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Islam Quotes

This is a small page with views from supporters, critics and historians, and none of its entries is flagged as misattributed. The names at the top are the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Harari, Hillary Clinton, Richard Dawkins and Tsai Ping-kun.

The sourced entries take different angles. Gandhi, speaking in 1939, says that the very word Islam means peace. Yuval Noah Harari, in Sapiens (2011), says Christian success served as a model for another monotheist religion that appeared in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century. The philosopher Antony Flew, in a 2009 book, says he could never regard it with anything but horror and fear. Each quote page gives the full text and source, which matter more here than on most topics.

Random quote on Islam

Most quoted on islam:

That his [Muhammad's] reforms enhanced the status of women in general by contrast with the anarchy of pre-Islamic Arabia is universally admitted.

H. A. R. Gibb

I would never regard Islam with anything but horror and fear because it is fundamentally committed to conquering the world for Islam.

Antony Flew Did the Resurrection Happen?: A Conversation with Gary Habermas and Antony Flew (2009)

The very word Islam means peace, which is non-violence.

Mahatma Gandhi On Trial (1939)

The trouble with Islam is deeply rooted in its teachings. Islam is not only a religion. Islam (is) also a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force.

Wafa Sultan

It's almost impossible to say anything against Islam in this country, because you are accused of being racist or Islamophobic.

Richard Dawkins

I do regard Islam to be a religion of peace in the same sense as Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are.

Mahatma Gandhi

How can people bear to live their lives bound by such insanely specific yet manifestly pointless rules?

Richard Dawkins

Christian success served as a model for another monotheist religion and that appeared in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century - Islam.

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Even a little knowledge of Islam will show that its religion is not only tolerant of other Faiths, but most respectful, and indeed, fully accepts the divine inspiration of all theistic Faiths that came before Islam.

Aga Khan III

Islam, from among all religions, best suits the science discoveries and is the most ready to edify souls and force them to abide by justice, kindness and toleration.

Gustave Le Bon

I like Islam, it is consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded.

Kurt Gödel

These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Islam cannot be either ‘moderate’ or ‘not moderate.’ Islam can only be one thing.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.

Arnold J. Toynbee Civilization on Trial (1948)

I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I hope I am a “Muslim” as “one surrendered to God”; but I believe that embedded in the Qur’an and other expressions of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other occidentals have still much to learn.

William Montgomery Watt

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.

Yann Martel

In most Muslim countries Islam is still the ultimate criterion of group identity and loyalty. It is Islam which distinguishes between self and other, between insider and outsider, between brother and stranger.

Bernard Lewis

History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races, is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated.

De Lacy O'Leary

You see, it's been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?

Adolf Hitler

At the heart of Islam is its preservation of an integral view of the Universe. Islam - like Buddhism and Hinduism - refuses to separate man and nature, religion and science, mind and matter, and has preserved a metaphysical and unified view of ourselves and the world around us.

Charles III

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