Muslim Unity Quotes

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Like a sculptor, if necessary, carve a friend out of stone. Realize that your inner sight is blind and try to see a treasure in everyone.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
Islam expect every Muslim to do this duty, and if we realise our responsibility time will come soon when we shall justify ourselves worthy of a glorious past.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
The great majority of us are Muslims. We follow the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed (may peace be upon him). We are members of the brotherhood of Islam in which all are equal in rights, dignity and self-respect. Consequently, we have a special and a very deep sense of unity. But make no mistake: Pakistan is not a theocracy or anything like it.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink
Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1))
The fundamentalists of every faith remain blind to the truth that the “sigh within the prayer is the same in the heart of the Christian, the Muslim, and the Jew.” I have seen this unity with my eyes, heard it with my ears, felt it with all my being.
David James Duncan (God Laughs & Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right)
Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history.
Huston Smith
The fact that Ferdinand and Isabella did not choose the path of tolerance is seen as an example of the intractability and inevitability of intolerance, especially in the premodern era. But their actions may be far better understood as the failure to make the more difficult decision, to have the courage to cultivate a society that can live with its own flagrant contradictions. They chose instead to go down the modern path, the one defined by an ethic of unity and harmony, and which is largely intolerant of contradiction.
María Rosa Menocal (The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain)
It is not wholly surprising, however, that, when India began to reassert herself, two nations should have replaced the single British Raj; but all impartial students must regret that the unity of the Indian sub-continent has been once more lost, and trust that the two great nations of India and Pakistan may soon forget the bitterness born of centuries of strife, in cooperation for the common welfare of their peoples.
A.L. Basham (The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the Coming of the Muslims)
Islamic science is related profoundly to the Islamic world view. It is rooted deeply in knowledge based upon the unity of Allah or al-tawhid and a view of the universe in which Allah’s Wisdom and Will rule and in which all things are interrelated reflecting unity on the cosmic level. In contrast, Western science is based on considering the natural world as a reality which is separate from both Allah and the higher levels of being. At best, Allah is accepted as the creator of the world, as a mason who has built a house which now stand on its own. His intrusion into the running of the world and His continuous sustenance of it are not accepted in the modern scientific world view.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr (A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World)
Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls 'freedom' and 'peaceful transfer of power'. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called 'freedom won by them with sacrifice' - whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country - which we consider a deity of worship - my mind was filled with direful anger.
Nathuram Godse (Why I killed Gandhi (Classics To Go))
If our polls are to be trusted, nearly 230 million Americans believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity. A survey of Hindus, Muslims, and Jews around the world would surely yield similar results, revealing that we, as a species, have grown almost perfectly intoxicated by our myths. How is it that, in this one area of our lives, we have convinced ourselves that our beliefs about the world can float entirely free of reason and evidence?
Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)
Kita umat Islam di Indonesia terikat pada adat-kebiasaan dan kebudayaan kita, dan ini mempunyai pengaruh pula pada Islam yang kita amalkan di tanah air kita ini.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Solidaritas Islam hanya merupakan pengandaian sepintas lalu, yang berubah ubah dan tidak pasti sifatnya - Jaques Duchesne-Guillemin
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Pokok terpenting bukanlah mencari hubungan melainkan menetapkan perbandingan.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
The prophets are like different rivers throughout time that all pointed to the same ocean of unity.
A. Helwa (Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam)
On 1 August 1939, Savarkar spoke at a public meeting organized at Tilak Smarak Mandir in Poona. In his speech, he talked about the three different schools of thought prevalent in the Congress, led by three different leaders—Gandhi, Subhas Bose and Manabendranath Roy—and how it is different from the school of thought of the Hindu Mahasabha. He said: In today’s Congress, there are three schools of thought . . . Gandhian school of thought has truth and non-violence as its key ideas. But Gandhian non-violence is inimical to Hindutva. Hindu philosophy says violence for violence sake is bad, but violence is permissible to destroy evil and protect the good, and such violence is good conduct. But Gandhian thought makes no such distinction. They believe in non-violence under all conditions. Second school of thought is led by Subhas Bose and the Forward Bloc. His policies and means used are similar to our thought process and we could work together on certain issues, but even they are obsessed with this mirage of Hindu-Muslim unity. The third school of thought is of Manvendranath (sic) Roy and that is not acceptable to us at all. They believe in the policy of active Muslim appeasement. The Hindu Mahasabha has the interests of Hindus in mind always.
Vikram Sampath (Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966)
Recalling the exact words that she had heard Maulana Azad utter once, she said, ‘Today, if an angel were to descend from heaven and declare that India could get swaraj in twenty-four hours, provided it relinquished Hindu–Muslim unity, I would give up swaraj rather than give up Hindu–Muslim unity. Delay in the attainment of swaraj will be a loss to India, but if our unity is lost, it will be a loss to the entire mankind.
Kiran Doshi (Jinnah Often Came to Our House)
Bukanlah kepercayaan religius yang menyebabkan individu-individu dan rakyat-rakyat Islam itu bertindak, walaupun mungkin kelihatannya seolah-olah demikian. Kepercayaan religius tidak membentuk hidup mereka; ini sering hanya merupakan alat di tangan pemerintah-pemerintah, kelas-kelas dan kelompok-kelompok. Islam merupakan suatu cermin yang digunakan oleh kepentingan-kepentingan tertentu untuk bercermin dan membenarkan diri - Minorsky (Jacques Duchesne Guillemin
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
In the broader spiritual realities, no rites or rituals are necessary to know God. NONE. Any religion that insists you can come to intimate knowledge of the Divine by any means other than stillness, self-awareness, and unity with consciousness is deceptive. So-called holy texts are about religion, not necessarily about God. They are really owners manuals for faith traditions. I am not denouncing them altogether, as I love the Bible and have studied it reverently all my life. But I don't view the Bible as the inspired word OF God as much as the inspired word of men ABOUT God, as they perceive God through their often jaded, human perspectives. Again, I respect these so-called sacred writings. I would just like to see them read and placed in their proper, less idolatrous, place.
Carlton D. Pearson (God Is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu...: God Dwells with Us, in Us, Around Us, as Us)
The Musalman, remaining faithful to his religion, has not progressed; he has remained stationary in a world of swiftly moving modern forces. It is, indeed, one of the salient features of Islam that it immobilizes in their native barbarism, the races whom it enslaves. It is fixed in a crystallization, inert and impenetrable. It is unchangeable; and political, social or economic changes have no repercussion upon it. " Having been taught that outside Islam there can be no safety; outside its law no truth and outside its spiritual message there is no happiness, the Muslim has become incapable of conceiving any other condition than his own, any other mode of thought than the Islamic thought. He firmly believes that he has arrived at an unequalled pitch of perfection; that he is the sole possessor of true faith, of the true doctrine, the true wisdom ; that he alone is in possession of the truth—no relative truth subject to revision, but absolute truth. " The religious law of the Muslims has had the effect of imparting to the very diverse individuals of whom the world is composed, a unity of thought, of feeling, of ideas, of judgement.
B.R. Ambedkar (Pakistan or the Partition of India)
Jehovah, the Christian name for God derived from the Hebrew Yahweh, (from the letters YHWH), is translated as "I AM." YOU ARE the essence of life—the Cosmic Consciousness that creates, lives in, and destroys all things. In Buddhism, your true nature is referred to as your “Buddha Nature.” Muslims refer to it as Allah, Native tribes have often called it the Great Spirit, Taoists refer to it as the Tao, and numerous other cultures throughout history have all created their own distinctive names for it. But the one eternal reality that these cultures point to remains the same—and this reality is YOU.
Joseph P. Kauffman (The Answer Is YOU: A Guide to Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Freedom)
In the Quranic vision there is no dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the political, sexuality and worship. The whole of life was potentially holy and had to be brought into the ambit of the divine. The aim was tawhid (making one), the integration of the whole of life in a unified community, which would give Muslims intimations of the Unity which is God.
Karen Armstrong (Islam: A Short History (UNIVERSAL HISTORY))
Ironically, support for the idea of Pakistan was strongest in regions where Muslims were a minority and Jinnah, as well as most of his principal lieutenants, belonged to areas that would not fall in Pakistan. To emerge as chief negotiator on behalf of Muslims, Jinnah and the All-India Muslim League had to prove their support in the Muslim majority provinces. ‘Such support’, Jalal points out, ‘could not have been won by too precise a political programme since the interests of Muslims in one part of India did not suit Muslims in others.’ Jinnah invoked religion as ‘a way of giving a semblance of unity and solidity to his divided Muslim constituents’.
Husain Haqqani (Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State)
If we justify practically our claim that the establishment of a Jewish national home will bring benefit to its non-Jewish residents as well, we will find among most of the Muslim effendis, including most of their leaders, an element that will oppose the path of violence and hostility and will resign from the Muslim-Christian Associations. It will not be difficult to break the Muslim-Christian alliance, but it cannot be done by direct and open action in that direction. A frontal attack will only strengthen that unity. The only way is to win the hearts of the Muslim members one by one, by granting a part of the economic benefits they expect from the establishment of a Jewish national home. After purchasing the effendis, most of the population of Palestine, which will in the future as in the past continue to be led by this caste, will also come over to our side 4
Hillel Cohen (Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948)
Agama Islam, suatu agama yang telah pernah menakhlukan dunia, telah dua kali membangun imperium yang kalaulah tidak meluas sejagad, setidak-tidaknya di bawah suatu panji politik tunggal telah menyatukan seluruh atau bagian terbesar rakyat-rakyat yang telah menerima seruan (Nabi) Muhammad (SAW). Imperium pertama di bawah Harun Al Rasyid, sezaman dengan kerajaan Karel Agung. Karena akar persatuannya kurang mendalam, kerajaan ini telah kehilangansseluruh esksistensinya, kecuali eksistensi di bibir saja, jauh sebelum penghapusan secara formal oleh orang Mongol dengan penggarongan kota Baghdad di tahun 1258. Mengenai kerajaan besar Islam kedua, yaitu kerajaan Utsmaniah, kerontokan berangsur-angsur dan kehancurannya dalam 1918 akibat Perang Dunia I, di dunia Timur telah meninggalkan suatu kehampaan politik yang sampai kini, tiga puluhlima tahun kemudian belum terisi - Jacques Duchesne Guillemin
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Whereas Jesus demanded of the Jews the rejection of the tribalist Jahweh whom they identified with Israel, the race, the community the political state as object of worship and desire, the Sufis, born in an atmosphere of pure monotheism, demanded what Jesus of the first century A.D. would demand if he were to relive his early life again in present-day monotheistic Christendom. This does not mean that Jesus did not demand, like the Sufis, the cleansing of the soul from the personal deities it may worship besides God, but it does mean that the main weight of his teaching centered around the Jewish preoccupation with the tribe as God." "The object and deal of Sufism is, therefore, identically the same as that of the radical self-transformation of Jesus. Both aimed at the state of consciousness in which God is the sole subject, the sole determiner and the sole object of love and devotion. The tradition of both later influenced each other and succeeded in developing the same kind of preparatory disciplines leading towards the end. Finally, both referred to the final end of these processes as 'oneness' and their reference was in each case exposed to the same dangers of misunderstanding, indeed to the same misunderstanding. The oneness of Jesus was misunderstood as unity and fusion of being, and thus gave rise to the greatest materialization of an essentially spiritual union history has ever seen. The oneness of the highest Sufi state was likewise misunderstood and gave rise to the worst crime perpetrated on account of a supremely conscious misunderstanding...The destinies of the two misunderstandings, however, were far apart. The Christian misunderstanding came to dominate the Christendom; the Muslim misunderstanding performed its bloody deed and sank away in front of the Sufi tide which overwhelmed the Muslim world. The success of Sufism in Islam was therefore the success of the Jesus' ethic, but devoid of the theological superstructures which this Christian misunderstanding had constructed concerning the oneness of Christ with God, or of men with Christ. In the Middle Ages, the intellectual disciples of Jesus were the sufis of Islam, rather than the theologians of the Council or Pope-monarchs of Christendom.
Ismail R. al-Faruqi
With Iran’s revolution, an Islamist movement dedicated to overthrowing the Westphalian system gained control over a modern state and asserted its “Westphalian” rights and privileges—taking up its seat at the United Nations, conducting its trade, and operating its diplomatic apparatus. Iran’s clerical regime thus placed itself at the intersection of two world orders, arrogating the formal protections of the Westphalian system even while repeatedly proclaiming that it did not believe in it, would not be bound by it, and intended ultimately to replace it. This duality has been ingrained in Iran’s governing doctrine. Iran styles itself as “the Islamic Republic,” implying an entity whose authority transcends territorial demarcations, and the Ayatollah heading the Iranian power structure (first Khomeini, then his successor, Ali Khamenei) is conceived of not simply as an Iranian political figure but as a global authority—“the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution” and “the Leader of the Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People.” The Iranian constitution proclaims the goal of the unification of all Muslims as a national obligation: In accordance with the sacred verse of the Qur’an (“This your community is a single community, and I am your Lord, so worship Me” [21:92]), all Muslims form a single nation, and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has the duty of formulating its general policies with a view to cultivating the friendship and unity of all Muslim peoples, and it must constantly strive to bring about the political, economic, and cultural unity of the Islamic world.
Henry Kissinger (World Order)
The opinion that the survival of Islam itself depended on the use of military slavery was shared by the great Arab historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who lived in North Africa in the fourteenth century, contemporaneously with the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt. In the Muqadimmah, Ibn Khaldun says the following: When the [Abbasid] state was drowned in decadence and luxury and donned the garments of calamity and impotence and was overthrown by the heathen Tatars, who abolished the seat of the Caliphate and obliterated the splendor of the lands and made unbelief prevail in place of belief, because the people of the faith, sunk in self-indulgence, preoccupied with pleasure and abandoned to luxury, had become deficient in energy and reluctant to rally in defense, and had stripped off the skin of courage and the emblem of manhood—then, it was God’s benevolence that He rescued the faith by reviving its dying breath and restoring the unity of the Muslims in the Egyptian realms, preserving the order and defending the walls of Islam. He did this by sending to the Muslims, from this Turkish nation and from among its great and numerous tribes, rulers to defend them and utterly loyal helpers, who were brought from the House of War to the House of Islam under the rule of slavery, which hides in itself a divine blessing. By means of slavery they learn glory and blessing and are exposed to divine providence; cured by slavery, they enter the Muslim religion with the firm resolve of true believers and yet with nomadic virtues unsullied by debased nature, unadulterated with the filth of pleasure, undefiled by the ways of civilized living, and with their ardor unbroken by the profusion of luxury.
Francis Fukuyama (The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution)
The call for justice was a protest as fierce as those of the biblical prophets and of Jesus, and the similarity of the call was no coincidence. As with early Judaism and early Christianity, early Islam would be rooted in opposition to a corrupt status quo. Its protest of inequity would be an integral part of the demand for inclusiveness, for unity and equality under the umbrella of the one god regardless of lineage, wealth, age, or gender. This is what would make it so appealing to the disenfranchised, those who didn't matter in the grand Meccan scheme of things, like slaves and freedmen, widows and orphans, all those cut out of the elite by birth or circumstance. And it spoke equally to the young and idealistic, those who had not yet learned to knuckle under to the way things were and who responded to the deeply egalitarian strain of the verses. All were equal before God, the thirteen-year-old Ali as important as the most respected graybeard, the daughter as much as the son, the African slave as much as the highborn noble. It was a potent and potentially radical re-envisioning of society. This was a matter of politics as much as of faith. The scriptures of all three of the great monotheisms show that they began similarly as popular movements in protest against the privilege and arrogance of power, whether that of kings as in the Hebrew bible, or the Roman Empire as in the Gospels, or a tribal elite as in the Quran. All three, that is, were originally driven by ideals of justice and egalitarianism, rejecting the inequities of human power in favor of a higher and more just one. No matter how far they might have strayed from their origins as they became institutionalized over time, the historical record clearly indicates that what we now call the drive for social justice was the idealistic underpinning of monotheistic faith.
Lesley Hazleton (The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad)
Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982 and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea. President Zia aimed to cement Islamic unity, turn Pakistan into the leader of the Muslim world and foster an Islamic opposition in Central Asia. Washington wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting the Soviet Union alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors.
Ahmed Rashid (Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia)
While recognizing that Muslims had ceased to function as a unified body and therefore assumed national status, he believed that after the achievement of real independence—even if it relied on the use of nationalism as a foundation for the struggle against colonialism—it was necessary to return to true Islamic beliefs, specifically the unity of the Muslim nation. Upon examination of some of his speeches delivered in the mid to late 1980s, it becomes clear that Dr. Ahmad was seeking ways to reconstitute the universal Umma, which had been reduced to an “abstract concept,” his opinion being that this would be brought about by a smaller group, who would actively enjoin the good and forbid the evil.
Reza Pankhurst (The Inevitable Caliphate?: A History of the Struggle for Global Islamic Union, 1924 to the Present)
Tilak had complained that Gandhi was asking too much of the Indian people. He was proved right. Non-violence, not harming the hated British, embracing jails, Hindu-Muslim unity, giving up titles, contributing money, the abolition of untouchability—each item on the long list was desirable, but also costly.
Rajmohan Gandhi (Punjab)
If more open-minded Christians, Jews, and Muslims were to sit down at a round table to try to achieve the holy grail of peace and unity, they would certainly have to be people of vision, willing to compromise.
Jeffrey J. Bütz (The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity)
For one thing, relatively small forces were involved – at the Battle of Hastings (in 1066), which resulted in the Norman conquest of England, about 10,000 Normans overcame about 7,000 English (the population of England was about 2.5 million at that time). The ‘big’ wars were seldom among Europeans, but involved fighting off external threats from invaders such as the Muslims, the Magyars and the Mongols. Moreover, these wars of resistance reflected the unity of Christendom in that many states often combined their forces.
Rodney Stark (Reformation Myths: Five Centuries Of Misconceptions And (Some) Misfortunes)
In the intervening decades, American unity had given way to bitter rivalries - and a contempt for leaders and their institutions, who had marched the country into Iraq and the Great Recession. Older workers had been gutted by debt, and younger people would never make up for the years of lost earnings. As Americans hunted for the origins of their pain they carved themselves up into rival tribes - Republicans and Democrats; city-dwellers and country people; white, Black, Latino, and Asian; Christian, Muslim, and Jewish; and centrally, those will college degrees and those without - the winners and losers of the meritocratic hustle.
Evan Osnos (Wildland: The Making of America's Fury)
Adonis contends, lies in the concept of tawhid, or “oneness,” of Allah. Tawhid connotes not just monotheism, but the exclusion of all forms of thought except Islamic doctrine. It refers more to totality than to unity. As the leading European Islamist Tariq Ramadan explains tawhid, for a right-thinking Muslim, it is literally inconceivable to raise doubts about God. A Muslim, Ramadan explains, might forget Allah, but he cannot doubt Allah. A religion that permits no doubt—unlike Christianity, of which Pope Benedict XVI said that “doubt is the handmaiden of faith”—becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. Either Islam regulates the totality of life and thought, so that no questioning may intrude into its magic circle, or it becomes nothing. Even in the most intimate human setting, the nuclear family, the collectivity consumes the individual: Muslim wives exist to placate
David Goldman (How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too))
For example, “according to the Maldives Religious Unity Regulations, it is illegal in the Maldives to propagate any faith other than Islam or to engage in any effort to convert anyone to any religion other than Islam. It is also illegal to display in public any symbols or slogans belonging to any religion other than Islam, or creating interest in such articles.”16 Violating the Religious Unity Act carries stiff penalties—fines and imprisonment for two to five years. This is the position of a modern and moderate Muslim nation.
Raymond Ibrahim (Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians)
Why is westernization so attractive to Muslims as it is for everyone else? It is irresistible because it is easy. Contemporary civilization is based on self-indulgence while that of Islam require sacrifice, altruism, discipline, self-control and endurance which are difficult. But self-indulgence leads to decadence and decline while the opposite qualities, which Islam demands, lead to superior strength, unity and virtue. If practiced in its right spirit, Islam leads to social integration. Self-indulgent materialism leads to social disintegration and ultimately collective suicide.
Maryam Jameelah (Islam and Modernism)
To my knowledge, the best summation of this ideology appears in D. R. Goyal’s authoritative history of the RSS. In Goyal’s rendition, the core beliefs of what the Sangh Parivar calls ‘Hindutva’ are as follows: Hindus have lived in India since times immemorial; Hindus are the nation because all culture, civilisation and life is contributed by them alone; non-Hindus are invaders or guests and cannot be treated as equal unless they adopt Hindu traditions, culture etc.; the non-Hindus, particularly Muslims and Christians, have been enemies of everything Hindu and are, therefore, to be treated as threats; the freedom and progress of this country is the freedom and progress of Hindus; the history of India is the history of the struggle of the Hindus for protection and preservation of their religion and culture against the onslaught of these aliens; the threat continues because the power is in the hands of those who do not believe in this nation as a Hindu Nation; those who talk of national unity as the unity of all those who live in this country are motivated by the selfish desire of cornering minority votes and are therefore traitors; the unity and consolidation of the Hindus is the dire need of the hour because the Hindu people are surrounded on all sides by enemies; the Hindus must develop the capacity for massive retaliation and offence is the best defence; lack of unity is the root cause of all the troubles of the Hindus and the Sangh is born with the divine mission to bring about that unity.29
Ramachandra Guha (India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy)
Jewish monotheism and Christian Trinitarianism affirm the oneness of God’s being. Christianity contains an additional doctrinal nuance of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who share the same substance while maintaining separate persons. In this way, the Christian is able to both affirm God’s oneness (unity) and his threeness (diversity). Simply put, God is three persons in one being, not three beings. Jews, Muslims and atheists who seem to assume that a monotheistic worldview cannot provide for diversity within the divine realm have often accused Christians of being polytheists.
Brian Godawa (Noah Primeval (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 1))
Christianity has a certain dramatic quality that involves a danger of individualism and deviation; Islam for its part "sought to avoid" this risk by tending toward equilibrium, whence the opposite danger, that of platitude; to speak of form is to speak of limit and at the same time of the possibility of error. Christianity aims to teach a unique and incomparable fact; its foundation is miracle. Islam on the other hand aims to teach only what every religion essentially teaches; it is like a diagram of every possible religion; its foundation is the self-evident. In Islam the idea is every-thing; a Muslim would not dream of dissociating the truth of the idea from its salvific effectiveness; but in Christianity it is the mediator, the miracle, the unique fact that takes precedence over everything else; the mediator is here the criterion of truth, as we said above: the miracle, which proves his superhuman quality, serves as evidence by opening the heart to grace. By its form Christianity is a predestined support of the way of love; Islam for its part is allied by its form to gnosis, for its pivot is universal truth (the Shahādah), and it conceives the love of God in relation to the knowledge of Unity. The Muslim saint is essentially a "knower by God" (ārif bi Llāh), and love appears above all as the half-human, half-heavenly savor of knowledge. Essentially all religions include decisive truths, mediators, and miracles, but the disposition of these elements, the play of proportions, can vary according to the conditions of the revelation and its human receptacles.
Frithjof Schuon (Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts)
nobody in the West should forget that what unites the two main branches of Islam is far greater that what divides them, and that the vast majority of all Muslims still cherish the ideal of unity preached by Muhammad himself—an ideal the more deeply held for being so deeply broken.
Anonymous
Kalau Islam berarti menyerahkan diri, maka kita semua hidup dan mati dalam Islam - Goethe
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Islam adalah agama yang hidup, terus berkembang dan dapat memenuhi kebutuhan rohani dan intelektual jutaan umat manusia.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Berkat adanya tasawuf, Islam menjadi agama Internasional yang dimana-mana mempunyai pengikut. Hasil usaha kaum Sufi dalam menyiarkan Islam lebih besar dari hasil usaha yang dijalankan melalui ekspansi politik, karena kaum Sufi lebih dapat memahami ajaran Islam mengenai persaudaraan seluruh umat manusia.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Tuhan ingin menyampaikan risalah kepada manusia. Untuk itu Tuhan mengirim Rasul-rasul dan Nabi Muhammad adalah salah satu dari Rasul-rasul itu. Risalah yang ingin disampaikan Tuhan ialah norma-norma akhlak dan syariat.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Orang Islam memandang Tuhanlah yang membentuk agama mereka dalam arti idealnya, tetapi dalam aspek sosial dan manifestasi sejarahnya jelas bahwa Muhammad-lah (di bawah hidayah Tuhan) yang menjadi pembentuknya.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Sukses yang diperoleh Islam menyeluruh dan juga amat menarik perhatian. Sebagai telah kita sebut, usaha (umat islam itu) bukan hanya membuat mereka berkuasa, tetapi juga besar. Di samping memperoleh kekuasaan politik dan ekonomi dengan cepat, mereka memperoleh kemajuan baik dalam bidang kesenian maupun dalam bidang ilmu pengetahuan. Tentara mereka menang dalam pertempuran-pertempuran, perintah-peeintahnya dipatuhi, surat-surat kreditnya berharga, arsiteknya agung, sastranya menawan hati, keilmiahannya tinggi, matematikanya kuat, dan teknologinya efektif.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Al-Quran dalam pendapatnya mempunyai sifat supernatural. Kemukjizatannya terletak bukan hanya pada isi dan kebenaran psikologis dan mistisnya, tetapi juga pada cepatnya Islam meluas ke daerah-daerah di luar semenanjung Arabia.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Pendekatan orang tentang agama yang dianutnya sudah semestinya berbeda dengan pendekatan orang yang berada di luar agama itu.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Adanya keragaman dalam Islam sungguh pun dasar utama dari ajaran islam ialah tawhid, yang mengandung arti penyatuan, telah terlebih dahulu disadari ulama-ulama Islam sendiri. Salah satu dari ulama itu adalah Syah Waliullah dari India. Ia menyadari bahwa Islam yang dianut dan diamalkan di Arabia ada perlainannya dengan Islam yang dianut dan diamalkan di India. Ke dalam Islam India telah masuk unsur-unsur adat-iatiadat India. Islam di Arabia mempunyai corak Arab dan Islam di India mempunyai corak India. Di dalam Islam terdapat kebudayaan yang beraneka ragam.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Bahwa Islam membawa kepada persatuan, tetapi dalam pada itu menimbulkan keragaman, itu memang sudah menjadi satu hal yang hatus terjadi. Prinsip pemersatu dalam Islam ialah ajaran-ajaran dasar yang diwahyukan Tuhan dalam Al-Quran. Jumlah dari ayat-ayat yang mengandung ajaran dasar ini sedikit. Dalam pada itu ia terbagi dalam dua kelompok. Kelompok pertama mengandung ayat-ayat qat'i, yaitu ayat-ayat yang teksnya telah jelas dan tegas arti dan maksudnya sehingga tak dapat diberi interprestasi lagi. Dalam kelompok kedua termasuk ayat-ayat zanni, yaitu ayat-ayat yang teksnya tidak jelas dan tegas arti dan maksudnya, sehingga boleh diberi interpretasi-interpretasi berlainan.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Bhineka tunggal ika adalah prinsip dalam Islam. Uraian yang diberikan di atas adalah keragaman dalam hal-hal yang erat hubungannya dengan soal keagamaan.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Kalau dalam bidang keagamaan sendiri terdapat keragaman dalam kesatuan, maka dalam kebudayaan Islam sudah semestinya pula terdapat keragaman - Zia 'Gokalp (1875-1924)
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Kebudayaan mempunyai sifat-sifat khusus, nasional, sederhana, dan timbul dengan sendirinya - Zia 'Gokalp (1875-1924)
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Peradaban memiliki sifat-sifat umum, internasional, dan diciptakan - Gia 'Gokalp (1875-1924)
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Peradaban Barat di bawahnya berkumpul kebudayaan Barat berlainan dari berbagai bangsa Eropa. Peradaban Islam menyatukan beraneka ragam kebudayaan untuk Islam yang terdiri atas berbagai bangsa Timur.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Soal bersatu sungguhpun beraneka ragam bukanlah soal yang asing bagi agama termasuk dalam Islam. Antara agama dan kebudayaan terdapat interaksi, keadaan saling pengaruh mempengaruhi. Agama mempengaruhi kebudayaan dan kebudayaan mempengaruhi agama pula, terutama dalam manifestasinya. Bahwa agama mempengaruhi kebudayaan itu tidak perlu penjelasan lebih lanjut. Untuk contoh dari keadaan kebudayaan mempengaruhi agama, dalam kasus Islam dapat diambil pemakaian beduk sebagai tanda waktu berbuka puasa. Dalam kebudayaan Arab tidak dikenal beduk. Di sana meriam dipakai untuk menyatakan tibanya waktu berbuka. Kebudayaan gotong-royong dan rasa persaudaraan yang erat dalam masyarakat Indonesia membawa pada adanya halal bi halal di Hari Raya sesudah berpuasa. Di masyarakat Arab Halal bi halal tidak dikenal. Di Mesir umpamanya, pada Hari Raya diutamakan berziarah ke kuburan keluarga. Dalam kebudayaan Mesir terdapat rasa terikat Yang kuat Pada keluarga yang telah terlebih dahulu meninggalkan dunia fana ini.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Perbedaan-perbedaan yang timbul dalam bidang keagamaan dan keragaman yang terdapat dalam lapangan kebudayaan, membuat Islam dalam pengalamannya berbeda di suatu negara dengan negara lain.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Hukum Islam tidak mempunyai dasar ke-Islam-an (apalagi dasar Qur'an). Hukum Islam adalah hukum Rumawi-Barat, Bizantium, Parsi dan lain-lain yang dipadu, tetapi tidak pernah secara sempurna dengan suatu sistim persyaratan-persyaratan moral yang di "wahyu" kan. Ia merupakan pembauran (integrasi) yang oleh ahli-ahli hukum Islam disajikan sebagai suatu kesimpulan yang bertolak dari sesuatu yang telah ditetapkan di dalam wahyu; sebab undang-undang Islam didikte oleh agama dan memang mesti begitu. Hal ini menimbulkan rasa tidak nyaman, ketegangan terus menerus - Schacht (Jacques Duchnese Guillemin)
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Peradaban Islam akan dibahas sebagaimana ia berkembang melalui proses peleburan tradisi-tradisi tertentu dengan hakekat seruan Nabi yang berkebangsaan Arab itu.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
Orang mempelajari Islam untuk mengetahui apa sebenarnya Islam itu.
Gustave Edmund von Grunebaum (Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization)
What the Western world does not understand about Islam is that its adherents’ first and foremost identity is being a Muslim, without the limitations of national boundaries or allegiances. There is no such thing called Sunni dar al-Islam and Shiite dar al-Islam. There is only one dar al-Islam and then there is the rest of the world, dar al-harb, or the house of war. Sunnis and Shiites understand this basic distinction and easily set aside internal conflict to deal with an external power. That is to say, the Sunni-Shiite conflict is secondary only to the Muslim–non-Muslim conflict. According to one author, “One of the myths of modern Islamist terrorism is that Sunni and Shi’a do not get along; but when it comes to common enemies or objectives or using force to replicate the Iranian revolution in other localities, they work together quite frequently.”18 There is no better example of such a display of unity against the Western influence, the external power, than the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The doctrine of jihad against nonbelievers coupled with the model of the Iranian Revolution has been a strong impetus for both Sunni as well as Shiite jihadist organizations.19 Iran sees the United States and Israel as such grave, existential, external threats to Islam that thwarting and ultimately destroying both the United States and Israel are important enough to temporarily put aside theological differences with heretical Sunni organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, making these some of the scariest partnerships in the unholy alliance.
Jay Sekulow (Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World)
• Whether it is Godse or Savarkar, what they broadly wanted was unity of the Hindus of India. A unity that ignores the inherent diversity, and silences those who do not consider India their punyabhoomi. Without this unity it is impossible to build a strong nation. Some Muslims in Pakistan also think along these lines. But Bangladesh separated primarily because of language. Blood was shed. • The unity that Gandhi desired was one in which everyone retained their faith, preserved their own unique cultures and accepted ahimsa. Unity comes naturally to those who live in harmony despite their differences. This becomes possible when ahimsa is the basis of their lives. The life force of every community lies in its uniqueness. Whether it is food, games, worship, dress, concept of God, differing methods of prayer, the many climates that nurture mountains, forests, valleys, flora and fauna – they are all part of a chain. This multiplicity is the warp and weft of the ecological system of the living world.
U.R. Ananthamurthy (Hindutva or Hind Swaraj)
The real explanation of this failure of Hindu-Muslim unity lies in the failure to realize that what stands between the Hindus and Muslims is not a mere matter of difference, and that this antagonism is not to be attributed to material causes. It is formed by causes which take their origin in historical, religious, cultural and social antipathy, of which political antipathy is only a reflection. These form one deep river of discontent which, being regularly fed by these sources, keeps on mounting to a head and overflowing its ordinary channels. Any current of water flowing from another source however pure, when it joins it, instead of altering the colour or diluting its strength becomes lost in the main stream. The silt of this antagonism which this current has deposited, has become permanent and deep. So long as this silt keeps on accumulating and so long as this antagonism lasts, it is unnatural to expect this antipathy between Hindus and Muslims to give place to unity.
B.R. Ambedkar (Pakistan or the Partition of India)
Similar fear was expressed by Lala Lajpatrai in a letter 49[f.150][f.5]  to Mr. C. R. Das — " There is one point more which has been troubling me very much of late and one which I want you to think carefully and that is the question of Hindu-Mohamedan unity. I have devoted most of my time during the last six months to the study of Muslim history and Muslim Law and I am inclined to think, it is neither possible nor practicable. Assuming and admitting the sincerity of the Mohamedan leaders in the Non-cooperation movement, I think their religion provides an effective bar to anything of the kind. You remember the conversation, I reported to you in Calcutta, which I had with Hakim Ajmalkhan and Dr. Kitchlew. There is no finer Mohamedan in Hindustan than Hakimsaheb but can any other Muslim leader override the Quran ? I can only hope that my reading of Islamic Law is incorrect, and nothing would relieve me more than to be convinced that it is so. But if it is right  then it comes to this that although we can unite against the British we cannot do so to rule Hindustan on British lines, we cannot do so to rule Hindustan on democratic lines. What is then the remedy ? I am not afraid of seven crores in Hindustan but I think the seven crores of Hindustan plus the armed hosts of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Turkey will be irresistible. I do honestly and sincerely believe in the necessity or desirability of Hindu-Muslim unity. I am also fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Quran and Hadis ? The leaders cannot override them. Are we then doomed ? I hope not. I hope learned mind and wise head will find some way out of this difficulty.
B.R. Ambedkar (Pakistan or the Partition of India)
He visited several towns in the United Provinces, before moving on to the Punjab. Then he moved south, where, in the first week of April, the AICC met at Vijayawada. In attendance was an Andhra Congressman named P. Venkayya, who for several years had been pressing Gandhi to adopt a ‘national’ flag for the nation-in-the-making. This time too Venkayya made the same proposal, but in the design he offered, Gandhi ‘saw nothing to stir the nation to its depths’. Then Lala Hansraj of Jullundur suggested that the spinning wheel should find a place on the Swaraj Flag. Gandhi was struck by the suggestion, and asked Venkayya to give him a design containing a spinning wheel on a background of saffron (denoting Hindu) and green (denoting Muslim). The enthusiastic Venkayya produced a design in three hours. Gandhi looked at it, and realized that a colour was also needed for the other religions of India. He suggested white be added to the saffron and the green. For, ‘Hindu-Muslim unity is not an exclusive term; it is an inclusive term, symbolic of the unity of all faiths domiciled in India. If Hindus and Muslims can tolerate each other, they are bound to tolerate all other faiths.’ Gandhi further suggested the order in which the colours should be placed: white first, next green, finally saffron, in progressive order of numerical importance, ‘the idea being that the strongest should act as a shield to the weakest’. Eventually, the white was placed in the middle, between the saffron and the green, the two major religions symbolically surrounding and protecting the others.
Ramachandra Guha (Gandhi 1915-1948: The Years That Changed the World)
While the Muslim vanguard had its party, the Muslim league, and tis thought centre, Aligarh Muslim University, most politically active Hindus were members of the pluralist Indian national Congress, and the newly founded(1916) Benares Hindu university never played a role comparable to that of AMU for the Muslim community. Quite apart from formal organizations, the Muslims showed a much stronger communal solidarity, whereas the Hindus were fragmented on caste, sect, class and ideological lines.
Koenraad Elst (Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism)
I am sorry they are making a fetish of this Hindu-Muslim unity. It is no use ignoring facts; some day the Hindus may have to fight the Muslims and they must prepare for it. Hindu-Muslim unity should not mean the subjection of the Hindus. Every time the mildness of the Hindus has given way. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organize themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself, it would automatically solve the problem.
Sri Aurobindo
You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is "I will not tolerate you'? How are you going to have unity with these people. Certainly, Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be arrived at on the basis that the Muslims will go on converting Hindus while the Hindus shall not convert any Mohamedan.
Sri Aurobindo
Don't Despair - Victory Is Near *** O' God, show me the way So that I could tell Those who pray to one God, Those who follow their prophet Those who recite their Holy Book But neither people nor leaders In their lives Act on that as its context Kashmiris breathe In the tyranny of democratic beasts Palestinians live In the occupation of Zionists And cruel occupiers For decades and decades Alas, the Muslim world And United Nations Stayed: Dumb, Deaf, and Blind Except for issuing words of condemnation On the unjust, oppressive rapes, And killing practices and deeds The Muslim States and rulers And the Armed Forces are unique and brave, Only for murdering their people And damaging unity and resources To stay in power Such rulers destroyed Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran Spending trillions of wealth The Muslim States fought wars In the interests of those who preach  Justice, equality, honesty, harmony,  And peace, never learn themselves.  How they can apply justice  For Palestinians and Kashmiris? Otherwise, peace was a destiny And the destination of the Muslim State And entire humanity In such a scenario as Kashmir,  And Palestine will be bearing cruelty Unjust, oppression, and bloodshed We belong to Allah And to Him, we shall return Oh, Palestine, oh, Kashmir Do not despair Victory is near.
Ehsan Sehgal
most Sunnis and all Shia still regard each other as fellow Muslims. The Wahhabis do not. They refer to the Shia as rejectionists (raffidah). In his detailed “Treatise on the Denial of the Raffidah,” Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab made it very clear that attributing infallibility to imams is a form of polytheism.11 Even today, many devout Wahhabis continue to regard the Shia as dangerous heretics whose reverence for their imams violates the Wahhabi’s most fundamental doctrine of the unity of God (tawheed).
David Rundell (Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads)
If Beirut was the supermarket of the left in the 1970s, where Marxists, communists, Egyptians, Iraqis, and all the Palestinian factions debated and theorized, published and drank in bars arguing over ideas and the fought in the streets, Peshawar was the supermarket of the Islamists in the 1980s without drinking: there the discussions were about Islamic law, fatwas, the war of the believers, the unity of the Muslim nation, and the humanitarian needs of Afghan refugees.
Kim Ghattas (Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East)
That the Congress had to stress on the need for Hindu–Muslim unity as a goal in itself showed that this unity was lacking and needed to be achieved (after all they had no Hindu–Christian or Hindu–Parsi unity goals).
Vikram Sampath (Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966)
Ambedkar envisaged Partition as a complete territorial separation of Hindus and Muslims, implying an exchange of population between truncated India and Pakistan. He had worked this out in detail, with blueprints for the transfer of pension rights and property rights. It is quite likely that the implementation of his plan for an orderly division, with an orderly exchange of population, would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. By contrast, Gandhi’s and Nehru’s refusal of this exchange, effectively sacrificing the Hindus in Pakistan to the dogma of Hindu-Muslim unity, made them responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
Koenraad Elst (Why I Killed the Mahatma: Understanding Godse's Defence)
Moreover the name - Nigar-Malti- I never liked such motivation. What is this? Is this a symbol of Hindu - Muslim unity or an example of Hindu - Muslim friction? Renowned leaders had lost the battle to solve this problem and here was this lady whose so-called open mindedness had muddled all this Hindu-Muslim issue.
Ismat Chughtai (The Profession)
The Quran is like an ocean into which Muslims plunge, but whose depth can never be fully reached. If we remember the original meaning of the Latin verb comprehendere, which is “to encompass,” then it can be said that it is the Quran that encompasses or “comprehends” the reader, while the reader can never fully encompass the Quran. The Quran is like a net cast into the world of multiplicity in order to bring us back to the world of Unity, which is infinite. As finite beings, we cannot encompass the Infinite, but we can and should be drawn to and ultimately immersed in It.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr (The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary)
Please remember, never be upset and worry when you talk the truth. I am not the person to discriminate against anyone in any way if there is care for civility, due respect, and honor that is appreciated. My life is devoted to Islam, Pakistan, and humanity though I am powerless and without resources and support; I have only Allah and Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him; you may see me as a very modern person since I have chosen that style to spread my message to the Muslim world to think and act for the unity that we need. I don't much chat; I do much of my writing work, so again, please keep it in your mind, you need time to understand me, but it is clear that I am a harmless person in all ways.
Ehsan Sehgal
Religion may be as powerful an engine of identity as the nation; indeed, in some cultures, religious identity may be far more powerful than national identity. In integrist religious fundamentalisms, the violent promotion of the unity and dynamism of the faith may function very much like the violent promotion of the unity and dynamism of the nation. Some extreme forms of Orthodox Judaism regard the state of Israel as a blasphemy because it was established before Messiah came. Here religious integrism fully replaces national integrism. Fundamentalist Muslims offer little loyalty to the various secular Islamic states, whether presidential or monarchical. Islam is their nation. For Hindu fundamentalists, their religion is the focus of an intense attachment that the secular and pluralist Indian state does not succeed in offering. In such communities, a religious-based fascism is conceivable. After all, no two fascisms need be alike in their symbols and rhetoric, employing, as they do, the local patriotic repertory.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
in recent years particularly, we have seen the negative impact of conflating spaces with faith and identity. We are increasingly witness to mosques, shrines, khanaqahs and jamatkhanas across the world being attacked because they are associated with minority communities whose beliefs are not well understood. Our collective heritage, treasures and traditions alike, are under threat from the idea of uniformity and those that would impose it rather than accepting the natural unity of our world’s diverse elements.
Rizwan Mawani (Beyond the Mosque: Diverse Spaces of Muslim Worship (World of Islam))
Yet everywhere he looked, what should surely bring people together only seemed to drive them apart. The more they preached what the prophets had said from Moses down through Jesus, the less they seemed to hear those same prophets' words. How could the idea of divine unity result in such human disunity?
Lesley Hazleton (The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad)
Some have argued, a few of them violently, that the Caliphate should be restored as the emblem of Muslim unity. These Muslims believe that the ideals of Islam and nationalism are “diametrically opposed to each other,” to quote Mawlana Mawdudi, founder of the Pakistani sociopolitical movement Jama‘at-i Islami (the Islamic Association).
Reza Aslan (No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam)
The immediate cause of his exasperation was the wives’ resentment of a slave girl called Mariya, said to have been sent as a gift from the Coptic Christian patriarch of Alexandria. Muhammad had taken her as a concubine and installed her in a house on the outskirts of Medina, out of sight of both mosque and wives. He began to spend more and more time there, apparently seeking refuge from the public eye. But no matter how discreet he tried to be, his fondness for Mariya was a matter of intense speculation, all the more so when the wives, in an unusual show of unity, publicly protested the amount of time he was spending with her. Some accounts have it that Mariya had given birth to a son by Muhammad, who had named him Ibrahim, or Abraham. If this was true, it can only have added to the wives’ resentment. The very idea that this slave girl had given him what none of them had done would have been intolerable. A son—a natural heir—was the one thing most painfully missing in Muhammad’s life. A son’s existence would place the wives’ own standing in jeopardy, forcing them to play secondary roles to a mere concubine.
Lesley Hazleton (The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad)
Upon encountering Islam by whatever means, Drew was soundly impressed with the appeal of the religion, initially. This ancient Middle Eastern religion attracted the North Carolinian with not only its strict moral discipline but also the modest way its worshippers dressed and the proud and sober manner in which they carried themselves. After reportedly coming under the influence of Muslim teachers, Drew came to view Islam as “the only instrument for Negro unity and advancement.” 7 Lacking knowledge of the Arabic language as well as grounding in Muslim orthodoxy, he examined its dogma as best he could by probing the international faith with a keen eye out for remedies that would help Negroes relieve the sociopolitical pain and suffering they endured early in the twentieth century as an oppressed people in the United States. The young black supplicant found no such balm in orthodox Islam. Also, he reasoned that Arabic dogma would be a tough sell to a generation of Negroes just out of slavery and barely literate in English. Most troubling of all, the Arab Muslims in the Middle East had a long and barbaric history of enslaving sub-Saharan Africans—indeed, they dominated this ruthless human trade in Morocco and Egypt. Additionally, the Moors were known to widely practice color-caste discrimination among themselves.
Les Payne (The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X)
The term “monotheism”2 to describe the belief in one god didn’t exist until the seventeenth century, when it was coined by the English philosopher Henry More, but a far more comprehensive and flexible monotheistic idea had existed for well over two thousand years. As historian James Carroll points out, the Jewish scribes who actually wrote most of the Hebrew bible during the sixth-century BC Babylonian exile conceived of “one god” less as a specific identity than as an affirmation of unity.
Lesley Hazleton (The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad)
In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, I was proud to lead an amazing, resilient, united people. When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. That leaves us worried about our nation and our future together. I come without explanations or solutions. I can only tell you what I have seen. On America's day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor's hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know. At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know. At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action. That is the nation I know. This is not mere nostalgia; it is the truest version of ourselves. It is what we have been -- and what we can be again.
George W. Bush
As the symbols reveal their knowledge, the Luciferian should utilize and bravely command and encircle the powers which are accessed via the Deific Masks as we understand them. A Muslim epithet of Shaitan is Maliku’l-Quwat, meaning Lord of Power. Iblis is not for Luciferians a symbol of “evil”, the Adversary motivates, challenges and inspires those bearing the Black Flame to become via Apotheosis. We are symbolically the new Nephilim, born of the Spirit and Earth and balanced between both with the potential to govern our inner and outer existence. Luciferians utilize some Sufi techniques. A theory of Sufism is that man is incomplete, part-animalistic and partspirit. The rituals of Sufi practice are devoted to making the seeker “pure”, becoming essentially “one” with the Infinite. That is Right-Hand Path thought, unity with an imagined “God” or governing force. Luciferians agree that man and woman in the initiated state are incomplete, often ruled by animalistic urges with a weakened will and little discipline to guide with the mind or spiritual nature. Luciferians seek a balance and “Infernal Union” between flesh and spirit to ignite our path to self-excellence. We reject “oneness” with the delusions of monotheistic creating tyrants and their priests. This is a hard path, full of struggle and challenges: Left-Hand Path creates Gods and Goddesses who are aware of their complete ability to shape their life. In summary, if the technique can be applied from our philosophical approach, use it!
Michael W. Ford (Fallen Angels: Watchers and the Witches Sabbat)