Mahesh Bhatt Quotes

This whole issue of Hindu-Muslim in India is completely overhyped.

I don't like to speak of Islamic violence, because every day, when I browse the newspapers, I see violence, here in Italy... this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law... and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics!

If they analyze the situation as thoroughly as they should, Muslims will realize they are the first targets. What are the fundamentalists really after? Simply taking over Islam and then turning its back on modernity.

I draw a distinction between traditional Islam and Islamism. Islamism emerged in its modern form in the 1920s and is driven by a belief that Muslims can be strong and rich again if they follow the Islamic law severely and in its entirety. This is a response to the trauma of modern Islam.

Islamic fundamentalism in its activist manifestation is bad news. Religious fundamentalism in general is bad news. We know about religious fundamentalism in South Africa. Calvinist fundamentalism has been an unmitigated force of benightedness in our history.

If Pakistan becomes an imminent reality, we shall be heading straight for bloodshed on a wide scale. Non-Muslims ... are not bluffing, they will not submit peacefully to a Government that is labeled 'Muhammadan Raj'.

Every conceivable cleavage of difference: Sindhi vs. Punjabi, Mohajirs vs. Pathans, Islam vs. Secularism, Shias vs. Sunnis, Deobandis vs. Barelvis, literates vs. illiterates, Woman vs. Man, Urban vs. Rural—has been exploited to magnify dissentions, giving rise to heinous blood baths, accentuated hatred, and intolerance.

A large percentage of Moslems living in Europe believe that Europe is decadent and that they should work to destroy it.

Or Wahab’s rebel brood, who dared divest The prophet’s tomb of all its pious spoil. May wind their path of blood along the West.

It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.

If the Shiites in a Sunni-dominated country insisted on practicing their religion openly, then … the Sunni state had no choice but to wage war on them.

Why is the Muslim world plagued by instability, undemocratic governments, and sectarian violence?

Traditional Moslems have much the same outlook as traditional Jews and traditional Christians. On the other hand, radical Islam has been gaining ground…. Islam has been around for more than a millennium and radical Islam has only been around for a couple of hundred years.

It is only through the complete and surgical isolation of the extremist element within Islamic nations and societies that a way can be found out of the tidal wave of terror and hatred that is being built up.

The mujahid Islamic movement will not achieve victory against the global infidel alliance unless is possesses a base in the heart of the Islamic world.

We seem to be the victims of religious dogma, both from the Christian Right here and, of course, in the East with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

The Muslim population in India is, largely speaking, not radicalised. From the beginning, they were always very secular-minded.

It may be politically incorrect to say, but it is nevertheless true that a terrorist today is exponentially more likely to be a Muslim than a Christian.

The Wahhabi movement is a form of radical Islam that people here say did not exist before in Bosnia, where Islam had co-existed with other major religions and was much softer and more liberal.

There's a difference between being a fundamentalist and being al-Qaeda and being Muslim. It's absurd to think otherwise.

Muslim clerics in India go to other countries, nobody knows what do they do, even the police can't go there.

Our leaders today cannot be honest about Islam with us. They will not even use the term "Islamic terrorism," "radical Islam."

Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion.

It is not coincidental that for so-called religious fundamentalists - whether they are Western or Eastern, Muslim or Christian - rigid male dominance and "holy wars" are priorities. Or that competing sects of the same religion, such as Sunni and Shia, are at each other's throats. In these cultures, women are rigidly controlled by men.

Let's make two things clear: Isil is not "Islamic." No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of Isil's victims have been Muslim. And Isil is certainly not a state.