Emily V. Gordon Quotes

I've become more and more aware of the promise and struggle to teach the global mind nowadays because I use every chance I get to ask faculty and administrators of management education programs why we don't offer at least one course - not even required, just an elective - on the world's religions.

How can we educators claim credit for understanding, let alone teaching, the 'global mind' without a single course on the impact of religion on every day life?

Knowledge about religions is not only characteristic of an educated person, but is also absolutely necessary for understanding and living in a world of diversity.

I'm used to always being different, in any context. People always want to know how I grew up, so I just say I grew up Muslim. That's the truth. Two Muslim girls can write me two extremely different letters - and they do. Some are very supportive, and some question what I do.

I grew up in Wakefield, Mass., and there were only a couple of Jewish families in the town.

I was involved with the Nation of Islam. I wasn't doing no marching. I've been involved with the Nation for 50 years. Back in those days, they tried to label us as black Muslims. There are Muslims all over the world. It doesn't have to be black; it doesn't matter what color he is.

Our pluralist society must provide its citizens with the tools to understand religions, their symbols and their practices.

By background I'm both a Quaker and a Yorkshireman, which I like to call double jeopardy.

If you are an Arabic-speaking, Greek-Orthodox going to a French school it makes you deeply sceptical if you have to listen to three different accounts of the Crusades - one from the Muslim side, one from the Greek side and one from the Catholic side.

I'm Christian. Growing up in Ethiopia, it's half-Christian and half-Muslim. You grow up with Muslim kids. I'm very much aware of their religion.

All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it.

The White man seems unable to understand or perhaps he is unwilling to accept the fact that another man may believe differently—that another man's religion may be valid.

I can't talk about Christianity if I don't know it. You can't talk about Muslims or Islam if you don't know it.

At Harvard, I grew up a lot in terms of being able to deal with different types of people because where I grew up in Arizona, it's predominately white and predominantly Mormon families, so there's not a whole lot of diversity.

My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths - that's why I am so open.

If I had the money I'd pay people to have them read accurate books or posts about our own religion. It is very important not only for their self-image, but also for the future of Europe - as a biological term.

American audiences very rarely deal with material outside their borders.

My siblings and I grew up studying from both the Bhagavad-Gita and the Bible, going to Mass, and then coming home to a yoga kirtan.

In Indonesia, Malaysia, wherever Muslims are living, they don't want to live in harmony.

I would never agree to an exclusive Muslim sovereignty over areas that are religiously important to Jews and Christians.

My dad was a Buddhist when I was young, so when I was begging to become a Catholic, he was saying no and imparting Buddhist precepts.

There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.

Twenty percent of students in Israel's schools are haredim; another 20% are retired; another 20% are Arab. I have no problem with any of them.

The true and correct solution to eradicating discrimination is by establishing religious Sepharadi educational institutions. This is one of the reasons Shas was founded.

In our society, which is multiracial and multi-religious, giving offence to another religious or ethnic group, race, language, or religion is always a very serious matter.