Tao Te Ching
Islam الإسلام
Though not such a good reputation in the world right now and – like Christianity – carrying forward a history of intolerance, superstition, and mindless violence; Islam also holds claim to some of the world’s finest inventions, advancements in science, medicine, mathematics, poetry and golden age periods of enlightenment, high philosophy, compassion and innovation. Already the world’s second largest religion with 1.7+ billion followers and the fastest growing of the largest religions (Bahá'í fastest during last 100 years), Islam’s influence is powerful and only ignored at the West’s peril. The Sufi branch may come closest to our lineages of doubt, understanding the sense and not just the words, the wisdom beyond belief.
The meaning of Islam is "Surrender" — a word that could be understood and practiced in a mystical way like Lao Tzu's "Wuwei;" or, if instead of directed inward, focused on an external religious figure, political leader, or belief; it could become a kind of mental slavery.
Quotes (66)
“The Muslim world is utterly deranged by its religious tribalism…The idea that Islam is a 'peaceful religion hijacked by extremists' is a dangerous fantasy—the dogmatic commitment to using violence to defend one’s faith, both from within and without to varying degrees, is a central Islamic doctrine”
“Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society.”
“God does not have a name, He is too big to fit inside names. A name is a prison, God is free.”
“They who believe not shall have garments of fire fitted unto them; boiling water shall be poured on their heads; their bowels shall be dissolved thereby, and also their skins, and they shall be beaten with maces of iron”
“To parents do good, and to relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion at your side, the traveler, and those whom your right hands possess.”
“We ought not to be embarrassed of appreciating the truth and of obtaining it wherever it comes from, even if it comes from races distant and nations different from us. Nothing should be dearer to the seeker of truth than the truth itself, and there is no deterioration of the truth, nor belittling either of one who speaks it or conveys it”
“Seek to win the hearts of your people and watch over their prosperity. It is to secure their happiness that you were appointed.”
“Renounce spiritual ignorance; return to The One – that is the religion called Islam.”
“Benares is to the East, Meca to the West; but explore your own heart, for there are both Rama and Allah.”
“Clerics and vicars, ignorant imbeciles, whom other ignoramuses who libel and slander the Mohammedan religion saying it is voluptuos and sensual; there is not a word of truth in it, you have been deceived on this point as on so many others.”
“The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Muslim who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
“It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence”
“Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars and nursed furious hatred and ambitions. Like Islam, it sanctified extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only to peace and the liberation of souls.”
“Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home”
“Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought… Mohammedan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and an many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. It’s import—which must not be underrated—is as a transmitter.”
“According to the mystics, every text of the Koran has 7 or 70 or 700 layers of interpretation, the literal meaning being only for the ignorant vulgar… they believed that the populace should take the Koran literally but wise people need not do so.”
“But the Mohammedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness... The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.”
“We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Mohammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god.”
“We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. (He is already on the way; he is like Mohammed. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with a wild god.”
“I lead no party; I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam”
“People hate Buddhist monks and nuns, Mohammedans, and Christians. But no one hates a Taoist. To understand the reason for this is to understand half of China.”
“Sufis have no set belief or disbelief. Divine light is the only sustenance… and what they see in this light they believe, and what they do not see they do not blindly believe.”
“The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”
“For five centuries, from 700 to 1200, Islam led the world in power, order, and extent of government, in refinement of manners, in standards of living, in humane legislation and religious toleration, in literature, scholarship, science, medicine, and philosophy.”
“The Mahometans, according to the principles of their faith, are under an obligation to use violence for the purpose of bringing other religions to ruin; yet they have been tolerating other religions for some centuries. The Christians have not been given orders to do anything but preach and instruct; yet they have been exterminating by fire and sword all those who are not of their religion... Christians enjoy the fine advantage of being far better versed than they are in the art of killing, bombarding, and exterminating the Human Race.”
“Tracing the Islamic society bak to its origins, we find that it is itself a fusion of two originally distinct societies: the Iranic and the Arabic… both originating from an extinct society, the Syriac.”
“The Hindus criticize the Mohammedans for having spread their religion by the use of the sword. They also ridicule Christianity on the score of the Inquisition. But really speaking, who is better and more worthy of our respect?… if the Mohammedan has been cruel, the Hindu has been mean; and meanness is worse than cruelty.”
“The Hindus criticize the Muslims for having spread their religion by the use of the sword. They also ridicule Christianity on the score of the Inquisition. But really, who is better and more worthy of our respect—the Muslims and Christians who attempted to thrust down the throats of unwilling persons what they regarded as necessary for their salvation, or the Hindu who would not spread the light, who would endeavor to keep others in darkness, who would not consent to share his intellectual and social inheritance with those who are ready and willing to make it a part of their own make-up? I have no hesitation in saying that if the Muslim has been cruel, the Hindu has been mean; and meanness is worse than cruelty.
”
“Belief is the systematic taking of unanalyzed words much too seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words, Hitler's words---people take them too seriously, and what happens?…sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church's inquisitors and crusaders.”
“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent… separating yourself from the rest of mankind.”
“The Egyptians lost themselves in trying to preserve the bodily form, the Greeks in trying to capture the beauty of the human body, the pre-Columbian Americans, by establishing cosmic laws over human considerations, Christianity and Islam—the daughters of Jewish monotheism—by overpowering the human mind through dictatorship of a a partially world-creating and at the same time world-negating spirit.”
“In the Bible, eternity withdraws, and nature is corrupt, nature has fallen. In biblical thinking, we live in exile… But once you reject the idea of the Fall in the Garden, man is not cut off from his source.”
“Islam is now Wrestling with Western thought as it once wrestled with Greek philosophy, and is as much in need as it was then of a 'revival of the religious sciences'. Deep study of al-Ghazali may suggest to Muslims steps to be taken if they are to deal successfully with the contemporary situation. Christians, too, now that the world is in a cultural melting-pot, must be prepared to learn from Islam, and are unlikely to find a more sympathetic guide than al-Ghazali.”
“Jews, Christians, Muslims believed that the true answers had been revealed by God to his chosen prophets and saints, and accepted the interpretation of these revealed truths by qualified teachers and the traditions to which they belonged.”
“Countless Muslims have never abandoned their dream of a world ruled by a unified caliphate, and in the meantime push to establish sharia, or religious law, as the civil law of a nation.”
“Buddhism and Taoism—unlike Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism—are not whole cultures but critiques of culture: endearing, non-violent revolutions or 'loyal oppositions' to the cultures they live in.”
“The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways.”
“Submission (in Arabic, Islam) was the very name of the religion that surfaced through the Qur’an… the possibility of there being something that, better than we are in every respect, could infuse us with goodness as well as power, were we open to the transfusion.”
“A postcard of a beautiful lake is not a beautiful lake, and Sufis may be defined as those who dance in the lake.”
“All culture is based on the past. For example... Islam is the reediting of Judaism and Christianity.”
“The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.”
“Whereas the entire meaning of the Quran must easily be interpreted by the lives of Muslims, Islam's followers abandoned its essence.”
“It is evil to think history is to end with a return to Zion, or with the classless society, or with the Islamization of all living infidels...”
“In Jewish and Islamic mythology God provided us with a garden but did not, indeed could not, do the gardening for us. It was only a garden because we could respond to ti, because we could be responsible for it.”
“What is most necessary for people and what is given us in great abundance, are experiences, especially experiences of the forces within us. This is our most essential food, our most essential wealth. If we consciously receive all this abundance, the universe will pour into us what is called life in Judaism, spirit in Christianity, light in Islam, power in Taoism.”
“I maintain that Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism all hold up love as an ideal, seek to benefit humanity through spiritual practice, and strive to make their followers better people.”
“The idea in the Western world is bringing the Kingdom of God to earth, or trying `to create the ideal Jewish level which is really a poverty-stricken way of viewing it. As long as we condemn ourselves, no confidence can take place. People are bewildered and only rely on technicians, technocrats, theologians, politicians...”
“From the point of view of the Madhyamaka school, these other approaches... earlier Buddhist philosophical schools, theistic Hinduism, Vedantism, Islam, Christianity, and most other religious and philosophical traditions... can be grouped together into three categories: the eternalists, the nihilists, and the atomists... atomisitic pluralism”
“My problem with some current critics of Islam is that their criticism is neither accurate, fair, nor well-informed. I am sure they do not intend this, but in the 1930s and '40s in Europe, we learned how dangerous and ultimately destructive this kind of discourse could be.”
“The spread of Islam was not just a spiritual event but a historical, political, and military event that changed the history of the world.”
“The Middle East is the crucible of conflict and the graveyard of empires.”
“Religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.”
“What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.”
“In Islam there is something called the principle of common good... whenever one is confronted by something that is not mentioned in the scriptures, one must observe what benefit it can bring. Does it serve the common good, does it protect the spirit, and does it serve God?”
“See them coming now, can’t you hear them shout? Stop running from, stop stealing from, stop pointing guns at... My People, keep on keeping on.”
“Islamism is a modern, instead of an ancient, political tendency, which arose in a spirit of fraternal harmony with the fascists of Europe in the 1930s and '40s.”
“The future course for Islamic societies [is] in a synthesis between adherence to the faith and adjustment to the modern age.”
“Islam is the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book. [Comparing Islam to Judaism] is beyond stupid. There aren’t 5,000 militant Jewish groups. They didn’t do a study of treatment of women around the world and find that the Jews were at the bottom of it. There weren’t 10 Jewish countries in the world that were putting gay people to death just for being gay. It’s idiotic.”
“The Muslim world is utterly deranged by its religious tribalism…The idea that Islam is a 'peaceful religion hijacked by extremists' is a dangerous fantasy—the dogmatic commitment to using violence to defend one’s faith, both from within and without to varying degrees, is a central Islamic doctrine”
“Islam is part religion, and part a political-military doctrine. The part that is a political doctrine contains a world view, a system of laws and a moral code that is totally incompatible with our constitution, our laws, and our way of life.”
“Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago.”
“see even the Islamic State as an errant offshoot of the global culture we all share... radical Islamists have been influence by Marx and Foucault as much as by Muhammad... Islamic fundamentalism may indeed pose a radical challenge, but the 'civilization' it challenges is a global civilization rather than a uniquely Western phenomenon.”
“True, hundreds of millions may nevertheless go on believing in Islam, Christianity or Hinduism. But numbers alone don’t count for much in history. History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking masses.”
“When I think of the mystery of existence, I prefer to use other words, so as to avoid confusion. And unlike the God of the Islamic State and the Crusades – who cares a lot about names and above all about His most holy name – the mystery of existence doesn’t care an iota what names we apes give it.
“The prophet Muhammed's death in 632 was followed by what, at the time, was simply a disagreement over succession... There is no reason to think that the fighting that followed was meant to evolve into a conflict that would last 1,400 years... the Sunni-Shi'a split.”
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