Islamic Thought Quotes

The mind is one of Allah's best designs.

Sheikh Rahman had a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar University in Cairo, the Harvard of Islamic thought. He also had a long history of guiding terrorist groups.

Islam is based on naql (texts) and ‘aql (intellect). Some people just have the texts – we call them naql-heads.

The whole religion of Islam is based on reward and punishment and reward and punishment, and it becomes a part of how you think of everything. Even yourself.

There is nothing more Islamic than critical thinking.

I read, read enormously on all different fields of Islamic thought, from philosophy to Islamic literature, poetry, exegeses, knowledge of the Hadith, the teachings of the prophet. That's how I trained myself. And then I was appointed imam by a Sufi master from Istanbul, Turkey.

From it genesis twelve hundred years ago to today, Islamic philosophy (al-hikmah; al-falsafah) has been one of the major intellectual traditions within the Islamic world, and it has influenced and been influenced by many other intellectual perspectives, including Scholastic theology (kalam) and doctrinal Sufism (al-ma'rifah or al-tasawwuf al-'ilmi) and theoretical gnosis ('irfan-i nazari).

Yusuf Qaradawi is probably the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.

The life of Islamic philosophy did not terminate with Ibn Rushd nearly eight hundred years ago, as thought by Western scholarship for several centuries. Rather, its activities continued strongly during the later centuries, particularly in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam, and it was revived in Egypt during the last century.

I don't buy anything which is Islamization of knowledge. I don't understand what it means in fact.

One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.

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.

Islam doesn't need reform, we need to reform the Muslim mind.

I had a long conversation with the imam, the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar University, and I know how they think... They seek peace, encounter.

In the first few centuries of the Islamic era, Islamic theologians sought to meet the challenge this implied, but during the past 500 years critical scholarship has declined, leading to strong resistance to modernity

One thing that I feel very, very strongly is that we talk about Islamic countries, Islamic people, Islamic leaders, as either moderates or extremists. It's almost like there are only two categories of Muslims. And actually, that doesn't show respect. It shows lack of understanding of the diversity of Muslim thought.

Greek philosophy departs from the assumption that we can understand the world autonomously using our rational faculties. Islam is not saying this.