Top 325 Quotes & Sayings by Tariq Ramadan - Page 4

IS [Islamic State] has played a major role in helping Bashar al-Assad to reposition Syria on the international scene. Now, it is almost impossible to come up with a solution that would exclude him. The political game appears to be very cynical indeed.

I focus on Islamic applied ethics in many fields, and here I am saying that coming back to the Qu'ran and the sunnah as our reference point does not mean that we depend for our ethics on 'Islam as opposed to the others'.

The Turkish road is not my model because I am critical of the way you are dealing with freedom of expression, of how you are dealing with the treatment of minorities, and your economic vision.

I am not a politician. I have often been approached in this regard, but I have always declined these sorts of offers. I view myself as an independent, critical intellectual, as someone who tries to stimulate thought on the left and the right, to encourage intellectual evolution.

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

And the crowd often betrayed the people

The Islamic world is obsessed with the notion of strong leaders. This is a mistake. We don't need powerful leaders, but rather unconventional, progressive thinkers with the courage to open our minds.

I had no intention to cover my tracks since I am not a politician and I do not represent anybody.

The BRIC countries - Brazil, India, China, Turkey, South Africa, Indonesia even, and Russia - are now new actors. Over the last eight years, China multiplied by seven its economic presence and penetration in the Middle East. And if this happens on economic terms and there is a shift towards the East, the relationship between these countries and Israel is completely different from the United States. And it means that the challenges are going to be different, because China is not supporting Israel the way the U.S. are supporting Israel.

Pushing the limits, to be thought provoking, pushing people to think and question the limits, it's not always bad for the rules if you're confident because it can even strengthen your understanding of religion in the process.

Acknowledged differences may create mutual respect, but hazy misunderstandings bring forth nothing but prejudice and rejection.

Jihadists are acting against the interests of every single country.

The suicide bomber who blows up Israeli children cannot transform himself into a martyr. The Palestinian problem is not an Islamic problem.

Drafting of the constitutions is interesting and the discussions around them revealing in many ways. I take it as a discussion of very important symbols revealing many different problems. My take at the beginning was to warn that Tunisia might be the only successful country, the only one to justify us in talking about the spring, while all the other countries were less successful, if not failing. Now the point is that even in Tunisia it is not going to be easy, and this is where we have a problem.

For me, equal citizenship for Muslims, Christians, Jews, Atheists and Agnostics is an indisputable principle. Whoever you are, you should get the same rights with no discussion and no compromise.

The link between domestic policy and international affairs is essential: We cannot say we care about domestic issues and we leave international politics, and the opposite is wrong as well. Both are connected and should be addressed together.

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.

We have to be very cautious not to accept the scam of polarization we see in the media. It is not in fact between secularists and Islamists, it is a battle within the Islamic reference.

If we agree to say that those terrorists are indeed Muslim, I have no problem whatsoever to condemn their actions. I won't apologise though, or justify my point of view.

Muslims, scholars or not, are on the side of the oppressed and never on the side of the oppressors. Some scholars claim they don't do politics but if you listen to their statements in the Middle East or in other conferences, they support corrupt regimes and despots, such as as-Sissi.

We can think of solutions in various theoretical ways, but it's not so on the ground. If they don't have a reference that helps them to belong, then they will end up excluding, and through that they get to feel that they belong on the basis of some narrow identity, language or color.

The question about the Salafi is an important question as I say in Arab Awakening, and have often repeated since. I am really underlining the importance of this, because we really don't have very good memories. Remember - the Taliban in Afghanistan were not at all politicised in the beginning. They were just on about education. And then they were pushed by the Saudi and the Americans to be against the Russian colonisation, and as a result they came to be politicised.

The universe is pregnant with signs that recall the presence of the Creator.

Only in the crucible of self-mastery can freedom be smelted

Always walking along despite the dangers and adversities, despite the injustices and horrors, trusting in God so as not to despair of men and events.

You can be a very charitable capitalist. Like [Nicola] Sarkozy was saying, we have to 'moralise capitalism', which for me is a contradiction in terms.

Globalisation means indeed everything is global but there are still very specific centres of power, especially when it comes to media and news.Misinformation about some attacks is going to affect how emotionally involved the audience is going to get. In the end, an emotional ranking is artificially created when it comes to casualties.

I'd say that the modern social sciences are just showing us why the conditions for implementing Hudud are so demanding, and thus Hudud should only be for the absolutely last resort.

To Islamize doesn't make sense to me. But to center, but to have intellectual empathy and modesty - all these dimensions are important on how we look at truth.

There is dignity in your being even if there's indignity in what you're doing.

Anyone who tries to separate or divorce domestic politics from international politics does not get it, and that might be dangerous for the future of Western Muslims.

We cannot have a free market since it does not really set us free. It's free for interest, speculation and consumerism to create false needs.

Prayer is better than to sleep. Wake up. Wake up & pray. This is the way you free yourself.

You cannot limit the debate to being solely in favour or against. It should be more complex. When you condemn, you need to understand what led to it. In general, if it is our responsibility to condemn terrorist actions after they had happened, we have an even greater responsibility beforehand to make sure they won't happen.

What is irreversible in the Arab world is this intellectual revolution, the awakening that we can get rid of dictators. That is here, and the people have this sentiment and this political power. They feel that they can do it, and it's still there. At the same time, we don't know what is going to happen. So to be very quick by saying, "Oh, revolutions and Arab Spring," and - you know, what I'm advocating is to take a cautious optimism as the starting point of our analysis and to look at what is happening.

It's okay to feel the need for protection if there is a real external threat. But to feel protective from the inside, it's a kind of jail: you get so protective that you cannot get out of the box.

I have learned that one should say "Peace!" to those who shout their hatred for one's being and presence or at one's passage.

Even the concept of the infidel is misleading, because the infidel is normally someone with a different faith, someone who refuses to recognize the truth of the words of the Koran, as revealed by God. He has every right to do so, as long as he does not question my right to believe in my truth.

I am too old to think that numbers are creating change

You're asking me how not to doubt. Good question.My answer is, you can't. This is life

51% of the French people - who are not very religious - were thinking that what "Charlie Hebdo" did was unwise. They aren't asking for a law to prevent Charlie Hebdo from publishing caricatures, but they are calling on its editors to be a bit more sensible.

There is a claim coming from the West that says that all art must be outside any moral consideration. I can understand this as a provocation, but I also believe that we can still have very profound creativity with a moral sense.

The collective psychology is something very close to being sacred - we can do it but we don't do it. We should understand that the Holocaust in the European conscience is reaching a point which is very close to what is sacred for people in the Southern countries, whether they are Muslims or not. Because of that we need to try to have intellectual empathy.

I'm not talking about reforming #Islam..it is to reform the #Muslim minds & the Muslim understandings of the texts.

In my book, the Arab Awakening, I talk about the fact that we have to move from this. All the contemporary ideologies of political Islam have been based on the nation state. The nation state is very problematic but I'm not sure if we have an alternative political model.

Those organisations, al-Qaeda being the first one, have all settled in areas full of mining and oil resources or in geostrategic zones. They settled in Afghanistan which underground is filled with oil and lithium. North Mali is filled with mining resources (uranium). It is essential to question the impact and role of some international players that create or let those organisations settle there.

In my book Radical Reform I made it clear that we cannot talk about the environment or ecology if we don't also deal with the economy. There is a direct link between how we deal with the economy and how we deal with nature.

I wrote a call to the contemporary Muslim conscience, saying to the ordinary people that we might not like the video or the cartoons, but that violence certainly isn't the right answer. I don't think laws are going to solve the problem.

Because ethics is fundamentally about questioning the ends, the goals and aims of our actions, we must come back to the rules and ask why. So we must return to the philosophy of law, the raison d'etre and the point of what we're asked to do. It's not easy, it's very demanding and it needs intellectual courage.

The United States of America or the Western countries, they don't have a problem with Islamists as long as they are neoliberal capitalists and promoting the economic order. And the best example is the petro-monarchies. The petro-monarchies, they don't want democracy. They say there is no democracy in Islam. But they are within the economic system.

One would love nonetheless to know how to be a man, how to be a woman before God, in the mirror of one's own conscience, in the looks of those who surround us. One would wish to find the strength to beautify one's thoughts and to purify one's heart. It is everyone's hope and expectation to live in serenity and to plod along in transparency: the palms of the hands patiently directed towards heaven, at the heart of all this modernity.

Serve humanity, regardless of religion. Show solidarity for those suffering and oppressed.

"If we had not created a set of people against another the world would have been corrupt", and "against" here means two things: Against in the fact that they are challenging you with their diversity, challenging your intelligence and to challenge is not negative, it can be very positive depending on how you are challenged.

Saying that the origin of the Islamic State (IS) is within the Muslim Brotherhood organisation only strengthens IS. This is what the Israeli government asserts when claiming that Hamas and IS are the exact same thing. By saying so, the historical resistance [against the Israeli occupation] is viewed as unlawful, called extremism and terrorism.

We want to tell people how great Islam is yet we are not great Muslims.

We need to challenge the dominant culture: by ethics, principles and values.

Sometimes people confuse silence as wisdom when in fact it is compromise.

If you look at how we are destroying and disrespecting Creation it is obvious that is something is not clear in our understanding. We overemphasize rules but we don't understand the objective.

The fact that this organisation is called the Islamic State reveals something even deeper. In fact, it implies that every single Islamist party in Egypt, Iraq or Tunisia are not really representing Islam and Muslim people. Nowadays, political Islam is going through a crisis, however this crisis is necessary, for it will lead to a changing way of thinking. In order to make it out of this dead-end, reviewing political Islam becomes mandatory.

If Barack Obama was to say Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood, is an ally, he's going to be destroyed here by, you know, the opposition saying, "How come you can say that the Islamists are your ally when these people are the same who are Hamas, and Hamas is against Israel?" It's the end of it. So he's saying, "We are just wait and see; we are trying to deal."