The Search for Beauty in Islam Quotes

“Ironically, the parents who have been plagued by the most problems in their own marriage are often the most insistent on directing the marriage of their children. It is as if they attempt to compensate for their failures.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“In silence we are confronted, splintered, and, ultimately, restored.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“What I do know, as a matter of certainty, is that we choose our own reality. We choose to descend into the mundane or elevate to the ethereal.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“We should remember that our choices affect the choices of society. If people want to marry doctors, you will find that the number of doctors will increase in society. If people want to marry those who personify the Prophet, you will find that a social incentive is created to study the Prophet, and the more we study the Prophet the more we personify him.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“But is it not a husband who will provide you with a stable and happy life - it is God.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“In our chauvinism - oppressed, demoralized, and emasculated - we associate defeat with femininity. In the same fashion that the abused becomes an abuser, the colonized became the colonizer, and we displaced our loss of masculinity, pride, and dignity upon our women, and made women a subjugated colony. The real shame is that we denounced the blessings of God and justified our ugliness through religious sophistry.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“Recall that the Prophet said, “The discomforts of this earth are nothing like the embarrassments of the Hereafter. It is a true shame if one awaits the Final Day to ponder his confusion.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“We do not serve God through a blind obedience to what we think is the law. We serve God through a perceptive examination of our understanding of the presumptions of the law. A precedent is there to guide, not to blind. A precedent points us towards the right direction, but it cannot become an obstruction to God’s way.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“Our inner prophet speaks and we mute the voice. We emit and inhale odious fumes of talk. We talk in conferences, we talk in programs, we talk in gatherings, we talk in meetings. For every moment of delusion, doubt, or ignorance, we give a talk. We emit and inhale fumes of talk. We talk to cover the anxiety of guilt and torment of fear. We talk because there is so much to conceal. We talk so that the self may not speak.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“After all, how many people sought to worship God, but ended up only worshipping themselves?”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“It is better to die suffering the injustice of others than to survive by inflicting injustice upon others.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“Brotherhood is a state which permits a group to move from the realm of a cooperative effort to the imperative of a shared destiny. It is a standard by which the success of a group is measured by the success of its individuals, and by which the strength of a group is measured by the strength of the bond that unites its members. The success of a group does not depend on its ability to unite over a cause or by its ability to work toward achieving a cause. Rather, the success of a group depends on its ability to transform its own members into a cause.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“The fact is that those who ache to regulate women are those who invariably violate them, and those who are obsessed with defining the limits for women are those who observe no limits with women. Colonizers always set borders that affirm their power, and you, my technocrats, are colonizers of women.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“Whatever causes hardship and misery cannot be a part of Shari’a even if people believe it to be so.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“We like to speak of Islam and liberation, but we close women behind curtains and walls and call it modesty. What modesty is there in men who cannot control their desires and who project upon women their subjugation fantasies? Every time we tell a woman to not speak or act or appear or breathe, we only affirm our own immodesty. What modesty is there in resisting temptation, not by sanitizing our hearts, but by purging women and turning our sisters and wives into a subjugated colony?”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“Culture cannot replace morality.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“Persecution, my Lord, is the fitnah which you described as worse than murder, it is the distorted intellect seeking to spread its diseased aberration; it is the created conspiring to become the Creator.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“A human being consumes another human being when he or she reduces and essentializes the other into a use or function. The individuality, emotions, feelings, and particulars of the consumed become relevant only to the extent that they facilitate or promote that use. For a person to be thoroughly consumed, they must be packaged and stereotyped into a function. The function must yield itself to the desires or needs of the consumer. The fact that, in some measure, we all consume each other is undeniable. The fact that we must strive not to do so is a moral imperative.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“The weak strive to communicate their refusal to surrender, and the strong strive to communicate their demand for surrender. The weak only communicate their desperate powerlessness, and the strong communicate their unfettered dominance.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“Every separation entails a birth and every birth is a separation. The pains of separation or birth invoke a new life laden with a thousand reflections.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“Ultimately, in every case, all thought and all knowledge must reduce itself to a prayer.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“God is a full partner in marriage that is why the commencement, the pursuit, and the termination of marriage must be conducted according to the standards of beauty suitable for a partner such as God.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“What would the Prophet have done in this situation?” A society built on this solemn inquiry is a society permeated with his blessed fragrance, and his miraculous beauty becomes its salvation. His Sunna would not be pursued in malformed and contorted imitations, but a fundamental state of transformation.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“In whatever life gives or takes, in whatever the liabilities or stakes, in whatever the pains or aches, in whatever pleasures or gratifications, I inhale the fragrance of the Prophet and ask, “What would the Prophet have done in this situation?”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“We cannot follow the Sunna of the beloved, we must live it - as if inhaling the fragrance only to emit it.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“To mimic the Prophet is nothing but an impersonation, for his sublimity cannot be simulated. The instant his majesty is animated, it is reduced and degraded. The replication of his Sunna becomes a grotesque parody of images and sounds - a demeaning forgery and an insolent falsification. The authenticity of the Prophet does not mean imitation, but impersonation.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“The Sunna of the beloved, my friends, is not a map; it lives in our soul not our hand.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“As to fitna, there is no fitna worse than ascribing to God what is immoral and ugly.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“My profession is to teach law, but as a Muslim, I am but a student of morality. As a lawyer, I am a combatant for equity. If the law is just, I honor it. If the law is unjust, I criticize it, and if l am wrong, I plead with God to judge the assiduity of my research and the diligence of my inquiry. But in all, I am but a believer in the beauty of God, and I believe that existence longs for divinity, and that at the heart of the beautiful is God's serenity and human dignity.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

“God has given us the night and day as a source of peace and tranquility (28:73), so why do we respond by violence, conflict and hostility? God has given us homes as a source of serenity (16:80), so why do we respond with anxiety, discord, and agony? God has made peace in prayer and piety, so why do we respond with self-righteous enmity? God made our husbands and wives the source of our sakina (30:21) (7:189), and we respond with subjugation, betrayal, and treachery.”
― Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books