Famous Muhammad Quotes

Muhammad Ali famously said, ‘To be a great champion, you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.

The blackness of night is an essential quality of the Divine Feminine. The "black cloak" of Muhammad is very famous. The Sûfîs sing about kali kamaliya vala (the one wrapped in the black blanket) in their qawwalis (spiritual songs). Muhammad's prayer rug was also black, as was the first flag of Islam.

Many Americans first fell in love with the poetry of the thirteenth century teacher and spiritual leader Jelalludin Rumi during the early 1990s when the unparalleled lyrical grace, philosophical brilliance, and spiritual daring of his work took modern Western readers completely by surprise. The impact of its soulful beauty and the depth of its profound humanity were so intense that they reportedly prompted numerous individuals to spontaneously compose poetry.

Machiavelli himself famously put it: “All armed prophets have conquered, and unarmed prophets have come to grief.”9

Having delivered his message in this world, he had gone to fulfil it in the Hereafter, where he would continue to be, for them and for others, but without the limitations of life on earth, the Key of Mercy, the key of Paradise, the Spirit of Truth, the Happiness of God. Verily God and His angels whelm in blessing the prophet. O ye who believe, invoke blessings upon him, and give him greetings of peace. اللهم صل على سيدنا محمد وعلى آل سيدنا محمد كما صليت على إبراهيم وعلى آل إبراهيم إنك حميد. اللهم بارك على سيدنا محمد وعلى آل سيدنا محمد كما باركت على إبراهيم وعلى آل إبراهيم إنك حميد مجيد.

I think it is almost impossible that he [Prophet Muhammad (saas)] could have known about things like the common origin of the universe, because scientists have only found out within the last few years with very complicated and advanced technological methods that this is the case. Somebody who did not know something about nuclear physics 1400 years ago could not, I think, be in a position to find out from his own mind for instance that the earth and the heavens had the same origin, or many others of the questions that we have discussed here. (Alfred Kroner, Professor of the Department of Geosciences, University of Mainz, Germany. One of the world's most famous geologists)

The reality of the Islamic metaphysical world was not taken seriously despite the fact that Iqbal, who was the ideological founder of Pakistan, had shown much interest in Islamic philosophy, although I do not think that he is really a traditional Islamic philosopher. He himself was influenced by Western philosophy, but at least was intelligent enough to realize the significance of Islamic philosophy. The problem with him was that he did not know Arabic well enough. His Persian was very good, but he could not read all the major texts of Islamic philoso- phy, which are written mostly in Arabic. Nevertheless, he wrote on the development of metaphysics in Persia, and he had some philosophical substance, much more than the other famous reformers who are men- tioned all the time, such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan or Muh:ammad ‘Abduh.

Evidently Nehru, though a nationalist at the political level, was intellectually and emotionally drawn to the Indus civilization by his regard for internationalism, secularism, art, technology and modernity. By contrast, Nehru’s political rival, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, neither visited Mohenjo-daro nor commented on the significance of the Indus civilization. Nor did Nehru’s mentor, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, India’s greatest nationalist leader. In Jinnah’s case, this silence is puzzling, given that the Indus valley lies in Pakistan and, moreover, Jinnah himself was born in Karachi, in the province of Sindh, not so far from Mohenjo-daro. In Gandhi’s case, the silence is even more puzzling. Not only was Gandhi, too, an Indus dweller, so to speak, having been born in Gujarat, in Saurashtra, but he must surely also have become aware in the 1930s of the Indus civilization as the potential origin of Hinduism, plus the astonishing revelation that it apparently functioned without resort to military violence. Yet, there is not a single comment on the Indus civilization in the one hundred large volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. The nearest he comes to commenting is a touching remark recorded by the Mahatma’s secretary when the two of them visited the site of Marshall’s famous excavations at Taxila, in northern Punjab, in 1938. On being shown a pair of heavy silver ancient anklets by the curator of the Taxila archaeological museum, ‘Gandhiji with a deep sigh remarked: “Just like what my mother used to wear.

One of the most damning examples of low-quality evidence concerns microcredit (that is, lending small amounts of money to the very poor, a form of microfinance most famously associated with Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank). Intuitively, microcredit seems like it would be very cost-effective, and there were many anecdotes of people who’d received microloans and used them to start businesses that, in turn, helped them escape poverty. But when high-quality studies were conducted, microcredit programs were shown to have little or no effect on income, consumption, health, or education.

What about Jerusalem? When discussing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, pundits and politicians often tell us that Jerusalem is one of the holy cities of Islam—indeed, its third holiest city, right after Mecca and Medina. But in reality, the Islamic claim to Jerusalem is extremely tenuous, based only on a legendary journey of Muhammad—a journey that is at best a dream and at worst a fabrication. The Koran refers to this journey only obliquely and in just one place; Islamic tradition fills in the details and connects Jerusalem with the words of the Koran. But the Koran itself never mentions Jerusalem even once—an exceptionally inconvenient fact for Muslims who claim that the Palestinians must have a share of Jerusalem because the city is sacred to Islam. Muhammad’s famous Night Journey is the basis of the Islamic claim to Jerusalem. The Koran’s sole reference to this journey appears in the first verse of sura 17, which says that Allah took Muhammad from “the Sacred Mosque” in Mecca “to the farthest [al-aqsa] Mosque.” There was no mosque in Jerusalem at this time, so the “farthest” mosque probably wasn’t really the one that now bears that name in Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa mosque located on the Temple Mount. Nevertheless, Islamic tradition is firm that this mosque was in Jerusalem.

If war was deception, so too, in a way, was peace. By disarming his own men, Muhammad had effectively disarmed the Meccans, forcing them into a classic zero-sum game in which compromise was the only possible solution, even as any compromise was to his advantage. Eleven centuries before Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war was the continuation of politics by other means,3 Muhammad had demonstrated quite the reverse. What war could not achieve, politics would. Unarmed confrontation had not only forced Mecca to accommodate him; it had also served as a very public demonstration to all of Arabia that he and his followers were more loyal to “the traditions of the fathers” than the Meccans themselves. Neither Gandhi nor Machiavelli could have done better. Muhammad had reversed the terms of engagement, turning apparent weakness into strength.

Muhammad Ali famously said that he didn’t start counting his sit-ups until they hurt. “They’re the only ones that count,” he said. “That’s what makes you a champion.” Bob Dylan said there’s pain behind every beautiful creation. You probably already know that this is true. I’m sure you’ve heard some of those popular sayings that get at this message. Get out of your comfort zone. Embrace the suck. Lean into the pain. Do something every day that scares you. These are just different ways of trying to tell you that if you want to grow, or you want to be great, it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to hurt a little bit. Or a lot.

You cannot project to others the idea that you are successful or wealthy if you don’t believe it yourself. Get into a Muhammad Ali frame of mind; as he famously said, ‘I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.’ In other words, you need to think and act like you’ve already achieved your goal in order that people will treat you that way. And when people treat you as a success you’ll find it easier to achieve that success. By thinking confidently you therefore create a virtuous circle of achievement

Death and life are two sides of the same coin; you cannot have one without the other. Each time you surrender, each time you trust the dying, your faith is led to a deeper level and you discover a Larger Self underneath. You decide not to push yourself to the front of the line, and something much better happens in the back of the line. You let go of your narcissistic anger, and you find that you start feeling much happier. You surrender your need to control your partner, and finally the relationship blossoms or ends. Yet each time it is a choice—and each time it is a kind of dying. It seems we only know what life is when we know what death is. The mystics and great saints were those who had learned to trust and allow this pattern, and often said in effect, “What did I ever lose by dying?” Or try Paul’s famous one-liner: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Now even scientific studies, including those of near-death experiences, reveal the same universal pattern. Things change and grow by dying to their present state, but each time it is a risk. We always wonder, “Will it work this time?” So many academic disciplines are coming together, each in their own way, to say that there’s a constant movement of loss and renewal at work in this world at every level. It seems to be the pattern of all growth and evolution. To be alive means to surrender to this inevitable flow. It’s the same pattern in every atom, in every human relationship, and in every galaxy. Indigenous peoples, Hindu gurus, Buddha, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus all saw it clearly in human history and named it as a kind of “necessary dying.” If this pattern is true, it has been true all the time and everywhere. Such seeing did not just start two thousand years ago. All of us have to eventually learn to let go of something smaller so something bigger can happen. But that’s not a religion—it’s highly visible truth. It is the Way Reality Works. Yes, I am saying that the way things work and Christ are one and the same. This is not a religion to be either fervently joined or angrily rejected. It is a train ride already in motion. The tracks are visible everywhere. You can be a willing and happy traveler. Or not.

Islam is aniconic. In other words, images, effigies, or idols of Allâh are not allowed, although verbal depiction abounds. There was a question long debated in Islam: can we see Allâh? The Prophet said in a hadith, "In Paradise the faithful will see Allâh with the clarity with which you see the moon on the fourteenth night (the full moon)." Theologians debated what this could mean, but the Sûfîs have held that you can see Allâh even in this world, through the "eye of the heart." The famous Sûfî martyr al-Hallaj said in a poem, "ra'aytu rabbi bi-'ayni qalbî" (I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart). Relevant to the focus of this paper is that Sûfîs have always described this theophanic experience as the vision of a woman, the female figure as the object of ru'yah (vision of Allâh).

This last report is particularly intriguing insofar as it implies that Muhammad received his call to prophethood not—as the most famous account would have it—atop Mount Hira occupied in prayerful meditation and acts of pious devotion but while shepherding flocks for wealthy Meccans.

Patricia Crone famously quipped that, with regard to Muhammad's trade journeys in sīrah-maghāzī literature, "What the [Arabic] sources offer are fifteen equally fictitious versions of an event that never took place.

W.E.B. Du Bois famously asked back in 1897: 'Between me and the other world, there is ever an unasked question: How does it feel to be a problem?' White people are generally allowed to have problems, and they've historically been granted the power to define and respond to them. But people of color-in this 'land of the free' forged through slavery and genocide-are regularly viewed and treated as the problem. This distinction has made all the difference. Once human beings are defined as the problem in the public consciousness, their elimination through deportation, incarceration, or even genocide becomes nearly inevitable. White nationalism, at its core, reflects a belief that our nation's problems would be solved if only people of color could somehow be gotten rid of, or at least better controlled. In short, mass incarceration and mass deportation have less to do with crime and immigration than the ways we've chosen to respond to those issues when black and brown people are framed as the problem. As Khalil Gibran Muhammad points out in The Condemnation of Blackness, throughout our nation's history, when crime and immigration have been perceived as white, our nation's response has been radically different from when those phenomena have been defined as black or brown. The systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation may seem entirely unrelated at first glance, but they are both deeply rooted in our racial history, and they both have expanded in part because of the enormous profits to be made in controlling, exploiting, and eliminating vulnerable human beings.