khayyam, drink wine, for soon this clay of yours
Will make a cup, bowl, one day a jar.
When once you hear the roses are in bloom,
Then is the time, my love, to pour the wine;
Houris and palaces and Heaven and Hell-
These are but fairy-tales, forget them all. — Omar Khayyam

I will fight to the death for one's right to be able to practice in their temple, their mosque, or in their church, even if they have a different belief than I do. — Otis Moss III

But I do think it's unwise, and it - to build a mosque at the site where 3,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of a terrorist attack. And I think to me it demonstrates that the - that Washington, the White House, the administration, the President himself seems to be disconnected from the mainstream of America. — John Cornyn

We have our values from the church, the temple, the mosque. Do not rob, do not murder. But our behaviour changes the minute we go into the corporate place. Suddenly all of this is irrelevant. — Anita Roddick

As Indian citizens, we subsist on a regular diet of caste massacres and nuclear tests, mosque breakings and fashion shows, church burnings and expanding cell phone networks, bonded labor and the digital revolution, female infanticide and the NASDAQ crash, husbands who continue to burn their wives for dowry and our delectable stockpile of Miss Worlds. What's hard to reconcile oneself to, both personally and politically, is the schizophrenic nature of it. — Arundhati Roy

The idea that I had anything to do with speaking about Islam or about the Muslim world was just absurd to my family ... I hadn't been to the mosque in like 10 years. — Aasif Mandvi

After 911, the US Government engaged in mock investigations and shut down many small Islamic charities and organizations, giving the appearance of action in the so-called 'War on Terror.' Why did they harbor, support and resource Fethullah Gulen's $25 billion madrassa-and-mosque-establishment efforts throughout the Central Asian region and the Balkans? — Sibel Edmonds

I love you, my brother, whoever you are - whether you worship in a church, kneel in your temple, or pray in your mosque. You and I are children of one faith, for the diverse paths of religion are fingers of the loving hand of the one supreme being, a hand extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, eager to receive all. — Kahlil Gibran

there is some aching
that will only heal...
in the mosque of sleep. — Sanober Khan

People were patient with each other in the Grand Mosque, and communal - everyone washing his or her feet in the same fountain, with no shoving or prejudice. We were all Muslims in God's house, and it was beautiful. It had a quality of timelessness. I think this is one reason Muslims believe that Islam means peace: because in a large, cool place full of kindness you do feel peaceful. But as soon as we left the mosque, Saudi Arabia meant intense heat and filth and cruelty. People had their heads cut off in public squares. Adults spoke of it. It was a normal, routine thing: after the Friday noon prayer you could go home for lunch, or you could go and watch the executions. Hands were cut off. Men were flogged. Women were stoned. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The night skyline was stunning. I could see the Monas and Istiqlal Mosque bathed in brilliant white lights and a dozen other places of cultural and historical significance. It's an amazing, beautiful world we live in ... despite Uncle Google's abysmal view of American schools, the security checkpoints and vehicle inspections that seem to be everywhere, and the need to be vigilant because of the things we do to each other. — Tucker Elliot

We are living in a post-fictional era. Fictional governments are accepted without comment, and we can sit in a mosque and have a debate about the fictional port a fictional character consumes in a video game, with every gravity we would accord something quite real. — G. Willow Wilson

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia, — Newt Gingrich

It's perfectly fair that you can't be a Roman Catholic priest unless you're a man. It seems right that the reach of anti-discriminatory law should stop at the door of the church or mosque. — Trevor Phillips

I was protected behind the walls of my house, the walls of the mosque and later, walls of my school. I didn't know that I was Palestinian. I knew that I was a girl, but the identity issues came later when I was 12 or 13 - then, they came in a very strong way. — Rula Jebreal

The very idea that you could have separation between mosque and state from Islam's perspective is the imposition on them of Christian practice. Islam doesn't really have a place for state. They are a universalistic faith like Christianity, but they think there is no country that bounds Islam. — Stanley Hauerwas

Some might argue that the reality of Nordic autonomy is that you are free ... to be Nordic. If you are a Muslim who is looking to build a mosque, or an American who wants to drive a large car, espouse your deeply held Creationist beliefs, and go shopping with your platinum card on Sunday, or even if you are English and choose to conduct yourself according to archaic forms of baroque politeness, you are likely to experience varying degrees of oppression and exclusion should you come to live in this part of the world. This is true. — Michael Booth

The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan. — Michael Bloomberg

We've got to reach out to Muslim countries.We've got to have them be part of our coalition. If they hear people running for president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam, that was one of the real contributions, despite all the other problems, that George W. Bush made after 9/11 when he basically said after going to a Mosque in Washington, we are not at war with Islam or Muslims. — Hillary Clinton

When I enter the studio, I leave my body at the door the way the Moslems leave their shoes when they enter the mosque, and I only allow my spirit to go in there and paint. — Pablo Picasso

When "I" and "You" are absent, I've no idea if this is a mosque, synagogue, church or temple — Mahmud Shabistari

You are my brother and I love you. I love you worshipping in your church, kneeling in your temple, and praying in your mosque. You and I and all are children of one religion, for the varied paths of religion are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being, extended to all, offering completeness of spirit to all, anxious to receive all. — Kahlil Gibran

We are hearing the imams that are preaching in places like the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The imam preached there to the migrants go in to Western Europe, build your enclaves there, breed their women and do not associate or assimilate into the broader society. — Steve King

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

Does the imam have a legal right to build the mosque at Ground Zero? The answer is yes. But is it the right thing to do? The answer is no. And most Americans, and most moderate Muslims, join with me in that call. — K. A. Paul

Ask me, it's a sin to pervert faith with religion. Despite every church, mosque, & synagogue in it, this is not the world any God worth his salt would have created. — Ellen Hopkins

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit. — Kahlil Gibran

Our
hunters come from a diversified set of beliefs, but work together toward one goal. And we're the best
at what we do."
"But you guys were at the church."
Jayden shrugged. "Father Bancroft is an area leader, so the church is our base, but elsewhere it
could be a synagogue, mosque, Buddhist temple. Any holy place will do. We fight demons, not each
other. — A&E Kirk

Our Butkara ruins were a magical place to play hide-and-seek. Once some foreign archaeologists arrived to do some work there and told us that in times gone by it was a place of pilgrimage, full of beautiful temples domed with gold where Buddhist kings lay buried. My father wrote a poem, "The Relics of Butkara," which summed up perfectly how temple and mosque could exist side by side: "When the voice of truth rises from the minarets, / The Buddha smiles, / And the broken chain of history reconnects. — Malala Yousafzai

I'd love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God - much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Those people behind the mosque have to respect, have to appreciate and have to defer to the people of New York. The wound is still there. Just because the wound is healing you can't say, 'Let's just go back to where we were pre-9/11. — Al-Waleed Bin Talal

Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that the truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to - then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Most Americans are unaware that Thomas Jefferson was the first American president to go to war against radical Islam. Jefferson was very concerned with Islam's war-like doctrine and its inability to separate mosque and state. — Brad Thor

The second point I want to make is that you are right; the boy does indeed have to learn human customs. He must be taught to take off his shoes in a mosque and to wear his hat in a synagogue and to cover his nakedness when taboo requires it, or our tribal shamans will burn him for deviationism. But, child, by the myriad deceptive aspects of Ahriman, don't brainwash him in the process. Make sure he is cynical about each part of it. — Robert A. Heinlein

Let God's grace be the mosque, and devotion the prayer mat. Let the Quran be the good conduct. — Guru Nanak

later i sat in the mosque balcony as the sun rose, watching while it unpicked the dark and misty folds of the forest and coloured the Bashgul river. We were all overcome by the fabulous richness of the landscape, the opulence of the wooden architecture, the yellow green coombes of ripening corn, the glistening trees. — Peter Levi

I tried Zen and Ching, numerology, tarot cards and astrology. I tried to look back into the Bible, and could not find anything. At this time I did not know anything about Islam, and then, what I regarded as a miracle occurred. My brother had visited the mosque in Jerusalem, and was greatly impressed that while on the one hand it throbbed with life. — Cat Stevens

I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque. — Said Sayrafiezadeh

At the beginning, I thought the best Islamic work was in Spain - the mosque in Cordoba, the Alhambra in Granada. But as I learned more, my ideas shifted. I traveled to Egypt, and to the Middle East many times.I found the most wonderful examples of Islamic work in Cairo, it turns out. I'd visited mosques there before, but I didn't see them with the same eye as I did this time. They truly said something to me about Islamic architecture. — I.M. Pei

At Jerusalem, I went to the mosque and sat down. A man asked me what I wanted. I told him I was a Muslim. Now I realize I can get direct contact with God, unlike Christianity or any other religion. — Cat Stevens

Religion and science have nothing to do with each other, they're about different things, science is about the way the world works and religion is about miracles, I mean, if you ask most ordinary people in church or in a mosque why they believe, it's almost certainly got something to do with the belief that God does wonderful things, that God intervenes, that God heals the sick, that God answers prayers, God forgives sins. — Richard Dawkins

Here's the Middle East. Here's the mosque, here's the church, open the temple, everybody's MAD! — Maria Bamford

Eyes closed, she let her pain float away with the prayers, higher and higher, around the mosque's minarets, and up to the sky. She thought about the old Arabic saying that a woman has only two exits. One exit leads from my father's house to my husband's. The other leads from my husband's house to my grave. I'm not ready for the second exit yet. — Christian F. Burton

The building is rather like a medieval Castle and was established in the Sixth Century and soon afterwards, as the Moslem armies advanced Westwards from the Arabian Peninsula, somebody had the prescience to build a small Mosque in its courtyard to guard against it being burned or demolished. At the time of the Crusades it was the turn of the Monastery to protect the Mosque, and so it has been down the ages, each House of God extending its shelter to the other as opposing armies came and went. — Ahdaf Soueif

It's been our experience that any time a Muslim community anywhere seeks to expand or establish a mosque or some other kind of institution, there will be some type of opposition, when you scratch the surface, often there is a tremendous level of bigotry and stereotyping in the opposition. — Ibrahim Hooper

Inside my heart there is
A temple, a synagogue,
a church, a mosque,
A monastery, a fish market
A serene lake, a tempestuous sea
Agreements and disagreements
Glory and failure
A big bang at dawn and
a little bang at dusk
All the cries, aspirations and
silent prayers
Yearning and seeking
Everything disintegrates
and dissolves
In a tempestuous ocean
Finally unifies
Collapses on one altar
In one Breath
In God — Gabriel Iqbal

We studied a mosque, and this is when we were at Notre Dame, and in this mosque they had people from a variety of countries, most of them immigrants. In some of the countries, when you go into a mosque you remove your shoes. To not do so could be punishable even by death in that nation. In other countries, it would be a great offense to remove their shoes when they come into the mosque, a sign of disrespect. — Michael Emerson

People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation - much like building a mosque at Ground Zero. — Sarah Palin

I think people often come to the synagogue, mosque, the church looking for God, and what we give them is religion. — Gene Robinson

bartender walks into a church, a temple and a mosque. He has no idea how jokes — Various

Ronny's religion was of the sterilized Public School brand, which never goes bad, even in the tropics. Wherever he entered, mosque, cave or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the fifth form, and condemned as 'weakening' any attempt to understand them. — E. M. Forster

For the first day of your trip to Istanbul, you will be wandering around Sultanahmet, the historical peninsula and the old city of Istanbul. Here, you get to feast your eyes on a breathtaking collection of architectural marvels, such as the Hippodrome, Topkapi Palace, Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. — 3 Day City Guides

I sometimes joke that I am the first writer of historical fiction who can look out his window and point to the objects in his novels. I have a view of the entrance to the Bosporus, the old city, Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque. — Orhan Pamuk

What shall I do, today? Visit the pub?
Sit down in a garden with a book? A bird
flies past. Where is it headed? It's out of
sight already. The drunkenness of a bird in the
burning azure. The melancholy of a man
in the cool shadow of a mosque. — Omar Khayyam

We know broadly from research is that religiosity does not correlate with sympathy for terrorism. It's actually quite the opposite. The more religious someone is, the more often they go to the mosque, the more likely they are to actually reject attacks on civilians. — Chuck Todd

Our Constitution's separation of church and state never meant that religion could have nothing to do with the governing of our nation. The Founders simply intended that the United States would not have an established state religion and that no one could be sanctioned by the state for being of the wrong faith. Separation of church and state does not mean, as many people inside government believe today, that religion can never be discussed when investigating a threat or interrogating a suspect. And it definitely does not mean that a subject under surveillance as a threat to American lives cannot be recorded or otherwise monitored when he steps into a mosque. If someone is suspected of being a terrorist, it matters not whether he steps into a mosque, a church, or a temple; he is still a threat and should be treated as such. — Sebastian Gorka

The street is still shut as we step into the molten-gold atmosphere of mid-afternoon. The houses face each other across the passages like armies of an ancient Arabian battlefield ... .We narrow our eyes against the glare. Beating their wings, the birds too are leaving the trees for the mosque. The leaves hang like limp hands from the branches. We try to think of the cool blue river and, turning around, glance towards where the river wets the horizon. But the river, too, seems helpless before the insanity of the sun, lying like an exhausted lizard at the end of the street — Nadeem Aslam

I didn't believe in spiritual homelands, and found God as readily in a strip mall as in a mosque. — G. Willow Wilson

Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not interfere with organized or individual expressions of belief or disbelief. Propagation of belief - or even of disbelief - in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meeting-house. — Felix Frankfurter

Tear down the mosque, the temple, everything in sight. But don't break a human heart. For that is where God resides. — Bulleh Shah

Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect. Whether in the synagogue, the mosque, the pagoda, or the wigwam, there is a hideous aspect which we execrate and a sublime aspect which we venerate. So great a subject for spiritual contemplation, such measureless dreaming - the echo of God on the human wall! — Victor Hugo

I was a very devout boy and one day I heard the music of an Egyptian Koran singer in the mosque. The melancholy of this music touched me so deeply that it brought me to tears. — Shahin Najafi

Today, as it was 2,000 years ago, the Kingdom of God is within each of us. It is not within a church, a temple, a mosque or synagogue. — Mahatma Gandhi

Except for a couple of hours
in the morning
which I passed in the company
of a sage
I stayed in bed
without food
only a few mouthfuls of water
"you are a fine looking old man"
I said to myself in the mirror
"and what is more
you have the correct attitude
You don't care if it ends
or if it goes on
And as for the women
and the music
there will be plenty of that
in Paradise"
Then I went to the Mosque
of Memory
to express my gratitude — Leonard Cohen

Bosnia's war had its visual hallmarks. Parks that were turned into cemeteries, refugee families piled onto horse-drawn carts, stop-or-die checkpoints with mines across the road. The most hideous hallmark of all was the blackened patch of ground in the center of town. It always meant the same thing, a destroyed mosque. The goal of ethnic cleansing was not simply to get rid of Muslims; it was to destroy all traces that they had ever lived in Bosnia. The goal was to kill history. If you want to do that, then you must rip out history's heart, which in the case of Bosnia's Muslim community meant the destruction of its mosques. Once that was done, you could reinvent the past in whatever distorted form you wanted, like Frankenstein.

p. 85 — Peter Maass