Hamza Yusuf Quotes

The most rabidly religious people are the most rabidly evil.

Those who believe that they have absolute truth and the only moral system are destructive both to themselves and to those whom they try to convert.

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

I really don't want to offend anybody, but I find all forms of religious fundamentalism frightening.

I don't believe in Jesus or God. But I do believe that fundamentalists in religion or anything else are bad, and that they have more hate than love.

I think now with fundamentalists, people who treat belief with a total lack of humor or empathy for any other viewpoint than their own - they, to me, are the enemy. And those people are born out of desperate extremes.

The spirit of religious totalitarianism is abroad in the world; it is in the very air we breathe today in this land. Everywhere are those who claim to have a corner on righteousness, on direct access to God ... The bigots of the world are having a heyday.

In religious and in secular affairs, the more fervent beliefs attract followers. If you are a moderate in any respect - if you're a moderate on abortion, if you're a moderate on gun control, or if you're a moderate in your religious faith - it doesn't evolve into a crusade where you're either right or wrong, good or bad, with us or against us.

That religious earnestness forever tends toward fright and hence towards brittleness and inquisition is clear enough in mythology and history.

Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

I think that anybody can become a terrorist. That's my point of view. But, not everybody can actually kill. In order to reach that level, you have to be deeply convinced.

I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute.

I don't think people by nature are extremists. You will never find a population of extremists. Extremists have existed throughout the centuries on all religions. And what happens is, extremists start to have more leverage when the situation is bad.

I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.

The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.'

A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic - all of them are the same. The thinking that, 'If you don't think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;' this is something to condemn.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

There is such a thing as fanaticism, it is always wrong, and if you disagree, you're wrong too.

The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism.

The enemy of idealism is zealotry.

We must recognize the fact that many Nazis, Marxists and Fascists believe passionately in their fundamental rightness, and allow nothing to hinder them from their goal in the pursuit of their mission.

You're always going to have extremists in every religion.

Many militants of the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy.

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

Looking back at the worst times [in history], it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in the matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agreed with them.