Ismail Serageldin Quotes
How different these enlightened voices from the past sound compared to the frenetic ranting and condemnations of everything that is new and different that we see and hear everywhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds today
He was contrasting the Islamic narrowness of today as compared with Islamic thinking at the height of the intellectual and scientific of 1000 years ago. See {623631}. Islamic modernists like Serageldin are many among the educated Muslims but their views are often drowned out by the violence and extremist statements of the fundamentalists.
Ismail Serageldin, Egyptian Director of the Library of Alexandria & Historian, Member of the Egyptian Senate & World Bank Enviornmental VP & World Bank Enviornmental VP & World Bank Enviornmental VP, Quoted in “A Voice in Egypt for an Arab Age of Reason”, New York Times, July 2, 2010
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Ibn al-Nafis was one of the great scientists of all time. He analyzed the human heart, lungs, and circulatory system. This quotation is often given by Muslim modernists and reformers to illustrate that Islam at one time was open to new knowledge, dissent, ideas of all kinds. A century later, Islam closed intellectually and later and even today, Muslims are killed for what became heresy. Truth became determined by the Koran and the words of The Prophet only, Christianity and the Church imposed a similar restrictive view of truth using the Bible and Jesus. However, the Reformation and modernity led Christianity to merge and adopt the more modern and scientific view with the exception of some Christian fundamentalists. Islam had the modern view and abandoned it causing the many educated Islamic reformers and modernists of today great difficulty in changing the culture and laws as a whole.
In September of 2005 a Danish Newspaper published some political cartoons showing the hypocrisy of some Muslims who use Islam to justify murder of innocents and terrorism. Months later, in January of 2006 many in the Middle East protested vehemently and Muslim riots broke out because the Prophet Muhammad's visage was depicted against Islamic tradition. Many Muslim nations started a boycott against Denmark. Many Muslim leaders claimed that insulting religion was an “abuse” of freedom of speech including those from nations which regularly publish material that is virulent against Christians and Jews.
Few Islamic leaders have publicly made such unequivocal statements about the problem of extremism and fanaticism.
This quotation is often given by those who believe that nothing has really changed regarding the Arabs and non-Islamic Westerners in the last century. While the support of dictators, Israel and support for that democracy, the artificial Western imposed borders, 9-11, or the Iraq war is often cited as the cause of Arab hostility and murderous aggression, as this quotation demonstrates, the problems and attitudes and behaviors existed long before any of these occurred. The borders were not set until after WWI and all the other causes occurred almost 50 years later, Yet there was still the propensity for fanaticism and violence. Sikes actually was one of those who was to determine the Arab borders, making one of the first “suggested” maps of the area for the English.
The Nazis and most of the Arabs were allies in WWII. The Jews of Palestine—although they were opposed to many of the British policies regarding Palestine—were active in the Allied cause contributing units to the British Army. Although the Germans were brutal to civilians, murdering millions, they refrained from public pronouncements or exhortations to kill civilians in most cases. The Arabs did not. The Mufti was actually given the rank of General in the Nazi SS and had his own SS unit. In this despicable exhortation he actually uses a concept and wording from the Koran. See {584355}. This quotation is important in that it refutes a common claim by some Palestinians that it was only the Germans who were responsible for the Holocaust and the post war Jewish Refugee problem and that the Palestinians had to bear the price rather than place Israel in Europe. This quotation and the other by the Grand Mufti prove that Palestinians were not only complicit in persecution of Jews but took a leadership and advocacy role.
The teaching of hatred towards other people—especially people of a different religion has a long and tragic history. The Palestinians and other Muslims did not invent or even perfect the technique which was ongoing before Islam began and reached a low point in WWII Nazi Germany. But in the modern world, most other religions and people have put a stop to the overt teaching of hatred. The Muslims alone invest large resources towards teaching hate of Americans, The West, Jews, Israel
Strictly anti-Islamic discrimination is not racism as Muslems are represented in every race and nationality in the world.
Son of Reverend Billy Graham. The statement was made in the aftermath of September 11.
This statement of the Prophet is often quoted by Yusuf al-Qaradawi and other moderate, modernist Islamic clerics and leaders urging people to eschew terrorism and Muslim fundamentalist extremism.
The images of the hostages in the Russian School:
Ismail Serageldin (/ˈsɛrəɡɛldɪn/; born 1944 in Giza, Egypt), Founding Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA), the new Library of Alexandria, inaugurated in 2002, is currently, Emeritus Librarian, and member of the Board of Trustees of the Library of Alexandria. He serves as Chair or Member of a number of advisory committees for academic, research, scientific and international institutions and civil society efforts, including as co-Chair of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center (NGIC), and serves on the Advisory Committee of the World Social Science Report for 2013 and 2016, as well as the UNESCO-supported World Water Scenarios (2013) and the executive council of the Encyclopedia of Life (2010) and Chairs the Executive Council of the World Digital Library (2010). He also co-chaired the African Union's high level panel for Biotechnology (2006) and again for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in 2012–2013, and was a member of the ICANN Panel for the review of the internet future (2013).
