Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje Quotes

The victories which the Turks gained in battlefields honored Islam. Yet it is a reality as well that Islam lost much of its meaning in the Turks' hands. In the hands of the Turks, Islam was frozen insubstantially and its improvement was stopped. The Ottomans froze and maltreated Islam in all the fields except in military. For example, they didn't lay on knowledge as much stress as necessary.

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion; Molière becomes a contemporary of Napoleon, Voltaire, a contemporary of Lenin.

In Islam's golden age, so much progress was made that it became the basis of the European Renaissance. We Muslims have to change ourselves, that's the main difference. We can't keep blaming America or Israel for our misery.

Divergence of opinion has been a deeply rooted tradition in the history of Islamic thought. Islamic scholastic tradition itself is not unitary but was often diverse and multifaceted.

Americans today don’t know history—even the smart ones who went to Ivy League schools.

The superiority of the Arab civilization, especially in Spain and Sicily, was the chief agency which awakened Europe after six centuries of barbarism.

Islam was Europe's teacher. From the eighth to the 12th centuries.

In the first few centuries of the Islamic era, Islamic theologians sought to meet the challenge this implied, but during the past 500 years critical scholarship has declined, leading to strong resistance to modernity

Let me remind you of a historical fact that is accepted by all. In the year 901 - an unfortunate year for Muslims - a Muslim qadi named Ibn Mujahid canonized one version of the Koran. Before that, there were many different versions of the Koran, and this did not upset the good Muslims!

Once Europe existed in a Dark Age and Islam carried the torch of learning. Now we Muslims live in a Dark age.

Make-believe has so long held sway that truth arrives on the scene with all the aspect of an ogre. As a consequence, the real history of their country is a sealed book to the vast majority of the Irish. They neither ask for it nor is it given them.

The medieval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.

It seems we're not only uninformed about our present, we're ignorant of our past.

Early Islam was a time of great creativity. Scholars excelled in sciences and literature.

Let me put it this way: There is nothing in Islam that is fundamentally against the quest for knowledge.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

There is an ideology problem in Islam. We need to revolutionize our religion.

The Turks were a great nation even before they adopted the Muslim religion…The religion founded by Muhammad was based on a policy of setting Arab nationalism above all other nationalisms.

Will Islam modernize or will it be stuck where it has been for hundreds of years?

Those of our people who do not study history can be duped into believing anything.

The first thing we learned growing up was to hate Jews. I’ll never forgot the first song I learned in school, ‘Arabs our beloved and Jews our dogs.’ I used to wonder at that time who the Jews were, but repeated the words with the rest of the kids without any knowledge of the meaning.

Because Muslims often consider the early traditions of Islam to be part of the original message of revelation, they typically look to the way Muslims lived in the past rather than attempt to construct new ways based on both the original teachings of Islam and the realities of modern life.

The people will perish if their scholars pass away.

Stories of the Crusades are still told in Moslem cafes and families as if they occurred yesterday.

Ignorant and illiterate people cannot understand democracy. They are prey to religious extremists.