"So long as Muslims continue looking towards Western civilisation as the only force that could regenerate their own stagnant society, they destroy their self-confidence and, indirectly, support the Western assertion that Islam is a "spent force"." --- Leopold Weiss (later known as Muhammad Asad)
"I do not feel that the West has really become less condescending toward foreign cultures than the Greeks and Romans were: it has only become more tolerant. Mind you, not toward Islam - only toward certain other Eastern cultures, which offer some sort of spiritual attraction to the spirit-hungry West and are, at the same time, too distant from the Western world-view to constitute any real challenge to its values." --- Leopold Weiss (Muhammad Asad), The Road to Mecca
"For Although there is not a single aspect of European growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic Culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the permanent distinctive force of the modern world, and the supreme source of its victory, natural science and the scientific spirit... The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories, science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence." --- Robert Briffault, 'Making of Humanity'
Wherever the spiritual values have been submerged, if not destroyed, by an emphasis upon the material things, invariably, the women reflect it. --- Malcolm X
"To Spinoza [...] superstition kicks in when "hope and fear are struggling for mastery" [and] Alexander of Macedonia was the perfect example of a superstitious person. He sought the council of seers and fortune-tellers when he feared the outcome of a campaign. However, having defeated Darius the mighty Persian King, Alexander ceased to consult his soothsayers. But once again, after having been frightened by reverses, abandoned by his allies and fallen sick, he returned to superstition." --- Ali Rahnema, Superstition as Ideology in Iranian Politics
In books written upon the subject in Eastern languages, it is said that there are not fewer than a thousand methods of binding the turban. It is in the peculiar method of tying on, and of arranging this head-dress, that not only tribal and religious distinctions are seen, but even peculiarities of disposition. --- Thomas Patrick Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam
Once, a soldier asked Tipu Sultan, "Is it right that everything is fair in love and war?" Tipu Sultan replied, "This is an excuse of English people. Our tradition is that whatever is to be done in love and war, should be fair."
