A Quote by Geert Wilders

I have travelled a great deal - to Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt - and can very well differentiate between moderate Muslims and Islam. — © Geert Wilders
I have travelled a great deal - to Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt - and can very well differentiate between moderate Muslims and Islam.
It's not that we have two different kinds of Islam. I acknowledge the fact that we have two kinds of people. There are moderate Muslims and non-moderate Muslims. But there is really only one Islam, and this is the Islam of the life of Muhammad, of the Quran, of the Hadiths, of the Sunnah.
The distinction between radical Islam and moderate Muslims is important, as are the differences between Sunnis and Shiites, and between militant and mystical Islam.
I make a clear distinction between the people and the ideology, between Muslims and Islam, recognizing that there are many moderate Muslims.
As a matter of fact the majority of the Muslims living in our society are moderate people. But don't make the mistake that even though there are moderate and radical Muslims that there is a moderate or a radical Islam.
Well, the most important thing about Islam is that we have to differentiate between two kinds of Islam. The first one is the institution of Islam... second, the culture of Islam.
The idea is that they wouldn't want to deal with militant Islam but an Islam and Muslims who are committed to progress, committed to development, who like peace and are moderate in their ways. So that's what we are doing here.
The West has been calling for years for the forces of moderate Islam to stand up to the very small percentage but very large number of radical Muslims all around the world. When countries - the U.A.E. or Egypt or Jordan - do that, we need to highlight it, we need to celebrate it, and we need to continue to encourage it.
When I was in the US, I felt that the discourse there surrounding Muslims as the other, problematising Muslims and Islam as the other was very similar to what we find in Australia, which is that the image of Islam is a constructed image in the West. We are starting from a point of view that Islam and Muslims - well Islam is a violent, misogynistic, hateful religion and that is where the debate always starts from - that presumption underlies the discourse.
There are Muslims, who are moderate Muslims. And there's more of them than there are radicalized Muslims and are using Islam in its misinterpreted ideology.
Rather than being a 'perversion' of Islam, it is truer to say that the version of Islam espoused by ISIS, while undoubtedly the worst possible interpretation of Islam, and for Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere obviously the most destructive version of Islam, is nevertheless a plausible interpretation of Islam.
There is no radical or moderate Islam. There is only one Islam and that is the Islam from the Koran, the holy book. That is the Islam from Mohammed. There are no two sorts of Islam.
While there are many moderate Muslims, Islam's political ideology is radical and has global ambitions.
When I was growing up, we often heard Islam in the form of a slogan: "Islam is the solution," but no one ever told me that Islam can be a burden... Very few Muslims write about Islam creatively because I don't think we're given permission to. I think that's the bane of modern Islam. It's been reduced to slogans.
There has always been a confusion in the West about -Islam and about the Middle East and the assumption that the countries are Arab. Iranians very much object to that. They are very proud of their own history, but they have this real inferiority-superiority complex thing about the Arabs and the position of Islam in Iran. One of the reasons why Shi'a Islam is so entrenched in Iran is because it has allowed the Iranians to distinguish themselves from the Arabs, who are mostly Sunni.
I am concerned if 25 percent of Americans think that President Obama is a Muslim. I mean, it's obviously a lack of knowledge. But also, it's for the Muslims as well, you know, because a small numbers of Muslims have really painted a very negative image of Islam.
If we are true small 'l' liberals, it's our job to seek out feminist Muslims, ex-Muslims, liberal Muslims, dissenting voices within Muslim communities, gay Muslims - we should promote those voices and in doing so, we demonstrate Islam is not a monolith, Muslims are not homogenous, and that Muslims are truly internally diverse.
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