Was Sen. Barack Obama a Muslim? Did he ever practice Islam? The presidential candidate officially rejects the claims, but the issue of Obama's personal faith has re-emerged amid conflicting accounts of his enrollment as a Muslim during elementary school in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Aaron Klein
I think Islam has been hijacked by the idea that all Muslims are terrorists; that Islam is about hate, about war, about jihad - I think that hijacks the spirituality and beauty that exists within Islam. I believe in allowing Islam to be seen in context and in its entirety and being judged on what it really is, not what you think it is.
Aasif Mandvi
I did a play called 'Disgraced' in 2012 at Lincoln Center, which ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize. I played the lead character, a Muslim American, who had renounced Islam and became very anti-Islam.
Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals.
Abdolkarim Soroush
As a result of the awareness and consciousness of decline, an awareness and consciousness of a national ethnicity or an Islamic identity also came into being.
Islam, or any religion, will become totalitarian if it is made into an ideology, because that is the nature of ideologies.
After the 9/11 incidents, Islam has become a big question mark among westerners, especially Americans. The mass media constantly raise the issue of relationship between Islam and terrorism.
We have been given a role to play. We have been asked to provide, to give lectures on the role of Islamic development and the way we do it here, so the people who are Muslims there would understand what the role of Islam is.
Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
The idea is that they wouldn't want to deal with militant Islam but an Islam and Muslims who are committed to progress, committed to development, who like peace and are moderate in their ways. So that's what we are doing here.
So when I had to make a decision whether I would like to do honors degree course in Islamic studies and Malay studies too, so I thought Islamic studies would be good.
Muslims are not bloodthirsty people. Islam is a religion of peace that forbids the killing of the innocent. Islam also accepts the Prophets, whether those prophets are Mohammed, God's peace and blessing be upon Him, or Moses or the other prophets of the Books.
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
As to women, the Islamic faith has given women rights that are equal to or more than the rights given them in the Old Testament and the Bible.
To allow the construction of places of worship other than Islamic ones in Saudi Arabia, it would be like asking the Vatican to build a mosque inside of it.
Well, the most important thing about Islam is that we have to differentiate between two kinds of Islam. The first one is the institution of Islam... second, the culture of Islam.
Abdurrahman Wahid
All too many Muslims fail to grasp Islam, which teaches one to be lenient towards others and to understand their value systems, knowing that these are tolerated by Islam as a religion.
If we cling to the institution of Islam, then we tend to defend it against whatever we see as a danger to it, so because of this we see now that many people are defending states, defending territories, defending everything institutional in the belief that they defend Islam.
There is not a single Muslim leader today who has the courage and commitment to defend Islam and Muslims, they are all in awe of the United States and other Western powers, and are indebted to them.
Abu Bakar Bashir
We have shown that Islam can rule the world perfectly for 14 centuries, and during this time of Muslim power we did not borrow ideas like democracy from others, so why do we need to learn democracy from them now?
We should be proud that our Prophet came into the world with the message of Islam to change it for the better, and not for the worse, or to keep things as they are.
So we want an Islamic state where Islamic law is not just in the books but enforced, and enforced with determination. There is no space and no room for democratic consultation. The Shariah is set and fixed, so why do we need to discuss it anymore? Just implement it!
Islam's laws are fixed and that is why Islam is stable.
Islam is perfect, there is nothing to be added or changed.
Islam is fixed, stable, ordered and disciplined, and so are Muslims.
If my children do not behave according to Islam, if they do not pray for instance, I will punish them.
The Prophet defeated the enemies of Islam even when he and his followers were small in number.
The only model to follow is pure Islam.
But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam.
Because Islam in its original form was tough and hard, not weak and pliable.
The threat to Russia isn't liberal Europe or America. It is nonliberal Islam and nonliberal China. Russia has to change. It can't be otherwise. It will take time. You have to be patient.
Pakistan is not the torch-bearer of Islam, and if I change my country, it doesn't mean that I have to change my religion.
I'm optimistic because I'm pragmatic: Neither of the two sides, the military government nor the Islamic front, is capable of winning. If they continue to fight, they will both bleed to death.
Let me put it this way: There is nothing in Islam that is fundamentally against the quest for knowledge.
Growing up in Egypt, I never saw the country as divided as it is today. We now have two main political groupings: the Islamist parties and the civil, or liberal, political parties.
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salifist parties are a real force in the Egyptian society. No civil, liberal government can succeed, even after new elections, if the Islamists are forced to work underground as a foe and the country remains divided.
Secularism will not work in Egypt any more than theocracy. What will work is governance that is guided by the Islamic values of the majority with protection of the minority rights.
One has to nurture a new generation, to raise children in the spirit of Islam.
Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
The Muslims are, as a group, attacking people because under the Quran, there is the house of Islam, and outside of it, there's the house of war.
If they analyze the situation as thoroughly as they should, Muslims will realize they are the first targets. What are the fundamentalists really after? Simply taking over Islam and then turning its back on modernity.
A country which has a population 99% as their faith in Islam can also be a country which are subscribing to the universal values of the E.U.
Islam and democracy can function together.
The vote, cast in a free atmosphere and with all inclinations and parties at present, was after all a vote to the Islamic Republic, to national independence, to the Constitution and to the Islamic causes.
The idea of human rights as a fundamental principle can be seen to underlie throughout Islamic teachings.
Our goal: the Islamization of Muslims. Our methods: to believe and to struggle.
Islam is a way of living rather than a way of thinking.
There are only three integral views of the world: the religious, the materialistic, and the Islamic. They reflect three elemental possibilities (conscience, nature, and man), each of them manifesting itself as Christianity, materialism, and Islam.
In the late 1980s, a new revolt broke out, this time led by the fundamentalist FIS (Islamic Salvation Front). Many of its leaders were the kind of young Algerians who joined the struggle against the French occupiers in the 1950s.
In the early centuries of Islam, the great schools of Islamic jurisprudence were built upon the above principles. Basic to all their legal systems they developed the doctrine that liberty is the fundamental basis of law.
Fortunately, historians are now beginning to recognise the historic role of Islam as a liberating force for peoples oppressed by the burdens of unjust social systems.
It is apparent that Christianity and Islam must come, and come immediately, to a closer understanding, and it is equally apparent that their unity if achieved, will be the most effective defensive measure against Communist expansion.
