A Quote by Karen Armstrong

It's quite common for a Sufi mystic to cry in ecstasy that he's neither a Jew, a Christian, nor a Muslim. He is at home equally in a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, or a church because when one's glimpsed the divine, one's left these man-made distinctions behind.

Karen Armstrong

Quote Topics

Because Behind Christian Church Common Cry Distinctions Divine Ecstasy Equally Home Jew Left Made Man Man-Made Mosque Muslim Mystic Neither Nor Quite Sufi Sufi Mystic Synagogue Temple

Quote Author

Karen Armstrong
English - Writer
Born: November 14, 1944

What can I do my friends, if I do not know? I am neither Christian nor Jew, nor Muslim nor Hindu. What can I do? What can I do? Not of the East, nor of the West, Nor of the land, nor of the sea, Not of nature's essence, nor of circling heavens. What could I be?

Rumi

What shall I say, O Muslims, I know not myself, I am neither a Christian, nor a Jew, nor a Zoroastrian, nor a Muslim.

Rumi

When "I" and "You" are absent, I've no idea if this is a mosque, synagogue, church or temple

Mahmud Shabistari

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not of the East, nor of the West.... My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.

Rumi

I know of no religion or sect that has done or is doing without a house of God, variously described as a temple, a mosque, a church, a synagogue or agiary.

Mahatma Gandhi

Today, as it was 2,000 years ago, the Kingdom of God is within each of us. It is not within a church, a temple, a mosque or synagogue.

Mahatma Gandhi

The public library building, in my view, is just a little lower than the church, the cathedral, the temple, the synagogue and the mosque. Within those walls and along those stacks, I have found security and assurance.

Maya Angelou

Too many of us live on the horizontal, vain level of life: We want to acquire more and more things; we want the material blessings of life and we are neglecting the elevated state of existence! And that's why God said of Abraham he was neither a Christian nor a Jew, he was a Muslim: he was an upright man.

Louis Farrakhan

If you're a Christian, Jew or Muslim, you're equally an American. That's the great thing about America, is the right to worship the way you see fit.

George W. Bush

Scripture is vast, and people can pick and choose what they emphasize, and so for hundreds of years verses that said that you are to welcome the stranger, that with Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, we've broken down the dividing wall with the original church, where Christians were first called Christian was the church of Antioch in which for the first time you had Jews, Gentiles of all different ethnicities come together as one people. That's when they were called Christians.

Michael Emerson

It is really impressive and makes us proud that in a lot of places in Indonesia, a church is close to a mosque, and even in many places, both Islamic and Christian communities cooperated to build a mosque or church.

Suharto

We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion. This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need.

Dalai Lama

I as a Muslim want you, as a Christian, to really be a perfect Christian. I want my Jewish friends to be perfect Jews, to live according to the highest principles of what it means to be a Jew, to be a Christian, to be a Muslim.

Feisal Abdul Rauf

It is neither just the religious, the spiritual, the power-hungry, the evil, the ignorant, the corrupt, the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Jew, nor the atheist that makes a hypocrite, but being a human being. Any man who thinks himself to be free of hypocrisy while committed to cherry-picking others for such, I am confident, the Almighty can prove to him a great deal of his own hypocrisy even beyond his earthly comprehension.

Criss Jami

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.

Rumi

I think people often come to the synagogue, mosque, the church looking for God, and what we give them is religion.