A Quote by I. M. Pei
At the beginning, I thought the best Islamic work was in Spain - the mosque in Cordoba, the Alhambra in Granada. But as I learned more, my ideas shifted. I traveled to Egypt, and to the Middle East many times.I found the most wonderful examples of Islamic work in Cairo, it turns out. I'd visited mosques there before, but I didn't see them with the same eye as I did this time. They truly said something to me about Islamic architecture.
Related Quotes
Qatar does not have much history, it's a new emirate. So I couldn't draw on the history of the country; its history is really just being a desert. But I thought, the one thing I must learn about for this project is the Islamic faith. So I read about Islam and Islamic architecture, and the more I studied the more I realized where the best Islamic buildings were.
I often ask myself, 'Why is it that most of the lies come out of Islamic countries, and why is it that most of the social corruptions are in the Middle East and in these Islamic countries?' The answer is, when you control something, when you suppress something, people try to do it another way.
It is no secret that many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, and some of the so-called 'Islamic regimes' such as Saudi Arabia, Iran - and the worst case was the Taliban in Afghanistan - they are pretty authoritarian. No doubt about that.
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.
Sufis have always been those that have tried to purify the ethics of Islam and society. And they don't have their hands cut off from the external action at all. For example, the bazaar in which the Sufis were very strong always dominated economic life in Islamic world. They could give a much more sane and Islamic form of activity when the economic life of Islam moved out of the bazaar to new parts of Islamic cities with modernized Muslims, who took it in another light and it became very, very anti Islamic, and much against many of the most profound practices of Islamic societies.
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.
Think about that: at a time when it was inconceivable to have a woman rabbi or a woman scholar of Christian theology or canon law, the Islamic civilization boasted hundreds of women who were authorities in Islamic law and Islamic theology and that taught some of the most famous male jurists and left behind a remarkable corpus of writings.
When you talk about Islamic terror. You go, oh, you're an Islamic - you're Islamophobic because you besmirching all Muslims. No. I'm talking about Islamic terror.
If I had known there was such a thing as Islamic Calligraphy, I would never have started to paint. I have strived to reach the highest levels of artistic mastery, but I found that Islamic Calligraphy was there ages before I was.
Egypt is the most populous Arab nation, the seat of Sunni Islamic doctrine, and has tremendous political, religious and social influence on the rest of the region. For better or worse, it will lead the rest of the Middle East by example. So goes Egypt, so goes the region.
President Obama and Hillary Clinton most definitely signaled to Islamic State leaders that they had no intention of seriously challenging them, or even of calling radical Islamic terrorism by its name.
The Islamic State is dangerous, a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic is even more so.
Islamic tradition is full of examples of supporting the autonomy of women and the empowerment of women. Very few people know that in Islamic history there have been well over two thousand women jurists.
We now have some years of very reliable polling by Western firms in the Islamic world, in multiple Islamic countries. And invariably, the question that asks, "Do you view U.S. foreign policy as an attack on Islam and Muslims?" is maxed out. Whether it's Jordan or Indonesia or Egypt, you get 80,85 percent of people saying "Yes."
Wahhabism goes and takes elements from the Islamic tradition that are most oppressive of women, and highlights and enlarges them and makes them the whole of Islam. In my view, that's a clear corruption of the Islamic tradition.
Muslims consider the honor of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them. The strict punishment if found guilty of this crime under sharia, the Islamic law, is capital punishment implementable by an Islamic State. This is because the Messenger Muhammad said, ‘Whoever insults a Prophet, kill him.’
Related Authors
Arthur Erickson Quotes
Canadian
Architect
Frank Gehry Quotes
American
Architect
Frank Lloyd Wright Quotes
American
Architect
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Quotes
American
Architect
Ma Yansong Quotes
Chinese
Architect
Maya Lin Quotes
American
Architect
Neri Oxman Quotes
American
Architect
Norton Juster Quotes
American
Architect
Philip Johnson Quotes
American
Architect
Rem Koolhaas Quotes
Dutch
Architect
Richard Rogers Quotes
British
Architect
Santiago Calatrava Quotes
Spanish
Architect
Tadao Ando Quotes
Japanese
Architect
Thom Mayne Quotes
American
Architect
Walter Gropius Quotes
German
Architect
Zaha Hadid Quotes
British
Architect