Alija Izetbegovic Quotes

While not in the Koran, this attributed statement is the basis for the ban on non-Muslims going on a Hajj and going to the most holy Muslim places—Mecca, Mina, Muzdalifa, and Arafat as well as the anti-religious hostility to all religions but Islam which is present in some Muslim countries.

This quotation illustrates that a narrow orthodox view of Islam is not the only one in Arab nations. Khaled is not an obscure cleric, but a popular television personality. While his views are considered heresy by many orthodox Muslims, the narrow view is by no means universal. Orthodox Islamists believe that God has commanded that all mankind be Muslims and the ones who are not are either ignorant so need to be “educated”, or evil and therefore should be killed. However, Muhammad ordained that an exception should be made for “Children of the Book”—Jews and Christians who revere the Old Testament. This was at a time when Christians would not allow any other form of worship but Christianity. Christianity, Judaism and most other religions have become tolerant of other religions and allow open alternative worship. Islam which early on led the way to tolerance, has in many countries gone back to the intolerance that existed amongst many Christians at the time of Muhammad.

In September of 2005 a Danish Newspaper published some political cartoons showing the hypocrisy of some Muslims who use Islam to justify murder of innocents and terrorism. Months later, in January of 2006 many in the Middle East protested vehemently and Muslim riots broke out because the Prophet Muhammad's visage was depicted against Islamic tradition. Many Muslim nations started a boycott against Denmark. Many Muslim leaders claimed that insulting religion was an “abuse” of freedom of speech including those from nations which regularly publish material that is virulent against Christians and Jews.

Despite the fact that the statues were holy symbols to Buddhists, they were offensive to Muslims who say statues as “graven images” prohibited by the Koran. See Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil {608419} and Jamal’s other quotation {604665}.

This is a particularly noteworthy quotation as Muslims are often accused of intolerance and here is a Muslim who argues that it is the responsibility of religious leaders to present religion in a tolerant manner.

The following year India was partitioned and millions of Hindus were slaughtered by Muslims and vice-a-versa.

Historically, when Christian Europe was torturing and butchering people over differences of religious opinion, Islam was for the time, in most places, a model of tolerance. Suhrawardy died before Islam degenerated into an intolerance that almost rivaled in brutality that of the Christians centuries ago. And while his statement about the invention and initiation of brutal intolerance is correct, he would be shocked at the behavior of 21st century Iran, Pakistan and some other Islamic nations who from a traditional Islamic perspective had degenerated.

He is a Greek Orthodox Christian, and he correctly observes that the Islamic world was considerably more tolerant than the Christian until the 18th century when Islam had become less tolerant in the Middle East while the Christians were modernizing and going through a cultural and intellectual enlightenment and societal modernization while the Muslims, became less tolerant than they were in earlier years leading to the modern situation.

This sura illustrates why peace treaties between Islamic and non Islamic countries are difficult to negotiate and enforce. For some fundamentalist Muslims, even making a peace treaty with Israel would constitute a transgression of the word of God. Nonetheless, the first treaty that the United States ever made was with a Muslim nation—Tripoli.

See {586039} for a quotation that goes further and seeks to punish and humiliate the non believers. This sura is often used by those wishing to illustrate the intolerance of Islam—especially of other religions. They fail to put this into the context of the Old Testament which proscribed death for heretics or the history of Christianity regarding the murder of nonbelievers. The difference is however, that a very small proportion of Jews or Christians today believe in following Biblical instructions in this respect while the proportion of Muslims who believe in the literal interpretation of scripture on these points is much larger. However there are Islamic modernists and moderates throughout the world who reject this notion of warring on all other religions and there is a struggle going on within Islam itself.

The notion that Islam would be practiced by individuals was in the Ayatollah’s view insufficient. Islam must also control the government—the head.

al-Mansur Abu Ali. Even though the Caliph was trying to return to Muslim Fundamentalism, there was a general tolerance that was far in advance of Christian societies at the time. It is dramatically at variance with many of the more rigorous Islamic countries today.

Head of the Sikh Religion. His teaching was that deeds determined the man, not the professed belief and that the existing religions turned man against man.

One remarkable aspect of this quote is that most Western nations have the exact same perception he claims the Islamic word does of what the West is doing. While the Western nations think the defense is necessary and desirable, the Muslim nations fundamentally believe that Christianity and Judaism should and will be supplanted by Islam. To the Islamic fundamentalist religion is a zero sum game. Every person in the world who is not a Muslim is an attack on Islam in that God wants all to follow Islam and wants the faithful to make it so.