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I Can See Both Trends Among The Youths: People Who Are Ready For A Constructive, Critical And Active Presence, And Others Who Are Ready To Become Invisible Muslims And To Compromise To Be Accepted. I Put My Hope In The Former And Pray For The Latter.

-Tariq Ramadan

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I Can See Both

Tariq Ramadan

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I Can See Both Trends Among The Youths: People Who Are Ready For A Constructive, Critical And Active Presence, And Others Who Are Ready To Become Invisible Muslims And To Compromise To Be Accepted. I Put My Hope In The Former And Pray For The Latter.

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How Can Someone Like Alain Juppé Still Claim I Haven't Condemned The Paris And Brussels Attacks, When I Actually Have. What I Am Saying Is Crystal Clear.

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.

Islam Is A Religion Of Justice And Dignity, And We Are Taught To Never Keep Silent When Facing Injustice, Discrimination And Double Standards.

Double Standard

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.

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

When I Am Talking To People From Germany, We Should Know That There Are Certain Things And Certain Histories That Are Very Important For People. If You Look At All The Muslims Living In The West, They Didn't React In A Violent Way. They Don't Like What They Saw But They Are Citizens Like You And Me And They Look At It And Say: "this Is A Silly Video But We Are Not Going To React."

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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.

Teach The Heart Not To Give Way To Proud Emotions And Arrogant Thinking; Bring The Mind To Heart-soothing Solutions That Make It Possible To Control Oneself Gently And Wisely.

Even The Concept Of The Infidel Is Misleading, Because The Infidel Is Normally Someone With A Different Faith, Someone Who Refuses To Recognize The Truth Of The Words Of The Koran, As Revealed By God. He Has Every Right To Do So, As Long As He Does Not Question My Right To Believe In My Truth.

Unsettled Middle East, In These Times Where The People Are Trying To Find Their Way Towards Democracy, Could Be Interesting For Many Reasons - For Weapons To Be Sold, For New Geostrategic Interests To Be Protected, And Something That We Are Not Talking About, Which Is The Israeli-palestinian Conflict. The People Who Are Lost In The Whole Discussion Here Are The Palestinians. We Have Demonstrations In Palestine In West Bank. Nobody Is Covering This. It's As If They Don't Exist Anymore. And This Is, In Fact, Central. And Israel Is Silent.

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.

I Am Saying The Same To Muslims In The Global South, Telling Them: "just Ignore What Is Done." However, In The Southern Countries They Are Not Living In A Comfortable Society Like You And Me. They Deal With Unemployment, Corruption, And Surviving. For The Majority Of Them, Their Religion Is Helping Them Survive.

Do Not Respond To Attacks With Attacks. Respond With Mercy & Respect

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Black And White

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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.

The Question About The Salafi Is An Important Question As I Say In Arab Awakening, And Have Often Repeated Since. I Am Really Underlining The Importance Of This, Because We Really Don't Have Very Good Memories. Remember - The Taliban In Afghanistan Were Not At All Politicised In The Beginning. They Were Just On About Education. And Then They Were Pushed By The Saudi And The Americans To Be Against The Russian Colonisation, And As A Result They Came To Be Politicised.

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Tell Me What You Are Doing With Your Suffering, And I Will Tell You Who You Are.

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Victim Mentality

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The End Of The Day

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

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Jihadists Are Acting Against The Interests Of Every Single Country.

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For Me I Made It Clear That I Wanted To Meet With Both Sides Of The Political Spectrum.

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The Bric Countries - Brazil, India, China, Turkey, South Africa, Indonesia Even, And Russia - Are Now New Actors. Over The Last Eight Years, China Multiplied By Seven Its Economic Presence And Penetration In The Middle East. And If This Happens On Economic Terms And There Is A Shift Towards The East, The Relationship Between These Countries And Israel Is Completely Different From The United States. And It Means That The Challenges Are Going To Be Different, Because China Is Not Supporting Israel The Way The U.s. Are Supporting Israel.

What You Need To Do Is Protect The Structures And Dynamics That Are Helping The People Choose. The Only Thing That We Can Do Is To Respect The Will Of The People When It Comes To Majority Processes. It Is Not For Us To Impose A Model, It Is Not For Us To Impose Answers To Some Critical Questions.

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.

We Are In A World That Is Connected, But Is Not Communicating.

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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.

My Experience Of Living With People Of Diverse Religions And Cultures Taught Me That One Will Never Be At Peace With The Other If One Is At War With Oneself.

Clarity And Consistency Are Not Enough: The Quest For Truth Requires Humility And Effort.

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.

We Need Modesty Not Only In The Way We Dress; We Need Intellectual Modesty.

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In The West Or Anywhere Else, The Treatment Of People In An Undignified Way (structural And Institutionalized Racism Against Latinos Or African American Citizens) As Well As A Dangerous Dehumanization Of Some People (in Palestine, Iraq, Africa Or Asia) Are Simply Unacceptable.

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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.

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.

"if We Had Not Created A Set Of People Against Another The World Would Have Been Corrupt", And "against" Here Means Two Things: Against In The Fact That They Are Challenging You With Their Diversity, Challenging Your Intelligence And To Challenge Is Not Negative, It Can Be Very Positive Depending On How You Are Challenged.

We Integrate The Good Wherever We Find It.

The United States Of America Or The Western Countries, They Don't Have A Problem With Islamists As Long As They Are Neoliberal Capitalists And Promoting The Economic Order. And The Best Example Is The Petro-monarchies. The Petro-monarchies, They Don't Want Democracy. They Say There Is No Democracy In Islam. But They Are Within The Economic System.

Things Need To Be Properly Named. Political Confusion Starts With Terminology Confusion. Islamism Implies Some Sort Of Political And Social Plan For Muslim People. In That Classification, We Find Different Categories. Legalist Ones, Traditional Ones And Revolutionary Ones. Some Of Them Are Revolutionary But Are Non-violent, Others Are Extremely Violent. There Are Also The Ones We Call The Literalists, Like The Egyptian Party Hizb Al-nour That Used To Be Against Democracy And Now Is Getting Into The Political Game.

If You Are Not At Peace With Yourself Then You Cannot Spread Peace.

Always Walking Along Despite The Dangers And Adversities, Despite The Injustices And Horrors, Trusting In God So As Not To Despair Of Men And Events.

South Africa Is Labouring To Find Its Revolutionary Path; The Colours Of The Rainbow Nation Have Difficulty Blending Together; The Wealthy Elites (white, Black Or Indian) Profit From De Facto Segregation.

Violence Against Embassies And Civilians Must Be Categorically Condemned. At The Same Time, We Must Attempt To Understand Why Such Events Occur.

As Muslims, We Are All Equals, We Abide By The Laws And We Understand That We Have To Be Active Citizens Wherever We Are. Our Goals Are First To Live By Our Principles, To Remind People Of These Values, To Reconcile Our Respective Societies With These Shared Universal Values And To Try Our Best To Push For A Spiritual Agenda With More Ethics In Society, In Politics, In Economics, And In Culture.

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.

We Need To Revisit How The Prophet Dealt With Water, Animals, In How He Talked About Slaughtering, Caring For Plants And So Forth. Respect Towards Nature Is A Part Of Islam. This Is Essential But Muslims Are Not Aware. The Whole World Is Talking About Global Warming And Respecting Nature But Muslims Are Not Doing Enough Of That.

We Should Not Fool Ourselves. When The Quran Says Wa La Qad Karamna Bani Adam ["we Have Honored The Children Of Adam"] So Yes We Should All Be Free But This Should Not Mean That We Must Act Against The Dignity Of Human Beings.

Drafting Of The Constitutions Is Interesting And The Discussions Around Them Revealing In Many Ways. I Take It As A Discussion Of Very Important Symbols Revealing Many Different Problems. My Take At The Beginning Was To Warn That Tunisia Might Be The Only Successful Country, The Only One To Justify Us In Talking About The Spring, While All The Other Countries Were Less Successful, If Not Failing. Now The Point Is That Even In Tunisia It Is Not Going To Be Easy, And This Is Where We Have A Problem.

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.

The More I Know, The Best I Believe. The More I Know, The Best I'm Worshiping Him. Because, In The End Allah Knows The Best.

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.

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 Have Learned That One Should Say "peace!" To Those Who Shout Their Hatred For One's Being And Presence Or At One's Passage.

Culture Constitutes An Essential Element Of Social And Political Liberation. As People Rise Up Across The Middle East And North Africa, The Diversity Of Their Cultures Is Not Only The Means But Also The Ultimate Goal Of Their Liberation And Their Freedom.

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.

Islam Has No Problem With Women, But Muslims Do Clearly Appear To Have Serious Problems With Them

Part Of The French Political Class Is Realising That There Is Are Large Number Of Muslim People Coming From The Ghettos Who Want To Make Themselves Heard, Politically, Especially About Foreign Policy Issues. Its Electoral Weight Can Bring Back To The Forefront The Palestinian Issue.

Politics Is Mainly About Interests. As Muslim Citizens, We Understand These Interests But We Should Put Principles And Dignity Beyond Everything.

I Don't Think We Should Take The Emotional Reactions Of A Few People As More Representative Than Those Of The Millions Of People Who Took To The Street In A Non-violent Way Against Dictators.

Islam Doesn't Need Reform, We Need To Reform The Muslim Mind.

Don’t Nurture A Sense Of Guilt; Rather, Nurture A Sense Of Responsibility Married With A Sense Of Humility.

When I Go Back To The Quran I See That The Context Of Revelation Is Creation In Its Entirety. The Universe Is A Revelation And This Of Course Includes Nature, Plants And Animals. In Other Words, What Is Coming From The Quran As Rules And Objectives Are Set Within The Larger Scheme Of The Universe And Nature As Part Of Creation.

I Wouldn't Call It Naive But Silly. History Does Not Work Like This. If You Look At The Dynamics Of Eastern Europe Or Even Germany Post Reunification, You Realize That Change Takes Time. No One Can Deny The Fact That We Are Still Not There - I Am Advocating Something Which Has To Go From Uprisings To Revolutions. It Is Not Coming Straight Away That It Is Not Going To Come But What We Have To Advocate Is That The Democratization Process Is Always Better Than State Dictatorship.

We Should Say To The West: "you Have Been Supporting Dictators For Too Many Years. Don't Expect The People To Introduce Democracy Over Night. It Is Going To Take Time." It Took Time With The French Revolution, It Took Time With The Eastern European Revolutions. And It Is Going To Take Time There.

In Ramadan, You Should Eat Less And Think More.

It Is Only Through The Opposition Of Ideas That We Can Learn To Be Self-critical, To Work Towards Intellectual Humility.

We Have To Reconcile Ourselves With Philosophical Questions In Every Field. Every Field Should Be Open To Inquiry And Knowledge.

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 Truth Does Not Belong To You, You Belong To The Truth.

Compelling A Woman To Wear A Headscarf Is Against Islam, And Compelling Her To Remove It Is Against Human Rights.

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

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

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.

For Muslims, The Source Of Everything We Do Is Based In The Belief That There Is One God, And This One God Is Revealing To Us There Is One Humanity With Equal Dignity For Each, Beyond Faith, Color And Social Status. Whatever Your Status, Color, Background Or Religion, You Have The Same Dignity.

What I'm Advocating Is An Intellectual Revolution - It's A Different Mindset Concerning The Ethical Benchmarks By Which We Live.

Our Pluralist Society Must Provide Its Citizens With The Tools To Understand Religions, Their Symbols And Their Practices.

There Is Great Potential And Deep Fragility [in Malaysia] That Can Be Used By Any Group That Stresses On Religion, Pushing Towards Islam, Rejecting People And Alienating Migrants - Anything Can Be Used To Win The Next Elections. So These Are The Signs Of Fragility That Is Very Much There.

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.

I Look To Islamic Ethics To Find Something That Can Provide The Basis For Shared Values With Other Traditions, And Ultimately Universal Values. This Ties Into The Point I Made In A Book, 'the Quest For Meaning', That The Only Way For Values To Be Universal Is If They Are Shared Universal Values. My Main Point Is, In This Quest For Value The Aim Is Not To Express Your Distinctness From Others, But About Being Able To Contribute To The Discussion Of Universal Value.

In Islam, Rules Are Important, Like The Prophet Said Innal Halaala Bayyinun, Wa Innal Haraama Bayyinun ["what Is Halal Is Clear, What Is Haram Is Clear"]. The Goal Is Not To Diminish The Importance Of Rules, But To Have The Right Priorities.

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

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

Prayer Is Better Than To Sleep. Wake Up. Wake Up & Pray. This Is The Way You Free Yourself.

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.

I Want To Be An Activist Professor.

To Have A Moral Sense Is Not To Be Dogmatic In Dealing With Rules. It Can Be An Open Way With Dealing With Questions Of Objectives And Purpose, Which Is Completely Different.

Still I Have Been Invited I Don't Know How Many Times To Turkey, Where Turkey Has Been Following Very Quickly In The Footsteps Of What Is Sometimes Referred To As The Movement Of Cyber-dissidents. They Have Been Training Young People And Also Encouraging Them To Come Into Contact With Western Muslims.

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.

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.

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

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

I Am Talking About Anything That Is A Provocation - Ignore It. When Something Falls Under Freedom Of Expression, You Can Read It And Take A Critical Distance.

Now No One Can Deny The Fact That Whatever Is The State Of The Affairs In The Country, You Did Not Have The Army Controlling The Country And You Have A Pluralistic Society Anyway.

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?

Unfortunately There Are Some Trends That Are Changing This But You Don't Have For Example As Strict And Narrow Understanding Of The Relationship Between Men And Women. And Then There Is The Philosophy We Have To Extract In The Relationship Between Text And Culture.

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.

Islam Came To Teach Us That There Is No Faith Without Intelligence And Here We Are: Destroying Our Intelligence In The Name Of Faith.

If You Look At How We Are Destroying And Disrespecting Creation It Is Obvious That Is Something Is Not Clear In Our Understanding. We Overemphasize Rules But We Don't Understand The Objective.

The Message Of Islam Asks You To Be Intellectually, Spiritually, Socially, And Politically Independent

It Is Like Using A Smoke Screen, The Same Thing For An Individual. The Topic Here Is Islam. If French Politicians Are No Longer Talking About Islam, They Know They Will Have To Talk About Something Else, Which Brings The Spotlight On Their Inefficiency. They Will Have To Talk About Domestic Social And Economic Issues And They Will Have To Justify Their Foreign Policy, Which Is Obviously Something They Need To Avoid At All Costs.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

You Can’t Be Good To Others If You’re Not Strict With Yourself. The More Shallow You Are With Yourself, The Harsher You Are With Others. The More Profound You Are With Yourself, The More Generous You Are With Others

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.

I'm Working On Different Fields. One Of My Next Books Insha'allah Will Be A Novel Because It's Important To Explore The Heart And Imagination, The Spiritual Side. I've Been Working For Twenty Five Years In The Legal Field And Now I'm Reaching What I Want, Which Is An Islamic Applied Ethics And I'm Also Dealing With Muslims In The West.

Muslims Must Decide, Lest They End Up Divided By The Very Religion That Calls Upon Them To Unite.

There Is A Sufi Trend, A Madhabi Sufi Trend, And I Don't Have Any Problem With This. What Is Not Acceptable Is That, First, Some Scholars Are Trying To Show To The Audience That They Are Open To Other Trends. However, When It Comes To The Retreat Or The Panels, They Don't Want To Be With Some Of Us Because They Are Scared Of Being Exposed.

You Can't Say 'i Don't Do Politics,' Because Silence Is A Political Statement.

Nevertheless, I Have No Political Agenda Whatsoever, Even Though Some Might Think The Contrary.

I Wrote A Call To The Contemporary Muslim Conscience, Saying To The Ordinary People That We Might Not Like The Video Or The Cartoons, But That Violence Certainly Isn't The Right Answer. I Don't Think Laws Are Going To Solve The Problem.

The West Hasn't Been Naïve, It Has Been Patronizing The South By Imposing Its Own Views On What Should Be Done - Ironically After Having Been So Close And So Supportive Of Dictators Who Were Not Respecting The People.

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

We Need To Realize That We Should Be On The Side Of Any Human Being Who Is Oppressed.

Life Is Not Black And White When It Comes To Perception.

Black And White

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

Intellectual Modesty Is Humility As To What I Know; Intellectual Humility Is Modesty As To What I Do Not Know

Is [islamic State] Has Played A Major Role In Helping Bashar Al-assad To Reposition Syria On The International Scene. Now, It Is Almost Impossible To Come Up With A Solution That Would Exclude Him. The Political Game Appears To Be Very Cynical Indeed.

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

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

Behind Every Great Man

The Diversity Is The Risk Of War, The Necessity Of Diversity Is Mutual Respect

Fear Is Created Which Can Lead To Racism. However, We Can Overcome That Fear Through Trust.

We Have To Free The Muslim Mind From The Obsession With Limits And Rules And Forgetting The Path And Objective. This Is Truly A Liberating Process, And For Me This Is Islam: Liberation From The Ego, And In This Case Liberating Ourselves From The Wrong Understanding Of The Religion.

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.

Being Muslim Has Become Synonymous With Pointed Questions, With Tension And Mistrust, Even With Conflict. It Has Become A Global Phenomenon With Profound Consequences For Inter-communal Relations, Political Rhetoric And Policies At The Local, Regional, National And International Level.

We Cannot Have A Free Market Since It Does Not Really Set Us Free. It's Free For Interest, Speculation And Consumerism To Create False Needs.

The Singularity Of Islam Is Its Universality. As American Citizens And As Muslims, You Need To Show There Is Something Specific, Namely Our Moral Singularity. We Believe There Is One God And This One God Is Pushing Us To Reach Universal Values By Liberating Ourselves From Our Ego And By Serving Humanity. We Must Be Involved In This By All Means Necessary, In A Nonviolent Way, Through The Legal, Media, Economic And Cultural Systems. We Cannot Achieve This If There Is No Courage, If We Are Not Ready To Sacrifice.

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

Nature Is Telling Us That If You Don't Respect The Environment Then You Are Living With Artificial Needs And A Consumerism That Is Destroying The Very Conditions We Need To Survive.

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.

We Can Think Of Solutions In Various Theoretical Ways, But It's Not So On The Ground. If They Don't Have A Reference That Helps Them To Belong, Then They Will End Up Excluding, And Through That They Get To Feel That They Belong On The Basis Of Some Narrow Identity, Language Or Color.

Things Need To Be Properly Named. Political Confusion Starts With Terminology Confusion. Islamism Implies Some Sort Of Political And Social Plan For Muslim People. In That Classification, We Find Different Categories.

Pray In The Night So That You Can Change The World In The Day

Changing The World

Serve Humanity, Regardless Of Religion. Show Solidarity For Those Suffering And Oppressed.

I Wanted To Understand. I'm Not Here To Support One, But I Am Here To Criticize All, On A Principled Position. I Very Much Value The Position Of Counter Power. I Think This Is Where Ethics Should Be, In Front Of Power As I Said In Radical Reform. The Power Of Counter-power Is Very Important.

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.

If You Look At How Great Artists Of The Past, Like Beethoven, For Example Dealt With Art And Morality, You See That There Was Torture And Pain In Their Work, But There Was Also Dignity In The Way That Was Dealt With. So I Don't Buy This Contemporary Notion That The Only Way To Be Artistic Is To Be Arrogant, Offensive Or Immoral.

To Islamize Doesn't Make Sense To Me. But To Center, But To Have Intellectual Empathy And Modesty - All These Dimensions Are Important On How We Look At Truth.

It Is Important That The Muslim Leaders, Scholars, And Intellectuals Are Much More Vocal And Explain What Islam Is.

What Is Irreversible In The Arab World Is This Intellectual Revolution, The Awakening That We Can Get Rid Of Dictators. That Is Here, And The People Have This Sentiment And This Political Power. They Feel That They Can Do It, And It's Still There. At The Same Time, We Don't Know What Is Going To Happen. So To Be Very Quick By Saying, "oh, Revolutions And Arab Spring," And - You Know, What I'm Advocating Is To Take A Cautious Optimism As The Starting Point Of Our Analysis And To Look At What Is Happening.

There Is Dignity In Your Being Even If There's Indignity In What You're Doing.

Globalisation Means Indeed Everything Is Global But There Are Still Very Specific Centres Of Power, Especially When It Comes To Media And News.misinformation About Some Attacks Is Going To Affect How Emotionally Involved The Audience Is Going To Get. In The End, An Emotional Ranking Is Artificially Created When It Comes To Casualties.

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.

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.

I Believe My Religion Is The Truth, But I Am Not The Truth And The Truth Doesn't Belong To Me I'm Trying To Belong To The Truth.

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

And The Crowd Often Betrayed The People

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.

If There Is A Smoke, There Is A Fire, The Saying Goes, That Is Quite True, But One Should Find What The Fire Is, And Who Lit It.

Your Country Needs Religious Leaders And Religious Politicians

In My Book, The Arab Awakening, I Talk About The Fact That We Have To Move From This. All The Contemporary Ideologies Of Political Islam Have Been Based On The Nation State. The Nation State Is Very Problematic But I'm Not Sure If We Have An Alternative Political Model.

I Talk To The Young Generation And Advise Them To Be Both Fully Muslim And Fully Western Citizens, To Be Free, To Speak Out, To Express Themselves. We Have New Generations Of Muslims Who Were Born In The West, Coming From Within, And They Are Well Educated And They Understand. Some Sisters And Brothers Are Ready, Yes, Even Though I Can See Young Sisters And Brothers Who Are Also Obsessed With Their Social Status, Their Titles, Their Salary And Are Scared To Not Be Tolerated.

Young Generation

Ramadan Is, In Its Essence, A Month Of Humanist Spirituality.

We Have To Be The Media When Media Is Silent

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.

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Clifton Fadiman

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