James R. Clapper Quotes

Iraqi national identity under Saddam Hussein never truly incorporated Shiites or Kurds. Sunnis, who identified most closely with the Iraqi nation, remain in some ways disenfranchised relative to the other groups, or at least they perceive themselves that way.

Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

Religious hatreds tend to be merciless and absolute.

The racial antipathy of the Occidental for the Oriental, the fierce religious hatred of the Christian for the Mohammedan, are motives actuating the Balkan peoples to a degree inconceivable in America.

Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq's Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq's Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.

And we've also had now the speaker of the Parliament in Iraq using blatantly anti-Semitic remarks, saying the Jews and sons of Jews are the problem of all the violence that's in Iraq.

The Arabs are victims. You have Shia Arabs, under Arabization under Saddam Hussein, who were forcibly moved up there... You have Kurds who were displaced by these Arabs that were moved up there by Saddam Hussein. Kurds have been displaced from Kirkuk for hundreds of years.

Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only kept together by Baathist tyranny and violence.

Jews, blacks and homosexuals are despised by the Christian and Communist majorities of East and West. Also, as a result of the invention of Israel, Jews can now count on the hatred of the Islamic world.

Virtually all of Africa's civil wars were started by politically marginalized or excluded groups.

For decades, Saddam and his Sunni minority had imposed their will on Iraq, carrying on a 14-century tradition of Sunnis controlling Mesopotamia despite a Shiite majority.

Sectarianism, bigotry, and it's horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful Earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization, and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now.

Race is set against race, party against party, religion against religion, neighbor against neighbor, and child against parent

It is its hostility and belligerence towards non-Muslims that makes Islamism a global problem. It should be noted that Muslims have not always treated non-Muslims in this manner. If we review Islam's 1400-year history we find ample examples of periods in which non-Muslims were treated with tolerance, as well as times of hatred and persecution.

The whole history of the last thousands of years has been a history of religious persecutions and wars, pogroms, jihads, crusades. I find it all very regrettable, to say the least

Here [in Jerusalem], no mercy is shown. One hates one's fellow man to the glory of God.

Muslims have been hating us for centuries ….

… the strangest sight in the world—two races hating one another for the love of God

The Anglo-Irish of the Pale and the native Irish … hate one another as much as any two nations in the world ...

Children are being beheaded, women are being raped, men are being crucified, and Christians are being forced to “convert or die”. This is the essence of radical Islam: the barbarians even kill Muslims, as well as Christians, Jews, and others who are not like them.

Today, with the war between Muslims and the West escalating, you cannot count on the message of solidarity you may get from a civic group or a political party, or the word of support you hear from a kind neighbor or a nice co-worker. The West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens.

It is unfortunate that there is not a government in Iraq that has been able to unify the Shiites and the Sunnis sufficiently. They are not currently fighting together.

Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy, yet ISIS' ferocious campaign against the Shia, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Muslims who don't precisely share its views has united every ethnic and religious group in Syria and Iraq against them.

Nothing is more powerful than hearing from former members of the group that ISIS is not creating an Islamist utopia in the areas it controls, but a hell on earth.

As we see with Sunni and Shiite Muslims, interreligious fights are the most ugly.