Boaz Ganor Quotes

Religion cannot and should not be understood by their texts alone. The lived history of a community of believers defines a religion; a great deal depends on how the custodians of the faith chose to interpret, defend and exploit or abuse its sacred texts.

Unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, Islam unashamedly came with a sword.

Would you take anybody's views on Christianity seriously if they hadn't read the New Testament? Of course you wouldn't. So I read the Koran.

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

Verses of the Koran and of the Prophet are being isolated and used to justify violence.

Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them, capture and besiege them and prepare for them every kind of ambush…But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free.

Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.

Arab Christians are not Christians, I am not leaving them until they become Muslims or I cut their throats.

Extremism is born when the social-political situation creates pressure which threatens the community. However, there are religious justifications for political pressure. People legitimize the use of (Koranic) verses that Jews and Christians will always be the enemy of Islam. People use such verses without looking at the historical context of the verses. They always use it as if the enmity with Jews and Christian is permanent.

… fight idolaters wherever you may find them; take them and besiege them, and waylay them at every outpost.

If there ever was a religious war full of terror, it was the crusades. But you can't blame Christianity because a few adventurers did this. That's my message.

Historically, more people have died of religion than cancer.

The violence in the Bible is appalling.

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.

This actual question of 'Why does God allow war?' is not considered or raised as such in the Bible at all.

To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.

All the Abrahamic faiths are marked by violence.

Many good sayings are to be found in holy books, but merely reading them will not make one religious.

If there is a God, the phrase that must disgust him is - holy war.

More people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, my friends, that is true perversion.

Wherever you look you see that the enemies of the true religion, particularly the English, the Russian, and the French, have oppressed Islam and invaded its rights in every possible way…the Moslems work and the infidels…live in luxury. The world of Islam sinks down and goes backward, and the Christian world goes forward.…The Moslems are enslaved and the infidels are the great rulers.…The time has now come for the Holy War, and by this the land of Islam shall be forever freed from the power of the infidels….This holy war has now become a sacred duty. Know ye that the blood of infidels in the Islamic lands may be shed with impunity---except Germans to whom the Moslem power has promised security and who are allied with it….The killing of infidels who rule over Islam has become a sacred duty, whether you do it secretly or openly, as the Koran has decreed: 'Take them and kill them whenever you find them. Behold we have delivered them unto your hands and given you supreme power over them.'

When you fight with disbelievers, do not retreat. Those who do will go to hell.

Violence is not a function of the Islamic faith.

The word for knowledge appears in the Koran more often than any other except God.