Tony Tan Quotes

I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery.

I made the film to bring the story of Islam, the story of 700 million of people, to the West.

I had this desire to understand Islam better and then focus on the beauty of Arabic and Islamic cultures. And one of the first things to emerge was Arabic calligraphy, which was instantly inspiring.

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.

The medieval Islamic world, from Central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and system of belief, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history.

The philosophical connection between the Islamic world and the West is much closer than I thought. Doubt did not begin with Descartes. We have this construction today that the West and Islam are entirely separate worlds. This is wrong.

The Council of Islamic Affairs is doing a great service to the world by promoting a greater understanding in America of the rich heritage of the Islamic peoples and their hopes and aspirations for the future.

Without television and mass communication, that knowledge wouldn't exist. So I think it actually has the possibility of turning people into more understanding and more empathetic people.

The superiority of the Arab civilization, especially in Spain and Sicily, was the chief agency which awakened Europe after six centuries of barbarism.

The Muslim world, with its history and cultures, and indeed its different interpretations of Islam, is still little known in the West. The two worlds, Muslim and non-Muslim, Eastern and Western, must, as a matter of urgency, make a real effort to get to know one another, for I fear that what we have is not a clash of civilisations, but a clash of ignorance on both sides.

You can't just read the Koran to understand Muslim life. You have to look at history, at personalities, at economics, and so on.

For a journalist who covers the Muslim world, we have responsibilities to be familiar with that culture and to know how to respond to that.

Many young Japanese were hearing for the first time the words of Native people from the West.

I have worked hard to build relationships between Jewish people and black people.

I'm Egyptian and Muslim, but I grew up in the West, far from my Arab roots. I began 'Sex and the Citadel' to help outsiders - like myself - to better comprehend this pivotal part of the world, up-close and personal.

I've spent a good deal of time in the Middle East over the years, lecturing at universities in places like Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Morocco.

International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

If there is much understanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history which we have inherited…. we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society and system of believe, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own society.

It can have a positive effect on public opinion worldwide if conducted properly. It is a way of conveying the Islamic point of view to Western people

Islam was Europe's teacher. From the eighth to the 12th centuries.

There are no national frontiers to learning.

Those Asians who come back with their MBA from America don’t come back to fight with each other. They come back to trade with each other.

Islamic subjects are taught with the aim of instilling in those students the essence of the Islamic message and its philosophy in general …. Such form of religious education is obligatory upon everyone who lives in a Muslim country regardless of whether he is a Muslim or not.

We've seen that whenever there was diversity, whenever there was openness, whenever there was dialogue, this was the time when societies have been most productive. When we talk about the Arab Golden Age, we cannot not think of Ibn Sina, al-Haytham, Averroes, Maimonides. This was a time when cultures, religions -- they were talking to each other. They were at peace with each other. And this was a time when they were highly productive. So I would say: bring down these walls.

If, in English, we speak words, the French speak thoughts.