Hamza Yusuf Quotes

There is nothing more Islamic than critical thinking.

I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That's how I trained myself. And then I was appointed imam by a Sufi master from Istanbul, Turkey.

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.

Throughout its history Islam has been marked by two trends: an intellectual trend that speculated on the philosophical foundations of the world and humanity, and another trend that turned political challenge violent by resort to force.

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

Moderate Islam seeks balance between intellect and the heart, between religion and the world, between spirituality and materialism and between individualism and the group

The laws of Sharia are entirely man-made, written by Muslim scholars according to their various schools, based on their best understanding of how the Qur'an should be translated into codes of law.

Sheikh Rahman had a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar University in Cairo, the Harvard of Islamic thought. He also had a long history of guiding terrorist groups.

Western intellectual Islamologists have totally failed in their duties as intellectuals. They have betrayed their calling by abandoning their critical faculties when it comes to Islam.

There is no "true Islam," just different interpretations.

I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.

The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents.

The Mohammedan religion is the finest of all.

There is nothing higher than reason.

This then is the age of reason.

Whatever else we may say of our own age, for good or evil, nobody is likely to call it an Age of Reason.

I like to make people think.

Fundamentalism has stood aloof from the liberal in self-conscious superiority and has on its own part fallen into error, the error of textualism, which is simply orthodoxy without the Holy Ghost. Everywhere among conservatives we find persons who are Bible-taught but not Spirit-taught. They conceive truth to be something which they can grasp with the mind.

Greek philosophy departs from the assumption that we can understand the world autonomously using our rational faculties. Islam is not saying this.

I wanted secular, non-Muslim people to stop kidding themselves that Islam is peace and tolerance.

It's a better tradition for people who think for themselves and who don't pray in aid of any supernatural authority. That's what you should be spending your life is in spreading and deepening that tradition.

I think in terms of being a New Yorker, as my friends would say, I don't take a lot of mess. I have no tolerance for people who are not thinking deeply about things. I have no tolerance for the kind of small talk that people need to fill silence. And I have no tolerance for people not - just not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it.

I am a humble adherent of...Enlightenment Rationalist Fundamentalism.

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.