"Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.
"
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"What has he found who has lost God?
And what has he lost who has found God?"
— Ibn 'Ata' Allah Al-Iskandari

"How often it is that a small action becomes great by its intention, and how often it is that a great action becomes small by its intention."
— Abdullah Ibn Mubarak

"Happy are those who find fault with themselves instead of finding fault with others."
— Muhammad Ibn Abdullah

""Acquire knowledge. It enables its possessor to distinguish right from wrong. It lights the way to heaven. It is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our compassion when friendless. It guides us to happiness. It sustains us in misery. It is an ornament among friends and an armor against enemies.""
— Muhammad

"Our religion-ISLAM- teaches us to be intelligent, Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery"
— Malcolm X

"Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other; nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking; and the result is a structure of absolute balance and solid composure."
— Muhammad Asad

"Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light."
— Imam Al-Haddad

""I testify that there is no god worthy of worship but God (Allah), and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God.""
— Muslim

"Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated"
— Saddam Hussein (The Revolution and Woman in Iraq)

"I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)

"When you see a person who has been given more than you in money and beauty, then look to those who have given less."
— Muhammad Ibn Abdullah

"Kindness is a mark of faith; and whoever does not have kindness does not have faith."
— Muhammad Ibn Abdullah

"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi (RUMI: Selections from the Masnavi)

"If you truly believe in God; silence if you do not have something righteous to say."
— Muhammad (The Koran)

"The ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr."
— Muhammad Ibn Abdullah

"It is unworthy of a Muslim to injure people's reputation; it is unworthy to curse anyone; it is unworthy to abuse anyone; and it is unworthy of a Muslim to talk vainly."
— Prophet Muhammad

"Umar ibn Abdil-’Aziz (rahimahullah) said: “Become a scholar if you are able. If you are not able, then be a student. If you can not, then show love for them. If you are unable to do that, then (at least) do not hate them.” "
— Umar ibn Abdil-’Aziz

"The strong man is not the good wrestler but the strong man is the one who controls himself when he is angry."
— Prophet Muhammad

"Do not use your energy except for a cause more noble than yourself. Such a cause cannot be found except in Almighty God Himself: to preach the truth, to defend womanhood, to repel humiliation which your Creator has not imposed upon you, to help the oppressed. Anyone who uses his energy for the sake of the vanities of the world is like someone who exchanges gemstones for gravel. There is no nobility in anyone who lacks faith. The wise man knows that the only fitting price for his soul is a place in Paradise..."
— Ibn Hazm

"Knowledge exists potentially in the human soul like the seed in the soil; by learning the potential becomes actual."
— Imam Al-Ghazali

"Do not say that if the people do good to us, we will do good to them and if the people oppress us, we will oppress them but determine that if people do good to you, you will do good to them and if they oppress you, you will not oppress them."
— Prophet Muhammad

"Those who are patient in adversity and forgive wrongs are the doers of excellence."
— Prophet Muhammad

"It pleases God for one to master his/her profession."
— Anonymous (The Koran)

"Kekayaan tidak dinilai daripada banyaknya harta tetapi kaya jiwa."
— Tuan Guru Dato' Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat (Tundukkan Hati: Rahsia Keikhlasan Hidup Di Dunia Fana)

""The faith is not the problem, Bernadette. The problem is the faithful.""
— Robert Ferrigno (Prayers for the Assassin: A Novel)

"در غم ما روزها بی گاه شد
روزها با سوزها همراه شد
"
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of secual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values.
The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life."
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"Religion is never more tested than when our emotions are ablaze. At such a time, the timeless grandeur of the Law and its ethics stand at our mercy."
— Abdal Hakim Murad

""Israelis might have nuclear bombs," he said, "but we have the children bomb, and these human bombs must continue until liberation.""
— Mr. al-Qaradawi ;Islamic Society of Boston

"To Allah belongeth the Mystery of the heavens and the earth. And the Decision of the Hour (of Judgment) is as the twinkling of an eye, or even quicker: for Allah hath power over all things. "
— Qu'ran 16:77

"…a man should say to his soul every morning, "God has given thee twenty-four treasures; take heed lest thou lose anyone of them, for thou wilt not be able to endure the regret that will follow such loss."
— Al-Ghazali (The Alchemy of Happiness)

"What has he found who has lost God?
And what has he lost who has found God?"
— Ibn 'Ata' Allah Al-Iskandari

"[…] I began to see Algiers as one of the most fascinating and dramatic places on earth. In the small space of this beautiful but congested city intersected two great conflicts of the contemporary world. The first was the one between Christianity and Islam (expressed here in the clash between colonizing France and colonized Algeria). The second, which acquired a sharpness of focus immediately after the independence and departure of the French, was a conflict at the very heart of Islam, between its open, dialectical -- I would even say "Mediterranean" -- current and its other, inward-looking one, born of a sense of uncertainty and confusion vis-à-vis the contemporary world, guided by fundamentalists who take advantage of modern technology and organizational principles yet at the same time deem the defense of faith and custom against modernity as the condition of their own existence, their sole identity.

[…] In Algiers one speaks simply of the existence of two varieties of Islam -- one, which is called the Islam of the desert, and a second, which is defined as the Islam of the river (or of the sea). The first is the religion practiced by warlike nomadic tribes struggling to survive in one of the world's most hostile environments, the Sahara. The second Islam is the faith of merchants, itinerant peddlers, people of the road and of the bazaar, for whom openness, compromise, and exchange are not only beneficial to trade, but necessary to life itself."
— Ryszard Kapuściński (Travels with Herodotus)

"‘An oft-quoted statistic from the [United Nations] reports is that the amount of literature translated into Spanish in a single year exceeds the entire corpus of what has been translated into Arabic in 1,000 years.’"
— The Economist

"As an African myself, I cannot tell how much proud and excited I am to see our nation having the first African-American president. This is a historical time for our nation. Arab and Muslim Americans are amongst those who overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Obama. As we know, there are about three million Arab Americans and about seven million Muslim Americans in this country. Not all Arab American are Muslims, and not all Muslim Americans are Arabs. These are very diverse communities. They come in all colors and backgrounds. They have been contributing to this nation for so long. Islam is not a foreign religion to this great nation of ours; Islam knew its way with the first sailors who came to America with Columbus after the fall of Granada in 1492. Islam was the religion of many Africans brought here to America. Muslim soldiers and chaplains contribute to the success of our military. "
— Aladdin Elaasar

"Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy. "
— Jalal Al-E Ahmad

"The participation if women in some armies in the world is in reality only symbolic. The talk about the role of Zionist women in fighting with the combat units of the enemy in the war of 5 June 1967 was intended more as propaganda than anything real or substantial. It was calculated to intensify and compound the adverse psychological effects of the war by exploiting the backward outlook of large sections of Arab society and their role in the community. The intention was to achieve adverse psychological effects by saying to Arabs that they were defeated, in 1967, by women."
— Saddam Hussein (The Revolution and Woman in Iraq)

"Islamic laws states that muslims shouldn`t stay long in infidel lands"
— Osama bin Laden (Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden)

"In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues," he told me when I pressed him for a reading of the struggle against Islamic radicalism. "In our island, we knew we would prevail, that the Americans would be drawn into the fight. It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy."
— Bernard Lewis (What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East)

"As Osama bin Laden puts it: "In this final phase of the ongoing struggle, the world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers--the United States and the Soviet Union. Now we have defeated and destroyed the more difficult and the more dangerous of the two. Dealing with the pampered and effeminate Americans will be easy."
— Bernard Lewis (Islam and the West)

"Her Majesty's government is engaging not merely in Orwellian Newspeak but in self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you."
— Mark Steyn (America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It)

"We are approaching a very historical event in the history of our nation, the United States of America. For the first time in our history, Americans voted for president –elect, Barrack Hussein Obama, as the first African-American president. We are so optimistic about the presidency of President Obama, not only for being the country's first African American president, but for what he represents. Mr. Obama brings a new positive energy, deep global understanding of the intricacies of world affairs, and deep commitment for social justice and reform in our great country, the United States of America."
— Aladdin Elaasar

"Islam was like a mental cage. At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage."
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel)

"The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European peoples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category "humans," can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) "translated" into a global ("European") civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable.
"
— Talal Asad (Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity)

"The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European poeples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category "humans," can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) "translated" into a global ("European") civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable."
— Talal Asad (Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity)