Glenn Greenwald Quotes

Islamic extremism may well be the greatest threat to Western values and Western security in the world.

Al-Qaida is a cult of martyrdom.

After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.

We have an even worse situation in Syria, where the United States' allies are actually supporting people who are violently opposed to the United States, who are dangerous, radical Islamist fanatics. I mean, where is the logic of that? When are we going to call the Saudis on the support of intolerant, bigoted, fanatical types of Islam? When are we going to call this ally?

The same means that have supported every other popular belief have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what it is.

Freedom of expression has a responsibility by those people who espouse it in the West, in particular non-Muslims.

To win that war [with radical Islamic extremists] we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.

Comedy is very interesting because you can very quickly cross into dangerous territory. I mean look at what happened, unfortunately, (in) Paris a couple of weeks ago. They were making comics - which were really satire - but it offended people. I'm not saying the reaction was justified but there's definitely a line when you're doing comedy or satire and how it might affect somebody. That's the thing you have to watch and I think you have to be respectful of it.

Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them.

To speak plainly and truthfully about the state of our world - to say, for instance, that the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish - is antithetical to tolerance as moderates currently conceive it. But we can no longer afford the luxury of such political correctness. We must finally recognize the price we are paying to maintain the iconography of our ignorance.

I hate extremes of any kind. Communism [seeks] the domination of the state over the individual... All my life I have stood against banning Communism or other extremist organisations because, if you do that, they go underground and it gives them an excitement that they don't get if they are allowed to pursue their policies openly. We'll beat them into the ground on argument...

We're not at war with all Muslims, we're at war with a subset of Islam that believes in killing in the name of religion, as jihadis do.

As for basic jokes about sex and even my religious stuff, I don't find any problems with that, even if I'm gigging in the Bible Belt, because religious people don't come and see me.

The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition.

The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence.

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.

There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins. Religious beliefs are sacred to people and at all times should be respected and honored. As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.

Republic. I like the sound of the word. It means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose. Some words give you a feeling.

Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs.

We forget now, but during his life, Dr. King wasn't always considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical. He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast or those who felt he was going too slow; by those who felt he shouldn't meddle in issues like the Vietnam War or the rights of union workers.

America is at war. Our enemy is not violent extremism. It is not some unnamed malevolent force. It is radical Islamic terrorist.

Unlike previous wars, our enemy now is a stateless network of religious extremists. They do not obey the laws of war, they hide among peaceful populations and launch surprise attacks on civilians. They have no armed forces per se, no territory or citizens to defend and no fear of dying during their attacks. Information is our primary weapon against this enemy, and intelligence gathered from captured operatives is perhaps the most effective means of preventing future attacks.

Frankly, our ancestors don't seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars, the broken planet. Clearly, they didn't care about what would happen to the people who came after them.

It's not religious war, but Al-Qaeda always use religions, Islam - actually, as a pretext and as a cover and as a mantle for their war and for their terrorism and for their killing and beheading and so on.

It is not possible in this culture today to hold up to public pillory and ridicule any group - whether blacks, American Indians, women, homosexuals, Poles, or any of a number of other groups that have been discriminated against in the past. However, the one group you can hold up to public mockery and pillory without fear of reprisal is evangelical Christians.