Shirin Ebadi Quotes

I do not believe that the totality of the Islamic world recognizes the Taliban interpretation of the faith as being representative of its own view. There is no unanimity in Islam with regard to this interpretation. Generally you will see as much diversity in the Islam as you do in the Christian world today. But the West does not really understand the pluralism of the Islamic world.

The dogmatic and, therefore, invulnerable core in Islam is understandably simple: acknowledgement of faith, prayer, charity and fasting. Almost everything else is open to interpretation and modification in space and time.

However, there are moderate and non-moderate Muslims, I acknowledge that.

India's Muslims know that India is the only country in the world where Islam's all 72 sects are found. No other nation, not even Muslim countries, have all the 72 sects of Islam.

Islam is at once the most and the least interesting of the world's monotheisms. It builds upon its primitive Jewish and Christian predecessors, selecting a chunk here and a shard there, and thus if these fall, it partly falls also.

I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.

There are different versions of Islam... it is meaningless to claim to speak in the name of a ‘real’ Islam.

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

I've studied various schools of thought... I acknowledge that some Muslims consider music prohibited, but I've found a lot of evidence from the life of the Prophet to show that he allowed certainly, but even encouraged, music at certain times.

I got my first exposure to Islam when I was 13.

I don't know that Islam has ever been a subject of anything that I've written. I think Muslims have often been, but those are two very different things.

Divergence of opinion has been a deeply rooted tradition in the history of Islamic thought. Islamic scholastic tradition itself is not unitary but was often diverse and multifaceted.

Knock out Islam's three main pillars … To reach Muslims with the gospel, you must first shake their faith in their religion, Islam.

Moderate Islam seeks balance between intellect and the heart, between religion and the world, between spirituality and materialism and between individualism and the group

The laws of Sharia are entirely man-made, written by Muslim scholars according to their various schools, based on their best understanding of how the Qur'an should be translated into codes of law.

Do not underestimate the importance of Islam on the continent of Africa.

There are Muslims of all kinds. The idea of closing them into a single identity is wrong.

The oldest civil war on the planet is the one between the Sunni and Shiites over who is the proper successor to the Prophet Muhammad.

I'm afraid that a lot of things that people believe about Islam are totally different from the religion that most of us recognize. I was really fortunate that I got to know Islam before it became a headline.

To speak of the Muslim world is not to endorse a totalitarian project, nor to bolster an Islamist narrative, nor to suggest that variety, plurality, and diversity are lacking in what Muslims think, believe, speak, and do as Muslims.

The human family is a great one, and the Muslim branch is certainly worth knowing.

I'm very proud to be of Muslim faith.

In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: 'Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran.' Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken.

It is difficult to generalize about Islam. To begin with, the word itself is commonly used with two related but distinct meanings, as the equivalents both of Christianity, and Christendom. In the one sense, it denotes a religion, as system of beliefs and worship; in the other, the civilization that grew up and flourished under the aegis of that religion. The word Islam thus denotes more than fourteen centuries of history, a billion and a third people, and a religious and cultural tradition of enormous diversity.

I believe in Islam. I am a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, nothing wrong with the religion of Islam. It just teaches us to believe in Allah as the God.