c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Islam’s all about knowledge, right? Muslims know everything. We seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. We seek knowledge even if it be in China, Yusef, EVEN IN CHINA! And we’ve reduced our religion to fuckin’ academics. The guy who knows Islam best is the one who really hits the books hard, learns his shit. Muslims brag about having no priests but we’re getting molested by scholars. Yusef Ali, books are not Allah. Even a book by or from Allah is not Allah.
— Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores
A Muslim just follows Allah. Sunni-Shiah? That's farga, the groups—Allah discourages this in the Quran, you know, never ever form the groups.
— Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores
Never lose hope,because ALLAH is always by your side.
— Waseem Latif
They were Muslims, man, but not your uncles. They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen. Iman, think about it like that, iman! It's supposed to be all about having no fear of death, right? And we got that part down, we've done that and we have plenty of Muslims who aren't afraid to die. Mash'Allah--but now Muslims are afraid to fuckin' live! They fear life, yakee, more than they fear shaytans or shirk or fitna or bid'a or kafr or qiyamah or the torments in the grave, they fear Life... You got all these poor kids who think they're inferior because they don't get their two Fajr in, their four Zuhr, four Asr... they don't have beards, they don't wear hejab, maybe they went to their fuckin' high school proms and the only masjid around was regular horsehit-horseshit-takbir-masjid and they had to pretend like they were doing everything right...well I say fuck that and this whole house says fuck that--even Umar, you think Umar can go in a regular masjid with all his stupid tattoos and dumb straghtedge bands? Even Umar, bro, as much as he tries to Wahabbi-hard-ass his way around here, he's still one of us. He's still fuckin' taqwacore.
— Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores
Islam is going to rise, Once again.
— Waseem Latif
People call you extremist when you are spreading Islam but always remember that you are not..they are extremist because they are endangering there own life with there own hands.
— Muhammad Mubbashir
Hide your good actions as you would your bad.
— Zarina Bibi
If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones.
— Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores
If you know the correct path then lost people are your responsibility.
— Waseem Latif
They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen.
— Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores
The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud’s pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir’s big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar.
— Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores
The tongue is like a lion, if you let it loose, it will wound someone.
— Hazrat Ali ibn Abu-Talib R.A
The hardest and greatest thing a human being can do is submit to his Creator.
— Habeeb Akande
One of the outstanding sources of resistance to imperial power in the Muslim world came from Sufi groups. While Sufi brotherhoods are generally known for a more quietist and mystic approach to Islam, they traditionally rank among the best organized and most coherent groupings in society. They constitute ready-made organizations - social-based NGOs, if you will - for maintaining Islamic culture and practices under periods of extreme oppression and for fomenting resistance and guerrilla warfare against foreign occupation. The history of Sufi participation in dozens of liberation struggles is long and widespread across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Sufi groups were prominent in the anti-Soviet resistance, and later against the American in Afghanistan and against US occupation forces in Iraq.
— Graham Fuller
Whether most Muslims are peaceable is irrelevant. The fact is that fanatics rule Islam now & act-out what the Qur'an truly says ...maul, march, & murder every Infidel if they won't convert!
— Gary Patton
We have no rational evidence that there exist another world, but we have a clear feeling that man does not exist only to produce and to consume. Scientists or thinkers who try to discover the truth cannot find that higher life by thinking alone, but their own life, spent in search for the truth and neglecting the physical living, is just that higher form of human existence.
— Alija Izetbegović
Take terrorism, one example among the methods used in that struggle. We know that leftist tradition condemns terrorism and political assassination. When the colonized uses them, the leftist colonizer becomes unbearably embarrassed. He makes an effort to separate them from the colonized's voluntary action; to make an epiphenomenon out of his struggle. They are spontaneous outbursts of masses too long oppressed, or better yet, acts by unstable, untrustworthy elements which the leader of the movement has difficulty in controlling. Even in Europe, very few people admitted that the oppression of the colonized was so great, the disproportion of forces so overwhelming, that they had reached the point, whether morally correct or not, of using violent means voluntarily. The leftist colonizer tried in vain to explain actions which seemed incomprehensible, shocking and politically absurd. For example, the death of children and persons outside of the struggle, or even of colonized persons who, without being basically opposed, disapproved of some small aspect of the undertaking. At first he was so disconcerted that the best he could do was to deny such actions; for they would fit nowhere in his view of the problem. That it could be the cruelty of oppression which explained the blind fury of the reaction hardly seemed to be an argument to him; he can't approve acts of the colonized which he condemns in the colonizers because these are exactly why he condemns colonization.Then, after having suspected the information to be false, he says, as a last resort, that such deeds are errors, that is, they should not belong to the essence of the movement. He bravely asserts that the leaders certainly disapprove of them. A newspaper-man who always supported the cause of the colonized, weary of waiting for censure which was not forthcoming, finally called on certain leaders to take a public stand against the outrages, Of course, received no reply; he did not have the additional naïveté to insist.
— Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized
The mystics have always stressed the religious aspect of Islam, the rationalists the other one. All the same, both of them have always had difficulties with Islam, simply because it cannot be put into any of their classifications. Take wudu as an example. A mystic will define it as a religious ablution with symbolic meaning. A rationalist will look upon it as a matter of hygiene only. They are both right, but only partly. The defectiveness of the mystic explanation lies in the fact that it lets the hygienic side of wudu become a mere form. Following the same logic in other questions, this approach will reduce Islam to pure religion, by eliminating all physical, intellectual, and social components from it. The rationalists take quite the opposite way. By neglecting the religious side, they degrade Islam to a political movement only, creating a new type of nationalism from it, a so called Islamic nationalism, deprived of ethical-religious substance, empty and equal to all other nationalisms in this regard. To be a Muslim in this case, does not represent an appeal or a duty, a moral or a religious obligation, or any attitude to the universal truth. It means only belonging to a group different from the other one. Islam has never been only a nation. Rather, Islam is a call to a nation, " to enjoin the right and to forbid the wrong" Quran- that is, to perform a moral mission. If we disregard the political component of Islam and accept religious mysticism , we silently admit dependence and slavery. On the contrary, if we ignore the religious component , we cease to be any moral force.
— Alija Izetbegović
Cultures that do not wish to exist cannot be dissuaded from destroying themselves.
— David P. Goldman, How Civilizations Die
Marxism rejected the family and the state, but in practice it kept these institutions. Every pure religion disapproved of man's worrying about this world, but as the ideology of living people, it accepted the struggle for social justice and a better world. Marxism has had to accept some degree of individual freedom and religion some use of force. It is obvious in real life that man cannot live according to a consistent philosophy.
— Alija Izetbegović
The question is whether they can find a way out and remain what they are. To adapt themselves to real life, they borrow from each other. Christianity , which has become a church, began to talk about work, wealth, power, education, science, marriage, laws, social justice, and so forth. And materialism , on the other hand, which became socialism or an order, a state, speaks about humanism , morality, art, creation, justice, responsibility, freedom and so forth.
— Alija Izetbegović
One thing I really love being a man about Islam is
—  I can have so many wives and that would be considered as my rights.
How bold we are. We shy from a flame that licks the tip of our finger for a fraction of a second, and from which we are allowed the luxury of escape. But most of humankind flaunt their disobedience in the face of an eternal fire that engulfs all, and from which there is no escape. Ever.
— Laurence B. Brown, The Eighth Scroll
To take a side against Rushdie, or to be neutral and evasive about him in the name of some vaguely sensitive ecumenical conscience, is to stand against those who try to incubate a Reformation in the Muslim world.
— Christopher Hitchens
Islamo-Fascism is NOT the result of economic deprivation or legitimate blowback because of Western foreign policies or even heinous drone attacks on Muslim civilians. All non-Muslims as Infidels, regardless of their faith or lack of it, are in an ideological war with a demonized, freedom-hating Muslim death-cult rooted in their accurate interpretation of the Qur'an!
— Gary Patton
All the dilemmas and questions of today were known in ethics more than 2,000 years ago. All the greatest teachers of mankind whether prophets such as Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad or non-prophets such as Confucius , Gautama, Buddha, Socrates, Kant, Tolstoy , and Martin Buber, covering a period from the sixth century BC up to the present ( Martin Buber died in 1965) have taught essentially the same morals. As distinguished from rules about social orders and ways of production , moral truths are constant. The reason for this lies in the fact that the riddle had been established at the moment of creation in the "prologue in heaven" in the act preceding the whole of human history. Intelligence, education, and experience do not in themselves help us approach or better understand all of that. Jesus pronounced his truth when he was a child and was slightly more than thirty when he was condemned. He needed neither knowledge nor experience for his great, capital truths about God and man because these truths could not be reached by knowledge or experience. Are they not "Hidden from the wise and the learned and revealed to the little ?
— Alija Izetbegović
Only he who asks the question, will be able to hear the answer.
— Ali Ezzat Bigovich
even if Noam Chomsky were right about everything, the Islamic doctrines related to martyrdom, jihad, blasphemy, apostasy, the rights of women and homosexuals, etc. would still present huge problems for the emergence of a global civil society (and these are problems quite unlike those presented by similar tenets in other faiths, for reasons that I have explained at length elsewhere and touch on only briefly here). And any way in which I might be biased or blinded by “the religion of the state,” or any other form of cultural indoctrination, has absolutely no relevance to the plight of Shiites who have their mosques, weddings, and funerals bombed by Sunni extremists, or to victims of rape who are beaten, imprisoned, or even killed as “adulteresses” throughout the Muslim world. I hope it goes without saying that the Afghan girls who even now are risking their lives by merely learning to read would not be best compensated for their struggles by being handed copies of Chomsky’s books enumerating the sins of the West
— Sam Harris
Based on the experience of history and civilization of mankind, which is more important for Muslims today, to no longer busy discussing the greatness that Muslims achieved in the past, or debating who first discovered the number zero, including the number one, two, three and so on, as the contribution of Muslims in the writing of numbers in this modern era and the foundation and development of civilizations throughout the world. But how Muslims will regained the lead and control of science and technology, leading back and become a leader in the world of science and civilization, because it represents a real achievement.
— Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie
We have no rational evidence that there exits another world, but we have a clear feeling that man does not exist only to produce and to consume.
— Alija Izetbegović
Yasunari Kawabata, the Japanese Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1968, committed suicide in 1971. Two years earlier, in 1969, another great Japanese novelist, Yukio Mishima, ended his life in the same way. Since 1895 ,thirteen Japanese novelists and writers have committed suicide, including the author of the Rashomon, Ryunosuko Akutagawa, in 1927. That "continuous tragedy" of Japanese culture during 70 years coincides with the penetration of Western civilization and materialistic ideas into the traditional culture of Japan. Whatever it be, for the poets and the writers of tragedies, civilization will always have an inhuman face and be a threat to humanity. A year before his death, Kawabata wrote "men are separated from each other by a concrete wall that obstructs any circulation of love. Nature is smothered in the name of progress." In the novel The Snow Country, published in 1937 , Kawabata places man's loneliness and alienation in the modern world at the very focus of his reflections.
— Alija Izetbegović
Muslims may fall short of Islam but Islam will never fall short of Muslims.
— Habeeb Akande
Islam's middle position can be recognized by the fact that Islam has always been attacked from the two opposite directions: from the side of religion, that is too natural, actual, and tuned to the world; and from the side of science that it contains religious and mystical elements. There is only one Islam, but like man, it has both soul and body.
— Alija Izetbegović
It is known that the Quran leaves an analytical reader the impression of disarrangement, and that it seems to be a compound of diverse elements. Nevertheless, the Quran is life, not literature. Islam is a way of living rather than a way of thinking. The only authentic comment of the Quran can be life, and as we know, it was the life of the prophet Muhammad. Islam is in its written form (the Quran) may seem disorderly, but in the life of Muhammad it proves itself to be a natural union of love and force, the sublime and the real, the divine and the human. This explosive compound of religion and politics produced enormous force in the life of the peoples who accepted it. In one moment, Islam has coincided with the very essence of life.
— Alija Izetbegović
Scientists or thinkers who try to discover the truth cannot find that higher life by thinking alone, but their own life, spent in search for the truth and neglecting the physical living, is just that higher form of human existence.
— Alija Izetbegović
...Amar was made conscious in an instant of a presence in the air, something which had been there all the time, but which he had never isolated and identified. The thing was in him, he was a part of it, as was the man opposite him, and it was a part of them; it whispered to them that time was short, that the world they lived in was approaching its end, and beyond was unfathomable darkness. It was the premonition of inevitable defeat and annihilation, and it had always been there with them and in them, as intangible and as real as the night around them. Amar pulled two loose cigarettes out of his pocket and handed one to the potter. "Ah, the Moslems, the Moslems!" he sighed. "Who knows what's going to happen to them?
— Paul Bowles, The Spider's House
In some socialist states well-performed work is rewarded with moral stimulants instead of material ones. However, the moral stimulants cannot be explained by materialistic philosophy. It is the same case with the appeals for humanism, justice, equality, freedom, human rights, and so forth, which are all of religious origin. Certainly, everybody has the right to live as he thinks best, including the right not to be consistent with his own pattern. Still, to understand the world correctly, it is important to know the true origin of meaning and of the ideas ruling the world.
— Alija Izetbegović
A man engrossed in sensual pleasures may form a mistaken out lookupon life andthink that he enjoys life more than others do. But soon he realizes hismistake as not longafter this he is reduced to a mere slave to his blind passions,He is doomed to a perpetuallife of deprivation and restlessness, for animal desires once run rampant are neversatisfied: they are rather sharpened all the more and degrade man to lower levels ofanimalism where all his efforts are focused on one object: how toderive the maximumpossible sensual pleasure in life?
— Mohammad Qutub
The Islamic intellectual tradition has usually not seen a dichotomy between intellect and intuition but has created a hierarchy of knowledge and methods of attaining knowledge according to which degrees of both intellection and intuition become harmonized in an order encompassing all the means available to man to know, from sensual knowledge an reason to intellection and inner version or the "knowledge of the heart.
— Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy
The successful are those who can be saved from their own selfishness.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
The idea behind verses about the sealing of hearts appears to be the psychological law that if a person once does a good or an evil deed, his chances of repeating that kind of action increase and of doing its opposite proportionately decrease. With constant repetition of an evil or of a good action, it becomes almost impossible for a person to do the opposite, or even to think of it, so much so that while men's hearts become "sealed" and their eyes "blinded" if they do evil, their doing good produces such a state of mind that the devil himself can have no sway over it. Nevertheless, actions which create a psychological habit, however strong their influence may be, must not be construed as absolute determinants, for there is no "point of no return" for human behavior: genuine repentance (tauba) can turn an apparently wholly evil man into a paragon of virtue; on the other hand, although this is much more rare, an apparent paragon of virtue (even a prophet!) can turn into a near devil enmeshed in carnal pleasures .
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
Fear no one except the One.
— Habeeb Akande
The removal of God from human consciousness means the removal of meaning and purpose from human life.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
If Allah wants to send me a message,he'll do so on the faces of my brothers and sisters.
— Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores
Being in relationship with Jesus, "God, The One and Only", is the single cure for hatred ...the only guarantee of salam or shalom!
— Gary Patton
All evil, all injustice, all harm that one does to someone else—in sum, all deviation from man's normative nature—in a much more fundamental way and in a far more ultimate sense one does to oneself, and not just metaphorically but literally.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
It must be constantly remembered that the Qu r’ān is not just descriptive but is primarily prescriptive. Both the content of its message and the power of the form in which it is conveyed are designed not so much to "inform" men in any ordinary sense of the word as to change their character. The psychological impact and the moral import of its statements, therefore, have a primaryrole. Phrases like "God has sealed their hearts, blinded their eyes, deafened them to truth” in the Qur’ān do have a descriptive meaning in terms of the psychological processes described earlier; but even more primarily in such contexts, they have a definite psychological intention: to change the ways of men in the right direction.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
To hold that the Qur’ān believes in an absolute determinism of human behavior, denying free choice on man's part, is not only to deny almost the entire content of theQu r’ān, but to undercut its very basis: the Qur’ān by its own claim is an invitation to man to come to the right path (hudan lil-nās).
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
Dualism is the closest human feeling, but it is not necessarily the highest human philosophy. On the contrary, all great philosophies have been monistic. Man experiences the world dualistically, but monism is the essence of all human thinking. Philosophy disagrees with dualism. However, this fact does not mean too much, because life, being superior to thought, may not be judged by it. In reality, since we are human beings, we are living two realities. We can deny these two worlds, but we cannot escape from them. Life does not depend too much on our understanding of it.
— Alija Izetbegović
People belittle or ignore or even rebel against God, because they view theprocesses of nature as having self-sufficient causes, normally regarded by them asultimate. They do not realize that the universe is a sign pointing to something"beyond" itself, something without which the universe, with all its natural causes,would be and could be nothing.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
There are only three integral views of the world: the religious, the materialistic, and the Islamic. They reflect three elemental possibilities (conscience, nature, and man), each of them manifesting itself as Christianity, materialism, and Islam. All variety of ideologies, philosophies, and teachings from the oldest time up to now can be reduced to one of these three basic world views. The first takes as its starting point the existence of the spirit, the second the existence of matter, and the third the simultaneous existence of spirit and matter. If only matter exists, materialism would be the only consequent philosophy. On the contrary, if the spirit exists then man also exists, and man's life would be senseless without a kind of religion and morality. Islam is the name for the unity of spirit and matter, the highest form of which is man himself. The human life is complete only if it includes both the physical and the spiritual desires of the human being. All man's failures are either because of the religious denial of man's biological needs of the materialistic denial of man's spiritual desires.
— Alija Izetbegović
Philologists assure us that żulm in Arabic originally meant "to put something out of its proper place," so that all wrong of any kind is injustice, i.e., an injustice against the agent himself) is, therefore, a very common term in the Qur’ān, with its clear idea that all injustice is basically reflexive.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
This unstable character of man, this going from one extreme to the other, arising as it does out of his narrow vision and petty mind, reveals certain basic moral tensions within which human conduct must function if it is to be stable and fruitful. These contradictory extremes are, therefore, not so much a "problem" to be resolved by theological thought as tensions to be "lived with" if man is to be truly "religious," i.e., a servant of God. Thus, utter powerlessness and "being the measure for all things," hopelessness and pride, determinism and "freedom," absolute knowledge and pure ignorance—in sum, an utterly "negative self-feeling" and a "feeling of omnipotence"—are extremes that constitute natural tensions for proper human conduct. It is the "God-given" framework for human action. Since its primary aim isto maximize moral energy, the Qur’ān—which claims to be "guidance formankind"—regards it as absolutely essential that man not violate the balance of opposing tensions. The most interesting and the most important fact of moral life is that violating this balance in any direction produces a "Satanic condition" which in its moral effects is exactly the same: moral nihilism. Whether one is proud or hopeless, self-righteous or self-negating, in either case the result is deformity and eventual destruction of the moral human personality.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
Belief in God, without belief in the Prophet (SAWW), would still be unbelief.
— Wasif Ali Wasif
The essence of all human rights is the equality of the entire human race, which the Qur’ān assumed, affirmed, and confirmed. It obliterated all distinctions among men except goodness and virtue (taqwā): The reason the Qur’ān emphasizes essential human equality is that the kind of vicious superiority which certain members of this species assert over others is unique among all animals. This is where human reason appears in its most perverted forms.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
The Qur’ān definitely seems optimistic about the future, while rather grim about the past It is absolutely imperative for successor civilizations and their bearer communities to study well and learn from the fate of earlier ones that have perished; or they will assuredly meet with the same fate, for "God's law does not change" for any people. This is perhaps one of the most insistent ideas in the Qur’ān, which constantly exhorts people to "travel on the earth and see the end of those before them
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
This struggle between good and evil, fresh and stale, new and decrepit,between the vigor of moral youth and the dotage of senility, is of positive benefit, for it keeps the perennial moral values alive
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
The Qur’ān began by criticizing two closely related aspects of that society: the polytheism or multiplicity of gods which was symptomatic of the segmentation of society, and the gross socioeconomic disparities that equally rested on and perpetuated a pernicious divisiveness of mankind. The two are obverse and converse of the same coin: only God can ensure the essential unity of the human race as His creation, His subjects, and those responsible finally to Him alone. The economic disparities were most persistently criticized, because they were the most difficult to remedy and were at the hear of social discord—although tribal rivalries, with their multiple entanglements of alliance, enmity, and vengeance, were no less serious, and the welding of these tribes into a political unity was an imperative need. Certain abuses of girls, orphans, and women, and the institution of slavery demanded desperate reform.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
The purpose of man's creation is that he do good in the world, not substitutehimself for God and think that he can make and unmake the moral law at his ownconvenience and for his own selfish and narrow ends. This is the difference betweenphysical laws and the moral law—the one is to be used and put to service; the othermust be obeyed and served. For God says
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
↑ top up position down↓ bottom“The corruption of religious leaders, who were expected to be the source of spiritual force and regeneration, is the last step in the decay of a community.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
The simple truth is that nowhere in human history is there another manwho combined so uniquely and effectively in his person both the idealist and realist factors as did Muħammad (Peace be upon him)
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
For the Qur’ān, it is neither strange nor out of tune nor blameworthy for a prophetthat he is not always consistent as a human. It is nevertheless as a human that hebecomes an example for mankind, for his average level of conduct is still so high that it is a worthy model for mankind.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
Nature exists for man to exploit for his own ends, while the end of man himself is nothing else but to serve God, to be grateful to Him, and to worship Him alone.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: "My Companions are as stars. Whomsoever of them you follow, you will be rightly guided." When a man looks at a star, and finds his way by it, the star does not speak any word to that man. Yet, by merely looking at the star, the man knows the road from roadlessness and reaches his goal.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Ibn Mas'ud said, "When 'Umar died nine-tenth of all knowledge vanished with him." The people were shocked and said, "How can this be when among us now are still many of the great companions?" Ibn Mas'ud replied,"I am not speaking of the knowledge of fiqh and the science of judgements, I'm speaking about the knowledge of Allah." This struggle of isolation, hunger, sleeplessness, weeping, fear and endless service to men was for this end. The journey is only for knowledge of Allah and the whole of it lies in detachment from everything that passes away. First from what is displeasing to Allah, then from one's self-illusion and desires, and then from all men and all otherness until there is only isolation and extreme nearness to Allah.
— Khalid Muhammad Khalid, Men Around The Messenger: The Companions Of The Prophet
Standing in Front of the Mirror of EternityDressed By True ExistenceLooking to Your Own RealityIn the Ocean of Oneness
— Sheikh Nazim Al-Haqqani
Yet she belongs, finally and truly, only to God. The hijab is a symbol of freedom from the male regard, but also, in our time, of freedom from subjugation by the iron fist of materialism, deterministic science, and the death of meaning. It denotes softness, otherness, inwardness. She is not only caught in a world of power relations, but she inhabits a world of love and sacrifice. This freedom, which is of the conscience, is hers to exercise as she will.
— Abdal Hakim Murad, Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions
He who at night feeling tired because of working in the daytime, then at night he was forgiven of Allah" —
— Anonymous, The Qur'an / القرآن الكريم
Empirical" knowledge itself is of little benefit unless it awakens the inner perception of man as to his own situation, his potentialities, his risks, and his destiny
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
One would love nonetheless to know how to be a man, how to be a woman before God, in the mirror of one's own conscience, in the looks of those who surround us. One would wish to find the strength to beautify one's thoughts and to purify one's heart. It is everyone's hope and expectation to live in serenity and to plod along in transparency: the palms of the hands patiently directed towards heaven, at the heart of all this modernity.
— Tariq Ramadan, Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity
If one has not been able to experience God by himself, one should allow himself to be guided by the experiences of others who have experienced Him
— Muhammad Asad
God is Love but He also is the Lawgiver
— Habeeb Akande
The essence of all human rights is the equality of the entire human race, which the Qur’ān assumed, affirmed, and confirmed. It obliterated all distinctions among men except goodness and virtue (taqwā)
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
The Qur’ān does not appear to endorse the kind of doctrine of a radical mind-body dualism found in Greek philosophy, Christianity, or Hinduism; indeed, there is hardly a passage in the Qur'ān that says that man is composed of two separate, let alone disparate, substances, the body and the soul.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
Taqwā means to protect oneself against the harmful or evil consequences of one's conduct. If, then, by "fear of God" one means fear of the consequences of one's actions—whether in this world or the next (fear of punishment of the Last Day)—one is absolutely right. In other words, it is the fear that comes from an acute sense of responsibility, here and in the hereafter, and not the fear of a wolf or of an uncanny tyrant, for the God of the Qur’ān has unbounded mercy—although He also wields dire punishment, both in this world and in the hereafter.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
This idea (Taqwa)can be effectively conveyed by the term "conscience," if the object of conscience transcends it. This is why it is proper to say that "conscience" is truly as central to Islam as love is to Christianity when one speaks of the human response to the ultimate reality—which, therefore, is conceived in Islam as merciful justice rather than fatherhood. Taqwā, then, in the context of our argument, means to be squarely anchored within the moral tensions, the "limits of God," and not to "transgress" or violate the balance of those tensions or limits. Human conduct then becomes endowed with that quality which renders it "service to God [‘ibāda].
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
Some think of Islam as an expedient jobs program that moves the female half of the population out of the way.
— William Langewiesche, Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert
the Qur’ān appears to be interested in three types knowledge for man. One is the knowledge of nature which has been made subservient to man, i.e., the physical sciences. The second crucial type is the knowledge of history (and geography): the Qur’ān persistently asks man to "travel on the earth" and see for himself what happened to bygone civilizations and why they rose and fell. The third is the knowledge of man himself.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
Nor can one take an unfair attitude even towards enemies: "Let the enmity of a people[towards you] not determine you upon an unjust course; be fair, it is closer to taqwā. Quran
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
The human being is not a fallen being in need of redemption but rather a forgetful being who must be reminded of God and his own nature.
— Joseph E. B. Lumbard, Submission, Faith  Beauty: The Religion of Islam
The corruption of religious leaders, who were expected to be the source of spiritual force and regeneration, is the last step in the of decay of a community.
— Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'an
Hearts melt when the Beloved of Allah is mentioned.
— Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf
We were the most humiliated people on earth and God gave us honour through Islam. If we ever seek honour through anything else, God will humiliate us again.
— Umar ibn Al-Khattab
The Prophet (SAW) said: 'Knowledge is only gained through learning and clemency is only gained through perseverance.
— محمد عبد الرحمن العريفي, Enjoy Your Life
And never think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them for a Day when eyes will stare [in horror].
— Quran 14 42
And Moses said, "If you should disbelieve, you and whoever is on the earth entirely - indeed, Allah is Free of need and Praiseworthy.
— Quran 8 42
The Qur’an sought to reform, not to destroy and start from scratch, tosalvage what was useful and then to modify and build on it. The task wasto get the Arabs to think about religion in a novel way, to inculcate in them a new conceptual frame of reference, to transfer them from one worldview to another, and higher, one. This process of transformation took them from traditionalism to individualism, from impulsiveness to discipline, from supernaturalism to science, from intuition to conscious reasoning and, in the end, ideally, harmonized the whole.
— Jeffrey Lang, Struggling to Surrender: Some Impressions of an American Convert to Islam
And speak to people good [words]
— Quran 2 83
The greatest threat to religion in any society is not persecution, but rather apathy born of irrelevance.
— Sherman A. Jackson
When, as happened recently in France, an attempt is made to coerce women out of the burqa rather than creating a situation in which a woman can choose what she wishes to do, it’s not about liberating her, but about unclothing her. It becomes an act of humiliation and cultural imperialism. It’s not about the burqa. It’s about the coercion. Coercing a woman out of a burqa is as bad as coercing her into one. Viewing gender in this way, shorn of social, political and economic context, makes it an issue of identity, a battle of props and costumes. It is what allowed the US government to use western feminist groups as moral cover when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Afghan women were (and are) in terrible trouble under the Taliban. But dropping daisy-cutters on them was not going to solve their problems.
— Arundhati Roy
Whoever says that all music is prohibited, let him also claim that the songs of birds are prohibited.
— حجة الإسلام أبو حامد محمد الغزالي
The veil deliberately marks women as private and restricted property, nonpersons. The veil sets women apart from men and apart from the world; it restrains them, confines them, grooms them for docility. A mind can be cramped just as a body may be, and a Muslim veil blinkers both your vision and your destiny. It is the mark of a kind of apartheid, not the domination of a race but of a sex.
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations
But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questionings, human beings can't acquire knowledge.
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Pay the hired worker his wages before his sweat dries
— Hazrat Muhammad P.B.U.H
If you wait to live you will never succeed. Living begins today and it begins within you.
— Asa Don Brown
If I choose to write about sheep, it's just because I happened to write about sheep. There is no deep significance.
— Haruki Murakami
Humanity was a passing notion to him; something he liked to try on for size and model in the dressing room, but never actually felt compelled to buy.
— Jane Bled
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness. 
— Kate DiCamillo
Yeah, I write Urban Fantasy, but its more like Die Hard or Indiana Jones with Fairies, Mummies and a Vampire who uses guns more than his teeth.
— Kevin James Breaux
Pregressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensity social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation
— Angela Y. Davis
When people have a hard task to do - one which stretches them - they become less concerned with trivial matters.
— Idries Shah
I used to always read with a pen in my hand, as if the author and I were in a conversation. 
— Tara Bray Smith
Expression is a function of intention and intention emanates from your thought faculty.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
~Reading a book is like looking through a window!
— Zetta Hupf
It ain't just about writing on some documents,author writes on to the readers' heart and mind.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Yes, I felt very small. The typewriter seemed larger than a piano, I was less than a molecule. What could I do? I drank more.-pg 237
— Albert Sánchez Piñol, Pandora in the Congo
Originality, not Intelligence, is the sign of a brilliant Author. All the Education in the world won't help someone who can't think for themselves.
— A.M. Sawyer
Be good, or good at it.
— Belo Miguel Cipriani
My author role model is Kurata Misako. I want to be rich enough to drive from room to room in my home but also down to earth enough to let squirrels live in my hair.
— Christy Leigh Stewart
To be or not to be wasn't the question meant
—  it was the secret answer hidden in riddled defense.
...I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no purpose than to get rid of that book....
— Vladimir Nabokov
I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55.
— Mark Twain
When I die cremate me so I can finally fit into something small.
— Xondra Day
New York City, city of exaggerations. Place of Herculean ascensions and perilous falls.
— Kurt Wenzel, Lit Life: A Novel
No, I will not join your Civil War reenactment troupe.
— Aaron A.A. Smith, Siren's Lament and Other Stories
I'll write'em if you'll read'em
— Robert Lee Thompson
He has tongue of a writer.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
To master magical realism, one must make the real seem unreal but, more importantly, make the unreal seem real.
— Kevin Ansbro
Literature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.
— Colum McCann
I don't believe it pays to be a great author.
— Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs
Where Norman Rockwell is the Artist for the man on the street, O'Henry is his author.
— Sonia Rumzi
But you can't fault me on my footnotes. I've worked hard on them and they look pretty impressive. And almost all the sources I quote actually exist. I must confess, however, that the idea of putting footnotes in chapter 5, the autobiographical chapter, started out simply as a joke. Who but a biblical scholar would think of footnoting an autobiography? But the joke quickly got out of hand and become a significant part of that chapter. I plan someday to write a scholarly article consisting of a single sentence and a twenty-page footnote.
— Jeffrey L. Staley, Reading with a Passion: Rhetoric, Autobiography, and the American West in the Gospel of John
I crept in to find my father with pennies on his eyes - and looking closer I saw they were made of foil-covered chocolate. Of course I stole and ate them. Magical guilt? Tell me about it
— Steve Aylett
He had long been curious at leaders intermittent calls for a return to past values and had tested the notion by trying to build a house from the sky downwards
— Steve Aylett
Determine the result you desire..law of averages does not know the objective untill the decision is made. Once a decision is made, the law of averages goes into operation.
— Earl Prevette, How to Turn Your Ability Into Cash
One of the single most important things a writer must do, besides writing, is reading ...... and drinking coffee.
— Linda Ghaderi
In the stories Joan wrote when she was Daniel’s age, she had murdered her characters, while Daniel had his one character facing down dangers and searching for answers. The genesis of the stories was clear to her: because Daniel felt loved and safe within his family, he could imagine himself taking risks, venturing out onto figurative limbs. He was lucky, Joan thought. She had only felt loved and safe within the worlds she created.
— Cherise Wolas, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
By connecting your inner child to your internal being, you bring out the hero in you that is inside all of us.
— Kim Ha Campbell, Inner Peace Outer Abundance
Writing places a person in the community of those imaginative spirits whom preceded their birth. Writing also connects a person with the intrepid spirits whom share the present as well as with those souls whom are not yet born.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Can you think of a better way than slavishly copying and removing attribution to disrespect an author
— Kalyan C. Kankanala, Fun IP, Fundamentals of Intellectual Property
Sometimes when I prepare to write, I feel the same sensation wash over me as if my toes were curling over the brink of a high cliff, my gaze peering downward into a dark pond, and I anxiously wonder, will the water prove deep enough? Will my words be satisfactory?
— Richelle E. Goodrich
A deep level of personal engagement is key to good writing and complete immersion by the writer will translate into a richer and more engaging experience for the reader.
— Nidhie Sharma
He could’ve penned a rendition of Moby Dick in Pig Latin and he wouldn’t have been the wiser.
— Kelly Moran, Benediction
A story only wants to be told. Don't stand in its way.
— Aleks Canard
I might be tempted to socialize more if the conversations taking place around me were half as interesting as the dialogue going on inside my head.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.
— A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh Best Friends Library
Yes I am aware of the rules. Yes I can totally see how I err the Queen.Yes it is this very fact of slaying her language.That gives my soul its melodies.
— Malebo Sephodi
My object is merely to give the reader a general introduction into an abode where, if so disposed, he may linger and loiter with me day by day until we gradually become familiar with all its localities.
— Washington Irving, Tales of the Alhambra
The biggest thing for aspiring writers I would say is that writing is hard work. You can’t sustain the fantasy that it should somehow be otherwise for you because you are more special or more committed than other aspiring writers. You aren’t sitting down to be entertained by the gods or to entertain yourself. At times it can be a thrill and it feels more like play, but we are easily deceived by whatever pleasures or rewards writing can offer. Exhilarating work is still work. Is it work, or is it play? And the answer is “yes.” Does it sometimes feel like it comes easily or naturally? Yes. But did it really come easily? No. Writing doesn’t offer the rhythmic endorphin hit you get scrolling down the screen clicking on memes. Are you up for the work it is going to take to become successful as a writer? It is going to be harder than you think. You are submitting to forces and to a process that you can’t fully control. There is maybe a tiny bit more control if you self-publish, and there is no shame in doing that, but even that is going to introduce hard work. Probably harder than you think. If my next novel can’t find a home, I’m not above self-publishing it in some capacity and then moving on to the next project.
— Brian K. Friesen
the medicine wheel is inside of you it not in a pile of stones the medicine wheel is inside the heart and body
— Medicine Turtle, The Quiet Revolution of the 7th Generation: Die Stille Revolution Der 7. Generation
The time is ripe for young Indian authors writing in the English language.
— Anurag Shourie, An Ode Towards Hope –
I love writing, but I would be able to love it more if that love wasn’t motivated by fear of homelessness.
— Jenny Trout, Say Goodbye to Hollywood
Survival is a passive way of saying “my needs are greater than yours.
— Caroline George, The Vestige
Life is totally unbelievable. Enjoy it at its fullest, with no regrets.
— Gloria E. Gherardi
Stay curious, stay weird, stay kind and don't let anyone ever tell you you aren't smart or brave or worthy enough.
— Alex Hirsch, Gravity Falls: Journal 3
Where did the stereotypical image of the reclusive author in a bathrobe and slippers, indulging in vices and spending hours before a typewriter, even come from? I don't know about you, but most writers don't have the luxury of doing any of this. Otherwise we'd have no life experience and nothing to write about, anyway.
— Rebecca McNutt
We choose our favourite author as we do our friend, from a conformity of humour and disposition. Mirth or passion, sentiment or reflection; whichever of these most predominates in our temper, it gives us a peculiar sympathy with the writer who resembles us.
— David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste
A good editor fixes. A superb editor fixes without ruining the original message of your book as a superb translator does as well.
— B.A. Gabrielle
Hating a main character for being too weak is like expecting a human to be able to do everything. Stories aren't all sunshine and rainbows.
— B.A. Gabrielle
Watching TV helps me come up with a lot of new ideas. Psychological and mystery help me the most because of how thought provoking they are!
— B.A. Gabrielle
Your mind is beautiful. No matter what problems people say you have, every mind is capable of writing something inspiring and beautiful.
— B.A. Gabrielle