Jay Parini Quotes
It's probably incorrect to say that Islam is 'a religion of peace,' as some politicians like to say. Overstatements like that don't clarify anything.
Parini, Jay. Opinion Column. CNN, Turner Broadcasting System, 2015.
Despite the fact that the statues were holy symbols to Buddhists, they were offensive to Muslims who say statues as “graven images” prohibited by the Koran. See Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil {608419} and Jamal’s other quotation {604665}.
While not in the Koran, this attributed statement is the basis for the ban on non-Muslims going on a Hajj and going to the most holy Muslim places—Mecca, Mina, Muzdalifa, and Arafat as well as the anti-religious hostility to all religions but Islam which is present in some Muslim countries.
In some countries political candidates run on religious platforms to convert the part of the population that is not of their religion and turn the nation into a theocracy.
Toleration is a relative term. The Muslim Moors made Christians (and Jews) pay a special tax. At times they were forced to wear special clothing so that they could be readily identified. And they could not build churches larger or taller than the smallest mosque in the community. At times, their occupations were restricted but at other times Christians and Jews were appointed to the highest positions like Vizier. The Inquisition, in contrast, forced all Muslims (and Jews) to leave the country without any of their property or money or be tortured and killed—usually by burning at the stake unless of course that they converted to Christianity.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
He is a Greek Orthodox Christian, and he correctly observes that the Islamic world was considerably more tolerant than the Christian until the 18th century when Islam had become less tolerant in the Middle East while the Christians were modernizing and going through a cultural and intellectual enlightenment and societal modernization while the Muslims, became less tolerant than they were in earlier years leading to the modern situation.
See {586039} for a quotation that goes further and seeks to punish and humiliate the non believers. This sura is often used by those wishing to illustrate the intolerance of Islam—especially of other religions. They fail to put this into the context of the Old Testament which proscribed death for heretics or the history of Christianity regarding the murder of nonbelievers. The difference is however, that a very small proportion of Jews or Christians today believe in following Biblical instructions in this respect while the proportion of Muslims who believe in the literal interpretation of scripture on these points is much larger. However there are Islamic modernists and moderates throughout the world who reject this notion of warring on all other religions and there is a struggle going on within Islam itself.
In 2005 Rose published a number of cartoons some of which depicted the Muslim Prophet, Muhammad which offended many fundamentalist Muslims who had a tradition who had a tradition of never depicting the visage of the Prophet. A delegation of clerics demanded an apology from Rose and the country of Denmark, claiming that they and Islam, like other religions, were entitled to respect.
She is a leading American Arab who is a Syrian expatriate.
The place of non-Muslims in an Islamic country, if any, has been a point of great anxiety among Christians, Jews, Bhais, and others. These have been persecuted and expelled from numerous Islamic countries while in others such as modern Turkey there is no problem. This particular cleric is seen as more “modern” and “liberal” than most. Even he has little concept of equality and freedom of religion.
Jay Parini is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels, poetry, biography, screenplays and criticism. He has published novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, Paul the Apostle, and Herman Melville.
