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Because Ethics Is Fundamentally About Questioning The Ends, The Goals And Aims Of Our Actions, We Must Come Back To The Rules And Ask Why. So We Must Return To The Philosophy Of Law, The Raison D'etre And The Point Of What We're Asked To Do. It's Not Easy, It's Very Demanding And It Needs Intellectual Courage.

-Tariq Ramadan

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Because Ethics Is Fundamentally

Tariq Ramadan

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Because Ethics Is Fundamentally About Questioning The Ends, The Goals And Aims Of Our Actions, We Must Come Back To The Rules And Ask Why. So We Must Return To The Philosophy Of Law, The Raison D'etre And The Point Of What We're Asked To Do. It's Not Easy, It's Very Demanding And It Needs Intellectual Courage.

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Thought Provoking

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Black And White

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Victim Mentality

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It's Okay To Feel The Need For Protection If There Is A Real External Threat. But To Feel Protective From The Inside, It's A Kind Of Jail: You Get So Protective That You Cannot Get Out Of The Box.

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The Dogmatic And, Therefore, Invulnerable Core In Islam Is Understandably Simple: Acknowledgement Of Faith, Prayer, Charity And Fasting. Almost Everything Else Is Open To Interpretation And Modification In Space And Time.

What We Have Within The Sunni Tradition Is This Clash Between The Literalists And All The Other Trends And The Salafi Movement, That Are Very Much Acting On The Ground And Using The Popular Sentiment To Act Against The West.

The Very Moment You Understand That Being A Muslim And Being American Or European Are Not Mutually Exclusive, You Enrich Your Society. Promote The Universal Principles Of Justice And Freedom, And Leave The Societies Elsewhere To Find Their Model Of Democracy Based On Their Collective Psychology And Cultural Heritage.

Destroying The Nation State Are Mainly Three Things: The Global Economy, Global Communication Technology And Global Culture. And This Is Where We Are Lost In The Process. What Could Be Something That Can Provide Us A Transversal Political Sense Of Belonging? At The End Of The Day, Without An Alternative We End Up With Populism In The Name Of Very Narrow Identities.

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There Is A Claim Coming From The West That Says That All Art Must Be Outside Any Moral Consideration. I Can Understand This As A Provocation, But I Also Believe That We Can Still Have Very Profound Creativity With A Moral Sense.

Fasting Is, First And Foremost, An Exercise For Identifying And Managing Adversity In All Its Forms. With Faith, In Full Conscience, Fasting Calls Women And Men To An Extra Degree Of Self-awareness.

When Manuel Valls Says There's Nothing To Understand Because "understanding Is Justifying," He Echoes Back To Georges W Bush's Logic In 2001. When François Hollande Says "they Are Attacking Us Because Of Who We Are," What Does It Say About Victims In Mali, Baghdad, Ivory Coast Or Turkey?

Feeling Sympathy And Searching For Explanations Isn't The Same As Believing That The Violence Is Justified.

Criticizing To Destroy Is Easy, Thinking In Order To Build Is Much More Difficult To Achieve

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American Muslims Are Already Within The System. We Should Stop Isolating Ourselves By Thinking We Are Powerless. The Youngest Generations Of Americans Have A Better Opinion Of Islam Because They Interact With Muslims. Half Of Young American Citizens Now Are Supporting The Palestinians Rather Than The Israelis. Things Are Moving.

We Must Master Our Egoism, And Through This Mastery, Step Outside Ourselves And Educate Ourselves In Giving. Fasting Requires That We Rediscover All That Is Alive Around Us, And Reconcile Ourselves With Our Environment.

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As Muslims The Way We Show Respect To The Creator Is By Respecting Creation And This Is Why We Have To Reconcile Ourselves With The Objectives Of The Revelation And The Objective Is Really To Honor Nature As Part Of Creation.

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I'd Say That The Modern Social Sciences Are Just Showing Us Why The Conditions For Implementing Hudud Are So Demanding, And Thus Hudud Should Only Be For The Absolutely Last Resort.

I Am Portrayed As A Dangerous Individual Who Can Be Fought Thanks To Their Ideas.

Cultures Are Never Merely Intellectual Constructs. They Take Form Through The Collective Intelligence And Memory, Through A Commonly Held Psychology And Emotions, Through Spiritual And Artistic Communion.

Collective Memory

Your Sensitivity Is Power. Don't Let People Transform Your Qualities Into Weaknesses.

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We Always Think From Where We Come From. We Always Think From The Sources That Shape Our Understanding. I Think About The World Through The Lens Of My Islamic Tradition. I Accept This But I Must Also Have Intellectual Humility.

To Live Is To Love,to Serve, To Forgive. Love The One, Love And Serve Humanity. To Learn To Love Oneself And To Love Is To Learn To Forgive

There Is Nothing More Islamic Than Critical Thinking.

Critical Thinking

The 21st Century - And The Atheists - Needs The Presence Of Religion, Just As Religion Must Deal With The Real Challenges And The Thinkers Of The Day In Order To Sharpen The Conscience And The Intelligence Of Those Who Study The Timeless Sacred Texts In A Spirit Of Responding To The Questions Of Their Time.

I Don't Like This Vision That Turkey Is Successful Because It Is As Successful As The Western Powers In Economic Terms. But I Do Think They Are Trying To Find A New Space In The Multi-polar World, And This Is What I Am Advocating. I Don't Think That Muslims Have An Alternative Model.

We Must Re-center Philosophy Within Our Frame Of Reference Which I Think Is The Way To Deal With It.

Saying That The Origin Of The Islamic State (is) Is Within The Muslim Brotherhood Organisation Only Strengthens Is. This Is What The Israeli Government Asserts When Claiming That Hamas And Is Are The Exact Same Thing. By Saying So, The Historical Resistance [against The Israeli Occupation] Is Viewed As Unlawful, Called Extremism And Terrorism.

When You're Overwhelmed By Your Emotion, You Listen Less And You Judge More. This Is Also The Reality Of The Dogmatic Mind.

The Problem With What We Call The 'arab Spring' Is That These Are Very Nationalistic Experiences. Tunisians Are Concerned With Tunisia, Egyptians Concerned With Egypt And So On.

I Want To Be An Activist Professor.

I Had No Intention To Cover My Tracks Since I Am Not A Politician And I Do Not Represent Anybody.

The Problem With Salafis Is That They Are Religiously Sincere And Politically Naïve. And They Allow Themselves To Be Supported By People Who Have No Religious Sincerity But Who Are Politically Very Smart, Especially When It Comes To Their Economic Interests.

For Me, Equal Citizenship For Muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists And Agnostics Is An Indisputable Principle. Whoever You Are, You Should Get The Same Rights With No Discussion And No Compromise.

This Simple Truth Is The Essence Of My Message To Muslims Throughout The World: Know Who You Are, Who You Want To Be, And Start Talking And Working With Whom You Are Not. Find Common Values And Build With Fellow Citizens A Society Based On Diversity And Equality.

And The Crowd Often Betrayed The People

A Time Will Come When You're Going To Be Numerous But Your Impact In The World Will Be Like Nothing

I Am Too Old To Think That Numbers Are Creating Change

In Sha Allah, God Willing, Must Be The Expression Of Humility Of The Active Actors And It Must Never Be The Justification Of The Passive Observers

Every Country In Europe Needs Immigrants For Its Economic Survival.

Religious Symbols Should Be Visible In Public Space, In A Dignified And Non-provocative Manner. Christmas Trees Here, Jewish Menorahs There And, Further Along, A Minaret - These Symbols Represent Human Life In All Its Diversity.

Mankind Must Be Positively And Constructively Wary Of Mankind, Of Their Fellow Man, Of Their Families, Of The Members Of Their Faith Community, Of Their Fellow-citizens.

History Is Replete With Ideologies Of Freedom, Justice, Liberation Of The Downtrodden And The Exploited, That Have Been Turned Against The Very People They Had Mobilised, Or That Have Reproduced The Same Logic Of Exclusion And Terror Toward Those Whom They Claimed To Set Free.

Those Organisations, Al-qaeda Being The First One, Have All Settled In Areas Full Of Mining And Oil Resources Or In Geostrategic Zones. They Settled In Afghanistan Which Underground Is Filled With Oil And Lithium. North Mali Is Filled With Mining Resources (uranium). It Is Essential To Question The Impact And Role Of Some International Players That Create Or Let Those Organisations Settle There.

I Think We Are Making A Mistake, A Very Big Mistake If We Look At What We Call The Arab Awakening Only By Looking At The Whole Dynamics In Political And Not In Economic Terms.

The Point For Me Is People Who Are Atheists Or Are Coming From Different Religious Traditions; They Are Coming From Their Own Sources And Specific Roots. We Should Analyze These.

You Can't Have Anything Happening Today Within The Petro-monarchies, Is Going To Be Too Risky For The United States And The Oil Interests There.

If You Are Only Concerned With International Issues And/or The Power Of Some Lobbies That Are Influencing American Policy, Then You Are Isolating Yourselves. You Are Powerless In Your Mind When You Don't Understand The Meaning And Quality Of Your Own Real Power.

Modesty Is The Way You Deal With Beauty Not The Way You Avoid It.

Stand Up For Your Values, Be Courageous And Humble

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Saying That The Origin Of The Islamic State (is) Is Within The Muslim Brotherhood Organisation Only Strengthens Is.

There Is One God. We Have An Epistemic Center. There Is Meaning.

If You Want To Have A Good Life, Never Forget That You Are Going To Die

The Only Way To Resist Colonialism Is Through Education.

I Understand The Need To Serve The Community By Talking About Marriage Or Halal Food. But You Should Also Lead With Vision, Wisdom And Courage.

Very Often When I See People Who Are Perceived To Be, Or Who Call Themselves Progressives, Sometimes I See An Imbalance. Yes I Understand The Courage In Their Mind But I Don't See The Spirituality In Their Heart, Good You Are Questioning The Limits, But What About Yourself, Are You Also Liberating Yourself?

There Are Certain Things That We Cannot Understand, Like Why We Pray Five Times A Day, For Example. But The Fact That We Choose To Pray Is Understandable.

Behind Every Great Man Is Not A Woman, She Is Beside Him, She Is With Him, Not Behind Him

Behind Every Great Man

Your Heart Is The Center Of Humility, Your Mind Could Be The Source Of Arrogance.

Intellect Is A Part Of A Good Faith. Intellect Is The Light, The Heart Is The Direction.

Our Emotions Are Often Beautiful, But They Can Also Be Dangerous. They Represent Our Spontaneity, And Seem To Speak To Us Of Our Freedom.

The Link Between Domestic Policy And International Affairs Is Essential: We Cannot Say We Care About Domestic Issues And We Leave International Politics, And The Opposite Is Wrong As Well. Both Are Connected And Should Be Addressed Together.

The Fact That This Organisation Is Called The Islamic State Reveals Something Even Deeper. In Fact, It Implies That Every Single Islamist Party In Egypt, Iraq Or Tunisia Are Not Really Representing Islam And Muslim People. Nowadays, Political Islam Is Going Through A Crisis, However This Crisis Is Necessary, For It Will Lead To A Changing Way Of Thinking. In Order To Make It Out Of This Dead-end, Reviewing Political Islam Becomes Mandatory.

The Collective Psychology Is Something Very Close To Being Sacred - We Can Do It But We Don't Do It. We Should Understand That The Holocaust In The European Conscience Is Reaching A Point Which Is Very Close To What Is Sacred For People In The Southern Countries, Whether They Are Muslims Or Not. Because Of That We Need To Try To Have Intellectual Empathy.

In Its Haste To Bolster Nationalism, In Its Obsession With Security, Europe Is Losing Its Soul.

The Findings In Contemporary Social Sciences Are Helping Us Understand That We Can Find Other Ways To Educate People And Act Against Injustice And Corruption In Our Society.

Instead Of Looking Outside Of Ourselves And Counting Potential Enemies, Fasting Summons Us To Turn Our Glance Inward, And To Take The Measure Of Our Greatest Challenge: The Self, The Ego, In Our Own Eyes And As Others See Us.

We Want To Tell People How Great Islam Is Yet We Are Not Great Muslims.

The Month Of Ramadan Is The World's Most Widespread Fast And Yet Its Teachings Are Minimised, Neglected And Even Betrayed (through Literal Application Of Rules That Overlooks Their Ultimate Objective).

A Good Muslim Is Not One Who Is Strictest In His Judgment, But Who Is Most Patient In Listening.

If You Do Your Work, If You Are Committed At The Grassroots Level, If You Have A Vision For The Long Run (not Only Short-sighted Interest), You Can Change Public Opinion.

If We Agree To Say That Those Terrorists Are Indeed Muslim, I Have No Problem Whatsoever To Condemn Their Actions. I Won't Apologise Though, Or Justify My Point Of View.

Political Confusion Starts With Terminology Confusion.

Muslims Must Speak Out And Explain Who They Are, What They Believe In, What They Stand For, What Is The Meaning Of Their Life. They Must Have The Courage To Denounce What Is Said And Done By Certain Muslims In The Name Of Their Religion.

Fear And Its Accompanying Emotional Reactions Have Become Part Of The Public Mindset. Such Reactions, While Often Legitimate, Are Also Being Exploited With Increasing Frequency For Political Ends.

This Is The Problem We Have With Many Muslim Leaders: They Claim To Differentiate Between Domestic And Foreign Issues And They Are Obsessed With Being Accepted, At Sitting At The Table Of Power In Order To Talk (or Rather To Listen) And To Be Tolerated. This Is The Starting Point Of Our Weakness. It Is In Our Minds Because We Do Not Realize We Are Part Of The System.

The Suicide Bomber Who Blows Up Israeli Children Cannot Transform Himself Into A Martyr. The Palestinian Problem Is Not An Islamic Problem.

To Be Courageous Is To Be A Voice For The Voiceless

No Civilisation Can Claim To Have A Monopoly On Universal Values And No One Can Claim To Be Always Faithful To His Own Values.

Muslims, Scholars Or Not, Are On The Side Of The Oppressed And Never On The Side Of The Oppressors. Some Scholars Claim They Don't Do Politics But If You Listen To Their Statements In The Middle East Or In Other Conferences, They Support Corrupt Regimes And Despots, Such As As-sissi.

Very Often We Talk About India And China, But Not Really Malaysia And Indonesia. The Potential In The Shift To The East Is Going To Be Great And Very Important For This Country.

In Ramadan, You Should Eat Less And Think More.

Tunisia's Responsibility, And Especially That Of Its Political And Intellectual Elites, Is Enormous. All The Protagonists Of The Nation's Social, Cultural, Economic And Political Life Must Work To Overcome Useless And Counterproductive Polarisation, And To Find Solutions To Domestic, Regional And International Problems.

Because Ethics Is Fundamentally About Questioning The Ends, The Goals And Aims Of Our Actions, We Must Come Back To The Rules And Ask Why. So We Must Return To The Philosophy Of Law, The Raison D'etre And The Point Of What We're Asked To Do. It's Not Easy, It's Very Demanding And It Needs Intellectual Courage.

I Am Dealing With People With Both Sides. I See People Who Are Liberating Themselves But They Want To Forget The World. And I See People Who Want To Liberate The World But They Forget Themselves. Neither Is The Way I Want To Go.

Advertising, Music, Atmospheres, Subliminal Messages And Films Can Have An Impact On Our Emotional Life, And We Cannot Control It Because We Are Not Even Conscious Of It.

To Be Kind Is Good. To Be Kind Without Expecting Anything In Return Is Better.

A True Teacher Doesn't Teach You To Think Like Him, But To Think Without Him.

The Problem Is That The Constitution Should Have Been And Was An Opportunity, Exactly As Moncef Marzouki Tried To Do, To Bring Together The Secularists And Islamists.

The Problem, Once Again, As In All Sciences Is The Attitude Of The Mind That Is Dealing With Whatever Field. The Problem Is Not Philosophy But The Lack Of Intellectual Humility. It Is When Reason Becomes Arrogant That We Lose Track. But Intellectual Humility With Science: This Is Spirituality - This Is The Way We Are With God. So We Should Not Be Scared And We Must Reconcile Ourselves.

We Fail When We Try To Give Simple Answers To Complicated Problems.

While Criticism Of Israel Is Legitimate And Justifiable, It Cannot Be An Excuse - In Any Way, Shape Or Form - For Anti-semitism.

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.

Times Have Changed; So Must The Lenses Through Which We See The Political Future.

Times Have Changed

To Those Who Say "sufism Is Apolitical" Or "no Politics," I Respond: "no Politics Is Politics." Look At The Very Old African Sufi Tradition, The Asian Sufi Tradition, Or The North African Sufi Tradition. Then You Get It And Understand What Sufism Is All About Wisdom, Courage And Resistance.

National Politics And Elections Are Dominated By Emotions, By Lack Of Self-confidence, By Fear Of The Other, By Insecurity, By Infection Of The Body Politic By The Virus Of Victimhood.

Self Confidence

Everywhere The Salafi Are Pushing By Saying, "we Are The Guardian, And We Are Resisting Any Kind Of Relationship To The West Or Provocation Coming From The West." And Internally, It's Unsettling The Whole Situation. Now In Tunisian, In Libya, In Syria, In Egypt, The Clash Between The Literalists And - The Islamists Or The Reformists Is Something Which Is Going To Be Part Of What We Have To Deal With As To The Future Of America.

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David O. Russell

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