Book project

In 2008 I received a book-writing grant from the prestigious Freedom of Expression Foundation, Oslo, Norway. The resulting book was launched in Oslo on 6 May 2010.

Quotes

We live in a time when men, driven by mediocre, ferocious ideologies, are becoming used to being ashamed of everything. Ashamed of themselves, ashamed to be happy, to love and to create…. So we have to feel guilty. We are being dragged before the secular confessional, the worst of all.

Albert Camus, Actuelles, Écrits politiques (1948), quoted in The Tyranny of Guilt, by Pascal Bruckner

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the carrier of the plague.

Often attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero (107-44 BCE), but spoken in 1965 by Florida Supreme Court Justice Millard F. Caldwell (1897-1984), inspired by Cicero

My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free.

Robin Morgan, key radical feminist member of the American Women’s Movement, quoted by IFNM

This is not ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It is all about Islam.

Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary, commenting on the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, quoted by Rod Liddle, The Islamic world is rioting – and not for free speech, The Spectator, 24.01.2015

So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill.

From the concluding words of 138 Muslim scholars in their open letter to Christians, A Common Word between Us and You, 2007

A man who arbitrarily imprisons me or confiscates my property is a tyrant. Institutions and general ways of thinking that destroy the social institutions and relationships that make me what I am; that attack the family and abolish gender distinctions, communal ties, and traditional moral standards; that drive religion out of public life and tell private associations what members to choose and why - these are also tyrannical.

James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 129-130

The recognition of ethnic and similar distinctions is regarded as extraordinarily dangerous. Those who would abolish them envision no problems should they succeed, as though they served no function and without them people would find nothing to fight over. It should be clear, however, that it is not universal human tendencies like ethnocentrism that are dangerous, but the failure to integrate them with other aspects of life and to restrain them by other considerations. The lessons of the events following the collapse of communism is that the attempt to create a utopia based on eradication of a fundamental impulse - even greed, which some have called the root of all evil - is supremely destructive.

James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 228

The post-liberal future may look rather like post-Soviet Russia, only with less common culture and more varied and numerous Chechens.

James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism, page 255

Christianity succeeded because pagan Roman religion failed to provide a sense of spiritual upliftment. Islam succeeded because the Eastern churches were spiritually debilitated by centuries of bitter polemic. New religious movements in the West succeed by offering techniques of meditation and alternative therapies which seem absent from established religions as they are presently formulated. Islam, wherever it degenerates into a primal scream of panic about one’s situation in the world, will certainly be replaced by any other religion that offers sakina.

Abdal-Hakim Murad, Muslim loyalty and belonging - some reflections on the psychosocial background, January 2003

Those of us who want reform [of Islam] are muted by [Muslim] extremists, as well as the liberals who betray us in the name of multiculturalism. ISIS paints a horrific picture, so I understand the knee-jerk reaction to deny any link. Most Muslims choose to interpret scripture in a peaceful way, but that doesn’t mean the raw material isn’t there for those who choose the path of violence. That material must be addressed.

Eiynah (a Pakistani-Canadian blogger/illustrator who writes about sexuality in Pakistan), An open letter to Ben Affleck, Pakistan Today, 25.10.2014

We can’t go forward without looking backwards.

President Obama, commenting on past human rights abuses in Indonesia, When presidential sermons collide, Salon, 25.03.2010

I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards.

President Obama, commenting on past human rights abuses in the USA, When presidential sermons collide, Salon, 25.03.2010

There are two fundamentally different conceptions of science – one that is scientific and one that is not. In the first, science properly deals with reality, mostly in its physical manifestations. It tries to understand the things that are - what they are, how they work and why, in terms of efficient causes. Science is not metaphysics, but, in order to work, it must assume that things have ends. Otherwise, what would be the point of investigating them, and how would one go about doing it? It is not science that gives to things their ends; those exist already as part of themselves. Science works with the already existing ends in Nature to held bring them about, to fulfill them. Science is not so much the mastery of Nature as an alliance with it. To succeed, it must work with Nature, not against it. This is particularly true in practical sciences. You cannot heal people if you do not know what health is. As Dr. Leon Kass said, ‘The doctor is the cooperative ally of nature, not its master.’
The other notion of science – the unscientific one – is an endeavor not so much to understand what exists and how to bring it to fruition, but to gain power over and fundamentally transform it. Man becomes the ultimate master through the exercise of his will by the instrument of science; he makes all things new according to his desires. Man’s will ignores the end of things and assigns to them his purpose, and they have purposes only insofar as he assigns them. They are nothing in themselves. Nor is man something in himself but only what he makes himself to be. This is science as ideology, as the construction of a false reality.

Robert R. Reilly, quoted by SydneyTrads

We Muslims must admit there are challenging Koranic passages that require reinterpretation today. Let us use existing tools of exegesis, such as specificity, restriction, abrogation and metaphor. Vacuous literalism as an interpretive method must be abandoned. It is bankrupt. Only by rejecting vacuous literalism are we able to condemn, in principle, ISIS-style slavery, beheading, lashing, amputation and other medieval practices forever (all of which are in the Quran). This is a struggle within Islam. Reformers either win, and get religion-neutral politics, or lose, and get ISIL-style theocracy. Help us, defend us, donate, or spread the word. But don't just stand by and watch. We cannot do this alone.

Maajid Nawaz, Facebook, 17.09.2014

When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar. You're only telling the world you fear what he might say.

From Game of Thrones

I prefer religious collaboration, discovering common ground, and so forth, rather than outward competition. I think, essentially, that the real rival to each of us is not each other any longer, but is the spirit of nihilism, negation, global capitalism, all of that stuff. That's what we should really be debating.

Timothy Winter (a.k.a. Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad), being interviewed by Dale Tuggy about the former's chapter The Trinity is Incoherent in the 2013 collection edited by J.P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis, Debating Christian Theism

There is a lot of Islam in the West but very few Muslims, and there are a lot of Muslims in the East but very little Islam.

Muhammad Asad, quoted by Kristiane Backer in her book From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life

Ubi caritas et amor, ibi Deus est.

Old Catholic hymn (where charity and love are, there is God)

Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

People often ask me by what standards they should measure the knowledge and qualifications of someone from whom they should accept counsel on matters of Islamic law. While this is a complex matter, at a minimum such a person should have received at least twenty years of formal training in Islamic law, should be intimately knowledgeable of the local culture, and should have a balanced, humanistic view.

Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 108

For moderates [i.e., moderate Muslims, as opposed to puritans/extremists], this would be impossible. God is moral and ethical, in the sense that God shares with human beings an objective standard for goodness, morality, and beauty. Civilizing the earth does not mean constructing buildings or paving roads. It means striving to spread on the earth the Divine attributes such as justice, mercy, compassion, goodness, and beauty. In doing so, human beings spread Divinity itself upon the earth. [...] The more the earth is permeated with justice, mercy, compassion, and beauty, the nearer the earth is to the Divine ideal.

Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 129-130

Muslims must set an example for the rest of humanity in their diligence and persistence in seeking the perfection of Divinity. If Muslims fail in setting an example for humanity in their fidelity to justice, mercy, compassion, and beauty, then Muslims have failed God. In moderate thought, God is too great to be embodied in a code of law. The [Shari'a] law helps Muslims in the quest for Godliness, but Godliness cannot be equated to the law. The ultimate objective of the law is to achieve goodness, which includes justice, mercy, and compassion, and the technicalities of the law cannot be allowed to subvert the objectives of the law. Therefore, if the application of the law produces injustice, suffering, and misery, this means that the law is not serving its purposes. In this situation, the law is corrupting the earth instead of civilizing it. In short, if the application of the law results in injustice, suffering, or misery, then the law must be reinterpreted, suspended, or reconstructed, depending on the law in question.

Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 131 (italics in original)

I must say that in my opinion the truly sad reality is that the puritan ideology of the state will only lead to considerable bloodshed without the puritans ever finding their utopia with its just despot. As some of the classical jurists used to say, justice and despotism are two opposites, and the two will never meet without one killing the other. After much suffering, the puritans are bound to wake up and realize that while they dreamed in clouds of their utopia, on this earth they only managed to create a nightmare.

Khaled M. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, page 199-200

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.

Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can't Buy - the moral limits of markets, page 203

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
—that is all
Ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know.

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Edith Stein, Jewish philosopher who converted to the Roman Catholic Church and became a Discalced Carmelite nun

We have seen the future, and it has failed already.

James Kalb, Against Inclusiveness, page 154

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Winston Churchill

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.

Anonymous

Based on the evidence of the past four centuries and the state of contemporary philosophy, the rational conclusion is that reason alone has failed as a means by which to discover or devise the truth about the nature of reality, morality, what human beings should care about, and how they should live. Despite high hopes for its success since the seventeenth century, modern philosophy has foundered in its central ambition. It sought universal, rationally demonstrable truth, but has produced instead an open-ended welter of preferential, ultimately arbitrary truth claims.

Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 379

Modern reason in its two most influential expressions is therefore a schizophrenically mixed bag: philosophy has dramatically failed, but science has spectacularly succeeded. One consequence is that the ever-expanding technological capacities afforded by scientific advances are set within an increasingly rancorous culture of moral disagreement and political contestation. If not necessarily a failure of modernity per se, this fact certainly contributes to its volatility and potential for man-made catastrophes on scales inconceivable in the preindustrial world.

Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 380

And perhaps some religious truth claims really are true, and maybe their rejection helps to explain both why Western history has unfolded as it has in the past half millennium and why modernity is now failing.

Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, page 383

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