Rianne Veen > Rianne's Quotes

“WORDS IN THE HEART CANNOT BE TAKEN.”
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

“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

“تبسمك في وجه أخيك صدقة، وأمرك بالمعروف صدقة ونهيك عن المنكر صدقة، وإرشادك الرجل في أرض الضلال لك صدقة، ونصرك الرجل الرديء البصر لك صدقة، وإماطتك الحجر والشوك العظم عن الطريق لك صدقة
Smiling in your brother’s face is an act of charity.
So is enjoining good and forbidding evil,
giving directions to the lost traveller,
aiding the blind and
removing obstacles from the path.

(Graded authentic by Ibn Hajar and al-Albani: Hidaayat-ur-Ruwaah, 2/293)”
― Anonymous

“Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see -egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be read to fight the enemy you can see.”
― Al-Ghazzali

“There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”
― Anonymous, القرآن الكريم

“It's not radical Islam that worries the US -- it's independence”
― Noam Chomsky

“My value as a woman is not measured by the size of my waist or the number of men who like me. My worth as a human being is measured on a higher scale: a scale of righteousness and piety. And my purpose in life-despite what fashion magazines say-is something more sublime than just looking good for men.”
― Yasmin Mogahed, Reclaim Your Heart: Personal Insights on Breaking Free from Life's Shackles

“When you have friends, don’t expect your friends to fill your emptiness. When you get married, don’t expect your spouse to fulfill your every need. When you’re an activist, don’t put your hope in the results. When you’re in trouble don’t depend on yourself. Don’t depend on people. Depend on Allah.”
― Yasmin Mogahed

“Some may view my focus on sexual matters as playing into the Western obsession with Muslim sexuality at the expense of other, more vital, areas of concern. Poverty, political repression, war, and global power dynamics are, indeed, crucial to Muslim women’s lives. However, even these issues cannot be entirely divorced from sex and sexuality: poverty matters differently for women, when it constrains women’s inability to negotiate marriage terms or leave abusive spouses; repressive regimes may attempt to demonstrate their “Islamic” credentials by capitulating to demands for “Shari‘a” in family matters or imposing putatively Islamic laws that punish women disproportionately for sexual transgressions.”
― Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence

“As we engage more deeply with the intellectual heritage of centuries of Muslim thinkers, we must neither romanticize the tradition as it stands nor be blindly optimistic about prospects for transformation within it. Most importantly, as we expose reductive and misogynist understandings of the Qur’an and hadith, refusing to see medieval interpretations as coextensive with revelation, we must not arrogate to our own readings the same absolutist conviction we criticize in others. We must accept responsibility for making particular choices – and must acknowledge that they are interpretive choices, not merely straightforward reiterations of “what Islam says.”
― Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence

“However, in a universe with human free will, allowing injustice is not the same as being the cause of it; God repeatedly rejects responsibility for injustice in Qur’anic passages declaring that God does not wrong or oppress people in any way, but rather people do wrong (zulm) “to their own selves” (or “to their own souls"). This assertion is freeing, in that God does not demand that Muslims act contrary to the dictates of conscience. However, it also implies a much more significant responsibility for the individual human being to make ethical judgments and take moral actions. Qur’anic regulations, in this case, must be seen as only a starting point for the ethical development of the human being, as well as for the transformation of human society.”
― Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence

“Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Ibn Mas'ud said that Allah's Messenger said: Abusing a Muslim is sinful and fighting with his tantamount to Kufr. Bukhari Muslim”
― Ahmad Von Denffer, A Day with the Prophet

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure.”
― Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto

“It is a dangerous myth that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not.”
― Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome