Letters to a Young Muslim Quotes

“I do not just buy books; I collect them with the idea that they fit into a pattern of knowledge.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“There is no knowledge that is wrong. Only knowledge that is difficult, troubling, enlightening, liberating, and intoxicating.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Life is diverse. Living is to live with difference. Anyone telling you that difference should be stamped out is stamping out life. Those people insisting that there are black and white answers to the difficult questions are stamping out the diversity that is inherent in life.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“There is much room to grow as individuals, and in doing so we can discover truths about our own inclinations. You should know that for every action there is a reaction. Your perseverance, kindness, or humor creates a ripple effect in our culture just as much as your indifference, violence, or negativity”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“There was no reason to hate anyone. There is no reason to react to the world around you with hatred. You have to understand that someone has made the choice for you when they say you have to hate. The choice is yours and the only way you can make the world a better place is by doing the opposite of hating. It is by loving.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Being an outsider is humbling. It makes you realize the humanity of all outsiders. It opens up a great space of empathy between yourself and everyone else who looks like the are excluded from the group. This is a set of people rich in perspectives and experiences. It is often the outsider who has the most interesting view of what life is and can become.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“I want you to be on the lookout for people who talk with unerring conviction and authority about what others should do. Especially about what others should do. These are the people who always seem to lead us into some kind of trouble.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Freedom is a gift to use your will and perception to impose a moral structure on yourself. Without the freedom to choose our path, we are morally crippled.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Stay strong and do not hand your fate to others.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Ask yourself the question: If I don't do it, who will? If you find the answer is no one will do it, then do it yourself.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“But questions have the odd habit of reappearing.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“The ultimate truth is that we are individuals who can choose to respect ourselves, and others, with or without regard to bloodline, wealth, tribe, or community.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“As long as we do not recognize the individual within our societies, we will not be able to live with humanity outside of our faith. In”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“If from the distance of a few years, I have found it almost impossible to reconstruct a realistic image of my father in his social and moral complexity with any certainty, imagine how difficult it is to do the same for our Prophet and his Companions. Of course the material that has survived is voluminous.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“I find this to be the real gift of others - the elegance of their perceptions, the labor that has been put into developing interesting positions and perfection of expression. Just as you read fiction in order to discover the names for emotions and experiences that we have all had, you read the philosophy and theology of others in order to enrich your own perceptions.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Or are we only fully accepting of our faith when we are free to reject it, as is possible in Western liberal democracies?”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“I came to understand that the perception that freedom is decadence is a fictitious one. Freedom is a good that is preserved and defended because it places individual responsibility at the heart of society.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“I knew that this was me running away from all the questions that were troubling me back at university. I realized that living in Mecca was an escapist fantasy. In fact, it became clear to me then that the real challenge as a Muslim was not to run away from the West and seek comfort at the heart of Islam. The real challenge was to figure out the structure that would allow me to exist out there as a Muslim. As”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Regret should not overwhelm you and force you into another form of intensity. Intensity distorts reality. And Islam in its essence is against the distortions of intensity.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“intense repentance and compensating for sins with greater piety could be just as destructive as the original errors.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Every day in the Arab world, in Europe, and in the United States, you are told that governments are helpless in the face of global economic forces, or climate change, or extremism. Governments are not going to do anything because they do not want to or because they cannot. So the only one left is you. So what do you do? You are the only one who has an ounce of morality left. Only you seem to know the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil. There are others out there like you. They also feel the outrage. They feel the sense of impotence when they look at the way people seem to shrug at the news of the latest atrocity, and then get on with their mundane lives.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“I want my sons’ generation of Muslims to realize that they have the right to think and decide what is right and what is wrong, what is Islamic and what is peripheral to the faith. It is their burden to bear whatever decision they make.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“The way it is recited today is the same way in which the Prophet recited it more than fourteen hundred years ago.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“If you are serious about being a good Muslim, a proper Muslim, a true Muslim, then you need to live like one. What are the models for this? Actually, the model is there in front of you. It is the model of the Prophet Mohammed. You are told to emulate him. In every way.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“want them to understand how to be faithful to their inherited religion of Islam and its deepest values, as well as to see how to chart their way through a complex world. I want them to discover through observation and thought that there need be no conflict between Islam and the rest of the world. I want them to understand that even in matters of religion, there are many choices that we need to make.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“world has so much more to offer us than the limited fantasies of deeply unhappy people.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“The responsibilities that come with building a family enable you to take a step back from yourself and see that the world consists of other people with greater claims on your energy and time than you yourself.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“Help a friend out of trouble. Defend someone less privileged than yourself. Teach someone how to read and write. Speak in public and hear what other people think of you. You will refine your understanding of yourself in the same way that a sculptor releases a figure from a block of marble.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“If you are going to live in the real world, the world of anger, violence, love and passion, responsibility, and continuity, then silence is not the path I recommend. You need to put yourself in the world, and in the way of the world.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim

“We cannot rely on what was achieved by a previous generation. We need to reacquire knowledge with each generation and push its boundaries out further.”
― Omar Saif Ghobash, Letters to a Young Muslim