Basil Bunting Quotes

The fact that Western Muslims are free means that they can have enormous impact. But it would be wrong to claim that we are imposing our ways on the West. New ideas are now coming from the West. To be traditional is not so much a question of protecting ourselves as to be traditionalist in principle.

There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.

Secularism is the experience of the Western culture and thought. Insisting on spreading it to places where the underlying intellectual background, and the political and social reasons for its appearance are lacking, is clearly a mistake, regardless of being desirable or not.

There can be no living culture in the world if you cannot criticize its foundations –- the religion. We lack the courage to ask any question about any religious issue. For example, as a Muslim, I cannot say a single word about the Prophet Moses. The Prophet Moses did not say anything to me as a Muslim, whereas the Israeli Jew can criticize Moses and all the prophets in the Torah, and he can even question the divinity of the Torah. We, in Arab society, do not understand the meaning of freedom. We say that freedom means writing an article. Freedom is much deeper than that.

Fact is, given a choice to erase or embrace Western popular culture, most Muslims would gleefully embrace it.

Islam and its tradition have until now encountered modernity as a cultural aggression (al-ghazw al-fikri), not as a historical phenomenon.

We Muslims in the West, like Jews before us, grapple with the same issues that Jews of the past did: integration or isolation, tradition or reform, intermarriage or intra-marriage.

Western culture is what is at risk from immigration from the Middle East.

I fully believe that our respective religious traditions - Islam and Catholicism - have the necessary resources to overcome past and present misunderstandings and to foster mutual friendship and understanding between our peoples. I am aware, as well, that collaboration does not imply giving up our distinct religious identities, but is rather a journey toward new discoveries, growth and self-respect.

Yes, I am a Muslim. But first I am an Indonesian Nationalist.

Consider that today there are more than six millions Muslims in America, and that we're in the process of witnessing the development of an Islam that, for the first time in history, is unfolding in a country where the freedoms of thought and speech are guaranteed political rights, then the possibilities are quite different.

I am not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture - rule of law, universal suffrage - is preferable to Arab culture. That's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic.

Migrants bring their culture with them… unsurprisingly, Nigerian immigrants to other societies tend to be untrusting and opportunistic.

If my ancestors had been Muslims in a country conquered by Christian armies, instead of Christians in a country conquered by the forces of Islam, I do not think that they would have allowed to live in their towns and villages, retaining their own religion, for over a thousand years.

Islam is something we can't afford any more.

I lived for 30 years in the U.S., but always kept my Islamic and Iranian culture and customs... even now, western lifestyle feels strange to me.

Capacity of human societies both to absorb and to discard cultures is much underestimated.

As a Westerner, the child of civil rights and anti-war activists, I embraced Islam not in abandonment of my core values, drawn almost entirely from the progressive tradition, but as an affirmation of them.

I want to show people there's not just one way of being Muslim.

I'd like to see the haredim become part of the Israeli society.

Growing up, my parents were very much about the Egyptian culture. They never really wanted to assimilate in American culture.

My company is called East-West Theatre precisely because Sarajevo is this city on the border between East and West, the place where the Great Mosque and the Catholic Cathedral and the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral stand almost within touching distance of each other.

My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths - that's why I am so open.

Shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?

It is not for us . . . to send out missionaries to foreign peoples; it is our task to build up our own Western culture.