“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Islam has never been a barrier to progress and science. It appreciates the intellectual activities of man to such a degree as to place him above the angels. No other religion ever went quite so far in asserting dominance of reason and, consequently, of learning, above all other manifestations of human life." --- Muhammad Asad, revert to Islam
"You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth." --- Malcolm X
"Mighty is geometry; joined with art, resistless." --- Euripides (Image: dome of Shah Jahan Masjid, Pakistan - by Sarmad)
"The past seems never to have been, and the future already to have been." --- Ali ibn Abi Talib (ra)
"Yet there were knowledge and learning everywhere except in Catholic Europe. At a time when even kings could not read or write, a Moorish king had a private library of six hundred thousand books. At a time when ninety-nine percent of the Christian people were wholly illiterate, the Moorish city of Cordova had eight hundred public schools, and there was not a village within the limits of the empire where the blessings of education could not be enjoyed by the children of the most indigent peasant, [...] and it was difficult to encounter even a Moorish peasant who could not read and write." --- S.P. Scott, 'The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe'
In reality, the representative of the masses does not actually represent the thinking of the masses, but he or she actually thinks on behalf of the masses. --- Moez Mobeen, Democracy Paradox
“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.” ― George Orwell
“The Qur'an does not ask for human perfection, but rather asks that we persevere in striving for self-improvement and that we never become complacent (2:197; 5:2; 7:26) or despondent (15:56; 39:53; 15:55) about our progress.” ― Jeffrey Lang
"Be assured of this, O Sultan, that justice springs from perfection of the intellect and that perfection of the intellect means that you see things as they [really] are, and perceive the facts of their inner reality without being deceived by their outward appearance." --- Al-Ghazali
"You might wonder how people can deliberately turn away from a thing that they believe not to exist. But God is in intimate relationship even with those who reject him. [...] God is unavoidable, or avoidable only by creating a void. This void opens before us when we destroy the face [...]. But there is more than one motive underlying the atheist culture of our times, and the desire to escape from the eye of judgement is one of them. You escape from the eye of judgement by wiping away the face." --- Roger Scruton, The Face of God
"If one notices that, for thirteen hundred years, Islam provided the dominant language of politics in the Middle East, and if one treats the twentieth century as a brief aberration, [... t]hen the reemergence of Islam looks like a return to the norm, and the rise of secular nationalism looks like the historical phenomenon in need of special explanation." --- Noah Feldman, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton)
"This school does not teach the complete abandonment of 'this world' nor the eradication of appetites. The follower takes from 'this world' what is sufficient for provision. He suppresses those appetites that violate the law [shar'] and reason." --- Al-Ghazali
"Just as people will be of three levels - the pure [al-tayyib] with nothing corrupt in them, the corrupt [al-khabith] with nothing pure and those in whom both are mixed - so, too will their abodes be three. There will be the abode of the fully pure and the fully corrupt - both eternal. But there will be the abode of those in whom purity and corruption are mixed. That abode, which will not last for them, will be like a house of correction. [...] And then naught will remain save the abodes of the fully pure and the fully corrupt." --- Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, The Invocation of God
Nāṣiyah - ناصية - Forelock "I put my trust in Allah, My Lord and your Lord! There is not a moving creature, but He hath grasp of its fore-lock. Verily, it is my Lord that is on a straight Path." --- The Holy Qur'an (11:56)
Yet there were knowledge and learning everywhere except in Catholic Europe. At a time when even kings could not read or write, a Moorish king had a private library of six hundred thousand books. At a time when ninety-nine percent of the Christian people were wholly illiterate, the Moorish city of Cordova had eight hundred public schools, and there was not a village within the limits of the empire where the blessings of education could not be enjoyed by the children of the most indigent peasant, […] and it was difficult to encounter even a Moorish peasant who could not read and write. —- S.P. Scott, ‘The History of the Moorish Empire in Europe’