Karen Armstrong Quotes

Unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, Islam unashamedly came with a sword.

To the government, terrorism committed by people who happen to be Muslim is not in any way a reflection of legitimate interpretation of Islam. You might find this hard to believe, but if you're doubting any of this, just search your own memory. All the times that we have heard that Islam's a religion of peace and that we can't use the word "terrorism" to describe it and Obama will not use it. And then remember all the times that this administration actually claims that violence by white right-wing white Christians poses a greater threat to the people of America than Islam.

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.

I would like to regard the Inquisition as an aberration as far as Christian history is concerned. And I think the Taliban would be an aberration as far as contemporary Muslim civilization is concerned

Terrorists have hijacked our religion.

One cannot offend, make war, kill in the name of one's own religion, that is, in the name of God.

What Planned Parenthood is doing is not the faith that I believe in, but Jesus never ordered anyone to be killed and he never raised his hand to injure anyone specifically. But Mohammed did and there is a big difference in this.

I don't know any religion that promotes violence. It is the adherents of whatever religion.

When somebody is flying airplanes into buildings and killing innocent people in the name of God, it makes you question why do they have that interpretation and somebody else has another interpretation, and how many people of Muslim faith would agree with that, and what are the different aspects of different people's religions that is so divisive, rather than being unifying?

More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason.

I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

Our enemy is not Islam. Islam is not the enemy of America; Americans are not the enemy of Islam. Our real enemy is extremism and radicalism.

Historically, more people have died of religion than cancer.

We are not at war against Islam.

I have a good Muslim friend who comes over to my house. Good guy; reads the Qur'an in Arabic. He comes over to my house and we talk about faith and we talk about things we have in common, but I can't shy away from the differences that we have. So I talk about why I'm not a Muslim and about the evidence that exists that show Christianity is true.

I had been fascinated with Islam since college - particularly how it could inspire such fervor in our modern age and move a significant number of its followers to horrific acts of violence. That invisible hand moved me to study more and more about Islam.

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

Violence is not a function of the Islamic faith.

Obstinacy in religious understanding leads to backwardness as in Muslims’, prevalence of violence and intolerance.

That both Muslim fundamentalists and the Christian right are today focusing their attempts to regain control in a rapidly changing world on frantic efforts to maintain control over women, particularly over women's sexuality. Moreover, given their mythologies about "holy wars," it is also understandable that they should use "divinely approved" violence to do so…

Extremists exist in every religion, thought and civilisation. Islam is no more inherently violent than Christianity or Judaism, and the fact that there are extremists in Islam does not justify holding Islam-the religion-hostage to distorted images and clichés. Didn't a Jewish extremist kill former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin? Did anyone call it Jewish extremism? When Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma, no one dared describe it as Christian terrorism. So why is it when a Muslim commits some foolish act, that his or her religious identity becomes the marker here?

When Muslims enter a mosque, for example, and blow it up, or go and behead people while reading the Koran --- these people believe their Islam permits this. You talk about the war on terror. The only way we can overcome these terrorists is with ideology. We Muslims must show the Muslim terrorists that their way is wrong. We must draw the line.

Arab Christians are not Christians, I am not leaving them until they become Muslims or I cut their throats.

The Islamic world is fed up with violence and extremism in the name of religion and is ready for an era of progressive, democratic Muslim governments …. After about two centuries of dispute between tradition and modernity in the world of Islam there must be a high level of mental preparation for the acceptance of a major transformation in the mind and lives of Muslims.