Mary Douglas Quotes

I am thankful that all the people in the world who absolutely, positively, know what God wants, usually kill mostly each other.

The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.

I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs.

When 'Christians' cite the Bible as the basis for secular policies, they must explain why they believe Muslims in the Middle East are evil for doing the same with the Koran.

It's unlikely that the organized religions will get more sectarian... or is it? I am not at all sure.

You think that religion is a thing that is there to help you and to see you through life, and then you wake up one morning and find the entire Irish situation, the civil war that's based on religion.

The hatred Muslim extremists feel against the West feeds on certain conflicts in the world.

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

The Middle East conflict has become the locus of the final war between Muslims and the West

The end of the Cold War unfroze religion and ethnicity as violent forces…

So many of the people killed in the world have been killed in religious conflicts. There is no more dangerous person in the world than someone who is doing what God has commanded.

The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history.

We never learnt the right lessons. We never went to the root of the problem. Once you start politicising religion, you play with fire and get burnt as well. Another lesson we did not learn is that Muslims are not homogenous.

Unfortunately, a certain type of Islam ghettoizes itself and is incompatible with our society. And it amazes me that some within the Catholic hierarchy act as if they do not understand.

The Wahhabi movement is a form of radical Islam that people here say did not exist before in Bosnia, where Islam had co-existed with other major religions and was much softer and more liberal.

Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion.

Religion has failed us. Christ was not a Christian. Buddha was not a Buddhist. Mohammed was not a Mohammedan. And yet ever since the dawn of history, we have engaged in conflict and war and terrorism and murder and racism and ethnocentrism and bigotry and prejudice in the name of God.

It is said that peace is the basic tenet of all religion. Yet it is in the name of religion that there has been so much disturbance, bloodshed and persecution. It is indeed a pity that even at the close of the twentieth century we've had to witness such atrocities because of religion. Flying the flag of religion has always proved the easiest way to crush to nothingness human beings as well as the spirit of humanity.

I don't know any religion that promotes violence. It is the adherents of whatever religion.

I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.

The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.

Historically, more people have died of religion than cancer.

It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.

Any Westerner can now buy a Koran for a dollar and burn it, while any Muslim with a platform can transform that act into a fighting offense. As passions rise on both sides of the divide, Western provocateurs and Islamist hotheads have found each other, as confrontations occur with increasing frequency.

The battleground has been moderates of all faith traditions in all the countries of the world against the radicals of all faith traditions in all parts of the world.