Youssou N'Dour Quotes

Terrorists have hijacked our religion.

Every mosque is a breeding ground for terrorists.

How effortlessly religious dogma has become intertwined with political ideology since September 11

Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war.

I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.

The terrorists whatever slogans they use have nothing in common with Islam.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

Obstinacy in religious understanding leads to backwardness as in Muslims’, prevalence of violence and intolerance.

When Muslims enter a mosque, for example, and blow it up, or go and behead people while reading the Koran --- these people believe their Islam permits this. You talk about the war on terror. The only way we can overcome these terrorists is with ideology. We Muslims must show the Muslim terrorists that their way is wrong. We must draw the line.

Muslims of the world be reasonable. What brings more prejudice against Islam, these caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?

Terror … is often the result of giving politics a sacred, absolute dimension.

It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

There are pragmatic, sane politics or those convinced that God is on their side.

Religion has both bolstered and undermined stable self-government. It has advanced political reform and human rights, but also induced irrationality, extremism, and terrorism.

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.

The real problem is that Saudi Arabia is bogged down by deep-rooted Islamic extremism in most schools and mosques, which have become breeding grounds for terrorists. We cannot solve the terrorism problem as long as it is endemic to our educational and religious institutions. .

Radical extremists have tried to use Islam as a cause for attacks on America. As I have stated before, they are not true followers of Islam. In my view they are simply terrorists, much like the so-called "Christians" of the white supremacy groups.

Islam is not the enemy, religious extremism is.

The Taliban has not really studied Islam…They only know jihad and fighting… they are using the name of Islam for their purposes

In our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds -- that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.

All extremists derive from one pool. This extreme mind-set is nurtured by religious rhetoric that needs to be reformed.

… the religion’s [Islam’s] teachings don’t involve acts of terrorism unless — as with every other religion — leaders manipulate the teachings to make whatever they want.

unflinching certainty can lead to political violence, as testified by the sad trail of historical events from the Crusades to the Paris terrorist attacks.

Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity.