Quran

1:Everywhere you turn, there is the face of God. ~ Quran,

2:And do good. Indeed, Allah loves the doers of good" Quran 2:195 ~ Quran, @Sufi_Path

3:To God belong the East and the West; whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God; God is All-embracing, All-knowing. ~ The Quran,

4:Our Lord! Accept this from us. You are indeed the All-Hearing, All-Knowing ~ Quran 2:127, @Sufi_Path

5:Allah Almighty said: "Fear not for I am with you. I hear and see everything. ~ Qur'an 20:46] ~ Quran, @Sufi_Path

6:Recite Quran until it prohibits you to do evil deeds. If it does not prohibit you, it will not be considered recitation. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,

7:Kind words and forgiveness are better than charity followed by injury. And Allah is Self-Sufficient, Most Forbearing. ~ Quran 2:263, @Sufi_Path

8:To Allah belong the east and the west: Wherever you turn, there is the presence of Allah. For Allah is all-Present, all-Knowing." Quran 2:115 ~ Quran, @Sufi_Path

9:Understand that for every rule which I have mentioned from the Quran, the Devil has one to match it, which he puts beside the proper rule to cause error. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,

10:When My servants ask you [O Prophet] about Me: I am truly near. I respond to one's prayer when they call upon Me. So let them respond with obedience to Me and believe in Me, perhaps they will be guided to the Right Way. ~ Quran 2:186, @Sufi_Path

11:Said [Hud]: 'You are already beset by loath some evils and by your Sustainer's condemnation! Do you argue with me about the [empty] names which you have invented - you and your forefathers - for which God has bestowed no warrant from on high? Wait, then, [for what will happen:] verily, I shall wait with you! ~ Quran, Al-A'raf (The Heights) 7:71, https://www.islamicity.org/quransearch/index.php?q=i+am+with+you

* WISDOM TROVE *

1:I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness. ~ napoleon-bonaparte, @wisdomtrove

2:So if you blame Facebook, Trump, or Putin for ushering in a new and frightening era of post-truth, remind yourself that centuries ago millions of Christians locked themselves inside a self-reinforcing mythological bubble, never daring to question the factual veracity of the Bible, while millions of Muslims put their unquestioning faith in the Quran. For millennia, much of what passed for news and facts in human social networks were stories about miracles, angels, demons, and witches, with bold reporters giving live coverage straight from the deepest pits of the underworld. We have zero scientific evidence that Eve was tempted by the serpent, that the souls of all infidels burn in hell after they die, or that the creator of the universe doesn’t like it when a Brahmin marries a Dalit—yet billions of people have believed in these stories for thousands of years. Some fake news lasts forever. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:Tidak ada satu kitab pun yang sempurna kecuali al-Quran ~,

2:We try men through one another. —Quran 6:53 ~ G Willow Wilson,

3:You can’t master the Quran, it masters you. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

4:Believers should rely on God.
Quran-Al-Emran(122) ~ Anonymous,

5:You will find yourself in the Quran, I guarantee you. ~ Hamza Yusuf,

6:Nothing on earth nor in the sky is hidden from God
Quran-Ibrahim(38) ~ Anonymous,

7:Surely hearts feel tranquil whenever God is mentioned.
Quran-Alrad(28) ~ Anonymous,

8:I know the Gospel according to Mark better than I know any sura in the Quran. ~ Aasif Mandvi,

9:If you're having trouble waking up for fajr, set your alarm to play Quran. It works! ~ Yasmin Mogahed,

10:There's a statement in the Quran: There should be "absolutely no compulsion in religion." ~ Hamza Yusuf,

11:I shall entrust my affair to God, for God is Observant of [His] worshippers.
Quran-Ghafir(44) ~ Anonymous,

12:throughout the first two centuries of Islam, Muslims regularly read the Torah alongside the Quran. ~ Reza Aslan,

13:Fasting men and fasting women, God has prepared forgiveness and a splendid wage.
Quran-AlAhzab(35) ~ Anonymous,

14:Islam believes in many prophets, and Al Quran is nothing but a confirmation of the old Scriptures. ~ Annie Besant,

15:Seandainya hati kita bersih berkesucian, takkan pernah ia kenyang dan bosan kepada Al-Quran. ~ Salim Akhukum Fillah,

16:Your calamity was sent to bring you back to the Quran. But the greater calamity is that you missed the point. ~ Yasmin,

17:In Pakistan we have something called the Blasphemy Law, which protects the Holy Quran from desecration. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

18:No, I might be able to poke fun at the Quran for its childishly imperious content, but not for its style. ~ Rabih Alameddine,

19:Verily, Prayer prevents the worshipper from indulging in anything that is undignified or indecent. (Quran 29:46) ~ Anonymous,

20:In Muhammad’s lifetime, the Quran was never collected in a single volume; in fact, it was never collected at all. ~ Reza Aslan,

21:Allah, having predestined the universe, made mankind with the express purpose of worshiping him (Quran 51.56). To ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

22:The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status. The ~ Karen Armstrong,

23:You cannot simply read the Quran,not if you take it seriously.You either have surrendered to it already or you fight it. ~ Jeffrey Lang,

24:Recite Quran until it prohibits you to do evil deeds. If it does not prohibit you, it will not be considered recitation. ~ Imām Al-Ghazālī,

25:While anyone whom God lets go astray will have no guide. No one can mislead anyone whom God guides.

Quran- Az-Zumar(36-37) ~ Anonymous,

26:But even the most accurate ones are the word of Muhammad , not the word of Allah. We must not equate the hadith to the Quran. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

27:Much to my surprise, the Islamic scriptures in the Quran were actually far less bloody and less violent than those in the Bible. ~ Philip Jenkins,

28:The God of Quran is trying to unskin Muslims from their humanity. Muslims are good people. But their God is absolutely bad. ~ Mosab Hassan Yousef,

29:The Quran is many different things, and we also have to see the Quran almost as a secondary source commenting on the Old Testament. ~ Ayad Akhtar,

30:Does man think that We will not assemble his bones? Yes [We are] Able [even] to proportion his fingertips " .Quran The Resurrection 75 ~ Anonymous,

31:If you wish to check how much you love Allah, then see how much your heart loves the Quran, and you will know the answer. ~ Ibn Qayyim Al Jawziyya,

32:The keys to the life of the heart lie in reflecting upon the Quran, being humble before Allah in secret, and leaving sins. ~ Ibn Qayyim Al Jawziyya,

33:Then did you think that We created you uselessly and that to Us you would not be returned?" Quran AL-MU'MINUN (THE BELIEVERS) 23 : 115. ~ Anonymous,

34:[God] has established for you [the Arabs] the same religion enjoined on Noah, on Abraham, on Moses, and on Jesus,” the Quran says (42:13). ~ Reza Aslan,

35:few Muslims realize that only one hundred years before, there were about eighty different readings of the Quran in the Muslim world, and ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

36:He also made all Muslims publicly forswear that part of their Holy Quran which permits them to dupe, cheat and kill all who are not of Islam. ~ Gary Jennings,

37:They fully bloomed in the pages of the Bible and the Quran, where the Sumerian word ilu became transliterated as Elohim in Hebrew and Allah in Arabic. ~ Reza Aslan,

38:Understand that for every rule which I have mentioned from the Quran, the Devil has one to match it, which he puts beside the proper rule to cause error. ~ Al-Ghazali,

39:A Muslim just follows Allah. Sunni-Shiah? That's farga, the groups—Allah discourages this in the Quran, you know, never ever form the groups. ~ Michael Muhammad Knight,

40:Female infanticide was as high in Mecca as in Constantinople, Athens, and Rome - a practice the Quran was to address directly and condemn repeatedly. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

41:I raised my right hand and placed my left on the Quran, which was being held by my wife and mom. Suddenly, I was blinded by a cascade of camera flashes. ~ Keith Ellison,

42:Indeed, those who devour the property of orphans unjustly are only consuming into their bellies fire. And they will be burned in a Blaze. Quran The Women 4 :10 ~ Anonymous,

43:I've read the Bible, but I felt like a lot of the Bible was oppressive towards women. Then I read the Quran, and I thought it was also oppressive towards women. ~ Robert Webb,

44:Quran’s primary verses tells people “to fight in Allah’s way, so they slay and are slain.” Is it a mere coincidence that this chapter and verse is (9:111)? ~ Michael D Fortner,

45:and follow not that of which you have not the knowledge; surely the hearing and the sight and the heart, all of these, shall be questioned about that
Quran-ALISRA ~ Anonymous,

46:God says in the Quran that there is only one true religion, God's religion. It's the same theme that God revealed to all of the prophets, even before Muhammad. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf,

47:Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding."
( A translation of Quran,3:190) ~ Anonymous,

48:O mankind, It is you that have need of God, and God is the Self-Sufficient, the Praised One. If He please, He will remove you and bring a new creation. And this is not hard for God. ~ Quran,

49:An interpretation of Jesus’ nature, identity, or role; for example, the Quran has a lower Christology than John, since he is just human in the former yet divine in the latter. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

50:Nor can one take an unfair attitude even towards enemies: "Let the enmity of a people[towards you] not determine you upon an unjust course; be fair, it is closer to taqwā. Quran ~ Fazlur Rahman,

51:In fact, the Quran proposes the unprecedented notion that all revealed scriptures are derived from a single concealed book in heaven called the Umm al-Kitab, or “Mother of Books” (13:39). ~ Reza Aslan,

52:Thus, the Quran promises that “all those who believe—the Jews, the Sabians, the Christians—anyone who believes in God and the Last Days, and who does good deeds, will have nothing to fear ~ Reza Aslan,

53:The people are only tools, a means used by God. But they are not the sourse of help, aid, or salvation of any kind. Only God is. The people cannot even create the wing of a fly (Quran, 22:73). ~ Yasmin,

54:It has often been noted that the biblical stories recounted in the Quran, especially those dealing with Jesus, imply a familiarity with the traditions and narratives of the Christian faith. ~ Reza Aslan,

55:There's not a word in the Quran or the Hadith that requires that women cover their faces. To the contrary, the only requirement is that they uncover their faces when they're doing the haj. ~ Jason Kenney,

56:I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.” —Alexis de Toqueville I ~ Milo Yiannopoulos,

57:Quran says do not abuse others' gods, they will abuse Allah. But most people do not believe in this... they feel their way is the only right one. This is to maintain religious hegemony. ~ Asghar Ali Engineer,

58:Those who (in charity) spend of their goods by night and by day, in secret and in public, have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. QURAN The Cow 2 : 274. ~ Anonymous,

59:The people are only tools, a means used by God. But they are not the sourse of help, aid, or salvation of any kind. Only God is. The people cannot even create the wing of a fly (Quran, 22:73). ~ Yasmin Mogahed,

60:Some of the toughest ayaat in the Quran have Allah's name "ar-Rahman" in them to make it clear that just because Allah is the Most Merciful, it doesn't mean He's not going to carry out justice. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

61:few Muslims realize that only one hundred years before, there were about eighty different readings of the Quran in the Muslim world, and that there are significant differences in Qurans even today. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

62:The truth of the matter is that the Quran was not revealed in the complete form in which it exists today. It was revealed from time to time, according to the circumstances, over a time span of 23 years. ~ Anonymous,

63:The boys learn the Quran by heart, rocking back and forth as they recite. They learn that there is no such thing as science or literature, that dinosaurs never existed and man never went to the moon. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

64:I often think that woman is more free in Islam than in Christianity. Woman is more protected by Islam than by the faith which preaches monogamy. In AI Quran the law about woman is juster and more liberal. ~ Annie Besant,

65:Muhammad’s example must have had a lasting effect on his early followers: as Nabia Abbott has shown, throughout the first two centuries of Islam, Muslims regularly read the Torah alongside the Quran. Certainly, ~ Reza Aslan,

66:Saudi Arabia put Egyptians like Qutb on salary, giving them positions in state mosques and schools where they would go on to mold a generation of students with their understanding of the Quran and jihad. ~ Gregory D Johnsen,

67:Liberals believe in burning the American flag, urinating on crucifixes, and passing out birth control pills to 11-year-olds without telling their parents -- but God forbid an infidel touch a Quran at Guantanamo. ~ Ann Coulter,

68:Regarding Jesus, there are two issues on which Muslims particularly disagree with Christians: that Jesus died on the cross and that Jesus claimed to be God. The Quran specifically denies both of these beliefs. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

69:The Quran did not put forward any philosophical arguments for monotheism; its approach was practical, and, as such, it appealed to the pragmatic Arabs. The old religion, the Quran claimed, was simply not working.3 ~ Karen Armstrong,

70:What if’ is not much of an argument if there is no evidence. Second, you know the Quran tells Christians to ‘judge by the Injil.’39 That means they still had it in Muhammad’s day. The Injil is not a lost scripture. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

71:they say that each word in the Quran has seven thousand layers of meaning, each of which, though some might seem contrary or simply unfathomable to us, exist equally at all times without cosmological contradiction. ~ G Willow Wilson,

72:Taking the strong believing women as role models for both men and women, clearly indicates that the Quran acknowledges the woman's ability to be a strong person who can overcome any innate weakens in her. ~ Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah,

73:And give to the orphans their properties and do not substitute the defective [of your own] for the good [of theirs]. And do not consume their properties into your own. Indeed, that is ever a great sin. Quran The Women 4 :2 ~ Anonymous,

74:The result is that Muslims place relatively little weight on surrounding passages when trying to interpret sections of the Quran. For context, they turn instead to historical commentaries, hadith called asbab-an-nuzul. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

75:You see the barren earth when We send water down upon it, stirring, sprouting and producing every sort of lovely species.* That because God is the Truth: He revives the dead and is capable of everything!
Quran-AlHaj(5,6) ~ Anonymous,

76:There's things in the Bible when you read the Quran there different wordings. The Quran is dealing with the Most High and the Bible is dealing with God. If they read them both and put it together they'll know what the true culture is. ~ Rakim,

77:We should not fool ourselves. When the Quran says wa la qad karamna Bani Adam ["we have honored the Children of Adam"] so yes we should all be free but this should not mean that we must act against the dignity of human beings. ~ Tariq Ramadan,

78:these traditions did not come from the Quran. They are found in hadith. From marital rites to martial restrictions, commercial laws to civil suits, the vast majority of sharia and the Islamic way of life is derived from the hadith. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

79:As a text, the Quran is more than the foundation of the Islamic religion; it is the source of Arabic grammar. It is to Arabic what Homer is to Greek, what Chaucer is to English: a snapshot of an evolving language, frozen forever in time ~ Reza Aslan,

80:Menegakkan syariat tidak boleh dengan melanggar syariat! Syariat tidak boleh dilanggar dengan memanfaatkannya dan berteriak-teriak demi dia, padahal bukan. Kunci syariat ada bersamaku, yaitu Al-Quran. (Said Nursi, hal.462) ~ Habiburrahman El Shirazy,

81:Do not say about anything: "I am doing that tomorrow," Unless you add: "Should God so wish! Remember your Lord whenever you might forget, and say: "perhaps my Lord will guide me even closer than this to proper behavior
Quran-Alkahf(23,24) ~ Anonymous,

82:Obviously, the Quran is not a weapon, but a book which gives us an introduction to the divine ideology of peaceful struggle. The method of such a struggle, according to the Quran, is ‘to speak to them a word to reach their very soul’ (4:63). ~ Anonymous,

83:America will nurture a new Muslim - one who can believe in Muhammad and the Quran but who abandons belief in a Shariah-based state and affirms the primary American value of individual liberty, which has not been a normative Islamic value. ~ Dennis Prager,

84:There are two distinct methods of interpreting the Quran. The first, tafsir, is primarily concerned with elucidating the literal meaning of the text, while the second, ta’wil, is more concerned with the hidden, esoteric meaning of the Quran. ~ Reza Aslan,

85:And there is no creature on [or within] the earth or bird that flies with its wings except [that they are] communities like you. We have not neglected in the Register a thing. Then unto their Lord they will be gathered." Quran The Cattle 6 : 38. ~ Anonymous,

86:Education is our right, I said. Just as it is our right to sing. Islam has given us this right and says that every girl and boy should go to school. The Quran says we should seek knowledge, study hard and learn the mysteries of our world. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

87:I wish I studied more religions, I wish I read the Bible, the Quran. I think as I get older, I will start to really dive into religions, just because I feel like there's truths in all of those books. Clearly. I'm saying there's truths in all of them. ~ J Cole,

88:Knowledge must be fixed in some way if it is to be preserved," said the sheikh. "That's why the Quran isn't meant to be altered. There were other prophets sent to other peoples, but because their books were altered, their knowledge was lost. ~ G Willow Wilson,

89:Srinagar, there was a grave of a Christian soldier from Travancore, which had the Vedic swastika and a verse from the Quran inscribed on it. There could be ‘no more poignant and touching symbolof the essential oneness and unity of India’.61 ~ Ramachandra Guha,

90:I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte,

91:I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness. ~ Napol on Bonaparte,

92:Abeh would always protest, and quote the Quran: "Paradise is at the feet of your mother!" But when we looked down at them, our mother's bare feet were cracked from washing the floor every day, and Abeh's were clad in expensive Italian leather shoes. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

93:I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up. ~ Larry Klayman,

94:Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God’s essence. As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it? ~ Reza Aslan,

95:The Quran explicitly opposes the killing of innocent people and the Prophet was always careful in doing that. If they had to fight a war, he was always on the side of peace as soon as it was possible to make peace because that's what the Quran says also. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,

96:Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony... In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism. ~ Oriana Fallaci,

97:By the glorious Quran! 2 Indeed, they are astonished that a warner should have come to them from among themselves. So these deniers of the truth say, ‘This is indeed a strange thing, 3 to come back to life after we have died and become dust? That is most improbable! ~ Anonymous,

98:O mankind, fear your Lord, who created you from one soul and created from it its mate and dispersed from both of them many men and women. And fear Allah , through whom you ask one another, and the wombs. Indeed Allah is ever, over you, an Observer. Quran The Women 4 :1 ~ Anonymous,

99:How many times have you seen Muslims quote an ayah of the Quran and their eyes were full of anger? Let me tell you, that is not how Angel Jibril brought the Quran to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and that's not how our Prophet recited the Quran to his people. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

100:You know what the Quran teaches me? The Quran teaches me that an incredibly wealthy man can be a failure (Firaun) and a homeless man can be successful (Prophet Ibrahim). It teaches me that success has nothing to do with wealth and failure has nothing to do with poverty. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

101:Jahil adalah penyakit kanser merbahaya yang menular dalam tubuh manusia. Bahayanya jahil ini boleh membawa syirik kepada Allah. Seperti mana penyakit kanser ada pencegahnya, begitu juga jahil ada pengubatnya. Pengubat bagi penyakit jahil adalah al-Quran dan as-Sunnah. ~ Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat,

102:We came to say, the Quran is our constitution, we are committed to God and his holy book. God willing, should they try to carry out their crime against the Quran, God will tear their state apart and they will become God's lesson to anyone who tries to desecrate the holy book. ~ Ismail Haniyeh,

103:ALMOST EVERYTHING MUSLIMS know about Muhammad comes to them orally, rarely from primary sources. Unlike Christians learning about Jesus from the Bible, the Quran has very little to say about Muhammad. Whether in the East or the West, Muslims usually only hear stories about him. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

104:It is He Who sent down to thee, in truth, the Book (Quran), confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (Quran) (of judgment between right and wrong). - Holy Quran 3:3 ~ Anonymous,

105:This is the primary argument to make to those who say that one should read only the Quran, for it has all knowledge within it. It has the key message of Allah. But even the Prophet is widely known for having encouraged us to go, even to China, in the search for knowledge. This ~ Omar Saif Ghobash,

106:When you pay attention to the Quran, you discover that it can only be from Allah. It becomes clearer and clearer to you that it cannot be from a human being. But many people don't perceive the Quran this way because Allah doesn't open its doors to people who do not pay attention. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

107:The scriptures of all three of the great monotheisms show that they began similarly as popular movements in protest against the privilege and arrogance of power, whether that of kings as in the Hebrew bible, or the Roman Empire as in the Gospels, or a tribal elite as in the Quran. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

108:You cannot simply read the Quran,not if you take it seriously.You either have surrendered to it already or you fight it.
It attacks tenaciously,directly,personally; it debates,criticizes,shames and challenges.
From the outset it draws the line of battle, and I was on other side. ~ Jeffrey Lang,

109:Muhammad dictated the contents of the Quran to his scribes over a period of twenty-three years. Only after his death was the Quran collected into a book. Verses that had been dictated years or decades apart are frequently found side by side in the Quran, often with no obvious connection. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

110:The ancient Egyptian expression of 'Sema Tawy' which is translated by Egyptologists as "The Uniter of the Two Lands" is transliterated into/from Arabic, as: Sema = زم which means: 'tuck,tighten'; and Tawy = طوى which means: 'pleat, fold'. And this exact expression even exists in the Quran. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,

111:I don't have a religion. I ain't nothing wrong with church as long as they selling chicken. Cause I read the Quran, I read the Kabalah, I read the Bible. They all got the same three basic principles: Love God, love your neighbor as yourself, and...As far as me being, I live by those principles. ~ Kevin Gates,

112:As the Quran suggests over and over again, and as the Constitution of Medina explicitly affirms, Muhammad may have understood the concept of the Umm al-Kitab to mean not only that the Jews, Christians, and Muslims shared a single divine scripture but also that they constituted a single divine Ummah. ~ Reza Aslan,

113:Although some popular religious texts such as the New Testament, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, or Tibetan Book of the Dead contain interesting insights and stories, it is the Jewish religious texts such as the Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures) that contain valuable information on acquiring wealth. ~ H W Charles,

114:Women's position includes so many pre-Islamic customs that have become an integral part of the Shariat. I am fighting that. Triple talaq is not mentioned in the Quran. Of course, there is a controversy; some maintain that the Prophet approved of it. Even if he did, maybe he had social constraints. ~ Asghar Ali Engineer,

115:Muhammad sets the model for being a good statesman. He also sets the model for being a good warrior, for chivalry, of nobility, of all the things which the Quran and Hadith [The recorded collections of the sayings and traditions of the Prophet] says of treating your enemy with dignity and kindness. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,

116:My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.

My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith. ~ Ibn Arabi,

117:Passages in the Bible and Quran or Hadiths endorse holy war, subjugating or exterminating unbelievers, killing blasphemers and others who violate religious taboos, stoning adulterers, ritually slaughtering animals, sexually enslaving females, and beating children. They prescribe mutilation of criminal suspects. ~ Anonymous,

118:O you who have believed, avoid much [negative] assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin. And do not spy or backbite each other. Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his brother when dead? You would detest it. And fear Allah ; indeed, Allah is Accepting of repentance and Merciful." Quran The Rooms 49 : 12. ~ Anonymous,

119:Let God's grace be the mosque, and devotion the prayer mat. Let the Quran be the good conduct. Let modesty be compassion, good manners fasting, you should be a Muslim the like of this. Let good deeds be your Kaaba and truth be your mentor. Your Kalma be your creed and prayer, God would then vindicate your honour. ~ Guru Nanak,

120:We don't have any option. We are dependent on these mullahs to learn the Quran," he said. "But you just use him to learn the literal meaning of the words; don't follow his explanations and interpretation. Only learn what God says. His words are divine messages, which you are free and independent to interpret. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

121:My heart wears all forms: For gazelles it is an open field, for monks a cloister. It is a temple for idols, and for pilgrims the Ka'ba. It is the Torah's tablets and the pages of the Quran. Love is the faith I follow. Whichever path Love's caravan takes, that is my road and my religion.

~ Ibn Arabi, My heart wears all forms
,

122:The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status. The Quran prescribes some degree of segregation and veiling for the Prophet’s wives, but there is nothing in the Quran that requires the veiling of all women or their seclusion in a separate part of the house. ~ Karen Armstrong,

123:When I go back to the Quran I see that the context of Revelation is creation in its entirety. The universe is a Revelation and this of course includes nature, plants and animals. In other words, what is coming from the Quran as rules and objectives are set within the larger scheme of the universe and nature as part of Creation. ~ Tariq Ramadan,

124:The Quran is the best of companions, being always available, truthful, comforting, trustworthy, and beneficial, it has about it a quality of sweetness. It surpasses all else, but is never surpassed itself. It is neither magic nor poetry nor the speech of man; rather, it is the speech of Allah: from Him it emanated, and to Him it shall return. ~,

125:But let's

suppose for a moment that my inspiration is not divine. Still, you would agree, my

speaking is not inferior to the workings of a bee? The Quran says, God has inspired

the bee. This universe is filled with honey. Human beings feed on it and evolve upward

with the same, but more profound, inspiration as the bee. ~ Rumi,

126:Nabi Muhammad SAW dipersetujui sebulat suara oleh semua umat Islam sebagai al-nabi al-ummi, nabi yang buta huruf. Namun demikian, sunnahnya lengkap dengan aphorisme dan tindakan-tindakan yang menguatkan konsep ilmu dalam al-Quran dan menjadi pencetus dan kuasa pendorong bagi pembangunan intelektual dan tamadun masa depan dalam Islam. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud,

127:Jalaluddin Rumi is completely rooted in Islamic teachings of Quran. He was a great scholar, he belonged to a madrassa, and he knew Islamic theology and jurisprudence very well. He knew Persian, Arabic and Turkish, which was coming into Anatolia at that time, very well. He was a remarkable, remarkable scholar, besides being a great saint. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,

128:Alif, Lam, Ra. These are the verses of the Book and a clear Qur'an.Perhaps those who disbelieve will wish that they had been Muslims.Let them eat and enjoy themselves and be diverted by [false] hope, for they are going to know.And We did not destroy any city but that for it was a known decree." Quran :Surah Chapter AL-HIJR (THE ROCKY TRACT):15 :1-4 . ~ Anonymous,

129:[The Quran is] a Revelation sent down by al-'Azeez, ar-Raheem." [Yaseen: 5]
The Quran is 'azeez (authoritative) and it's from al-'Azeez. And the Prophet is the most merciful human to ever live and was sent as a mercy to mankind from ar-Raheem. It's the perfect message delivered on the tongue of a perfect Messenger (salAllahu alayhi wa sallam). ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

130:They have certainly disbelieved who say, "Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary" while the Messiah has said, "O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord." Indeed, he who associates others with Allah - Allah has forbidden him Paradise, and his refuge is the Fire. And there are not for the wrongdoers any helpers.( A translation of Quran,5:72) ~ Anonymous,

131:Those who followed al-Ghazāli adopted the same literalist view as Christian fundamentalists do today: the only cause of anything was God, and the texts of the old books, in this case not the Bible but the Quran and the Hadīth (the recorded conversations of the Prophet Muhammad), gave Muslims everything they would ever need to know about their faith, ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto,

132:Every age requires a new approach to the Qur’an for the simple reason that the Quran is made for all ages. It is our duty to look for deeper meanings in the Quran in order to increase our knowledge and experience. The Quran wants your intellect to be always active and trying to approach the message of God. God himself dedicated this book to people who think. ~ Muhammad Asad,

133:Wonder,
A garden among the flames!
My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.
My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith.

~ Ibn Arabi, Wonder
,

134:I found myself thinking that the Quran is not a holy document. It is a historical record, written by humans. It is one version of events, as perceived by the men who wrote it 150 years after the Prophet Muhammad died. And it is a very tribal and Arab version of events. It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women, and harsh in war. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

135:Abdur Rab offers a comprehensive vision of Islam using the Quran as his sole religious textual source. He intentionally avoids the hadith literature, which he believes, and argues, has done much damage to the message of the Quran. His work provides many thought-provoking insights and should be a significant contribution to the 'Quran only' movement in modern Islam. ~ Jeffrey Lang,

136:Where establishment Islam was becoming less tolerant, seeing the Quran as the only valid scripture and Muhammad’s religion as the one true faith, Sufis went back to the spirit of the Quran in their appreciation of other religious traditions. Some, for example, were especially devoted to Jesus, whom they saw as the ideal Sufi since he had preached a gospel of love. ~ Karen Armstrong,

137:It’s a kind of Romeo and Juliet story in which Gul Makai and Musa Khan meet at school and fall in love. But they are from different tribes, so their love causes a war. However, unlike Shakespeare’s play their story doesn’t end in tragedy. Gul Makai uses the Holy Quran to teach her elders that war is bad and they eventually stop fighting and allow the lovers to unite. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

138:In every way, to read these books of Western history was sinning. Even the history of how modern states formed confronted me with the contradictions of my belief in Allah. The European separation of God’s world from the state was itself haram. The Quran says there can be no government without God; the Quran is Allah’s book of laws for the conduct of worldly affairs. In ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

139:It is not true that if we had true faith we would not be sad. Prophets (as), and righteous people experienced a great deal of sadness. The Quran is full of stories in which the central theme is sadness. Sadness is a reality of life. The Quran is not there to eliminate sadness, but to navigate it. Sadness is one of the tests of life, just as happiness, and anger are tests. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

140:his eyes narrowed in what seemed to be intense pain or grief, and others when he’d shudder violently. Whichever way it happened, he was left helplessly weak as the words formed inside him, waiting to be recited into the world. The pain was an essential part of it, part of the birthing process, for this is what he was doing: verse by verse, he was giving birth to the Quran. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

141:By entwining the story of his life with verses from the Quran and an acknowledgment of the new Christian terms to which he must adapt, Omar ibn Said created less a tale of conversion than a syncretic narrative: Like that of so many others, his is a story not of the religious remaking of a people but of a people remaking religious traditions to serve their altered circumstances. ~ Peter Manseau,

142:Bismillah al rahman al Rahim,” he replied. In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate. Harvath knew the phrase. Every chapter in the Quran, except for the ninth, began with it. “Ash-hadu an laa ilaaha illallah,” he continued. “Wa ash-hadu anna Muhammadan rasulullah.” I bear witness that there is no god except Allah. And I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. ~ Brad Thor,

143:It should not be assumed that the Quran is the Islamic analogue of the Bible. It isn’t. For Muslims, the Quran is the closest thing to an incarnation of Allah, and it is the very proof they provide to demonstrate the truth of Islam. The best parallel in Christianity is Jesus himself, the Word made flesh, and his resurrection. That is how central the Quran is to Islamic theology.94 ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

144:When liberal celebs stammer out a litany of shopworn bleats about the administration's attempt to turn America into a theocratic prison state, people can't help but notice that these buskers and mummers seem unmoved by the horrors of actual prison states. (Saddam commissioned a copy of the Quran written in his own blood - but John Ashcroft is the real religious nut, don't you know.) ~ James Lileks,

145:If I am speaking for my rights, for the rights of girls, I am not doing anything wrong. It’s my duty to do so. God wants to see how we behave in such situations. There is a saying in the Quran, “The falsehood has to go and the truth will prevail.” If one man, Fazlullah, can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it? I wondered. I prayed to God every night to give me strength. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

146:A few Muslims dissent on this view, and the Ahmadi jamaat is among them. These Muslims argue that if any part of the Quran could be canceled, then it would not be the eternal word of God. They resort instead to harmonization of apparently abrogated verses, like the tenuous interpretation above. The difficulty for this view, though, is that the hadith are full of accounts of abrogation. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

147:The hijab or a variation of the word shows up eight times in the Quran. And it never means headscarf. And so what's happened is that the identity of a Muslim woman especially is being equated to this piece of cloth on her head. And in that ideology there's a very fundamental assumption that people need to think very deeply about, which is do you believe that a woman is too sexy for her hair? ~ Asra Nomani,

148:Widespread criticisms of jihad in Islam and the so-called sword verses in the Quran have unearthed for fair-minded Christians difficult questions about Christianity's own traditions of holy war and 'texts of terror.' Like Hinduism's Mahabharata epic, the Bible devotes entire books to war and rumors thereof. Unlike the Quran, however, it contains hardly any rules for how to conduct a just war. ~ Stephen R Prothero,

149:"I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I hope I am a "Muslim" as "one surrendered to God," but I believe that embedded in the Quran and other expressions of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other occidentals have still much to learn, and 'Islam is certainly a strong contender for the supplying of the basic framework of the one religion of the future.'" ~ William Montgomery Watt,

150:But the proto-democracy he had envisaged would devolve into a succession of ruling dynasties. Class distinctions grew, and with them—as had happened before in both Judaism and Christianity—a rapidly rising all-male clerical elite. These men became the gatekeepers of faith, elaborating the principles of islam into the institution of Islam, often by projecting their own conservatism onto the Quran itself. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

151:The vast body of hadith and sirah literature particularly enables this phenomenon. If a Western Muslim wants to paint a peaceful portrait of Muhammad, all they have to do is quote peaceful hadith and verses of the Quran, to the exclusion of the violent ones. If an Islamic extremist wants to mobilize his followers to acts of terrorism, he will quote the violent references, to the exclusion of the peaceful ones. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

152:Warnings are of 3 kinds and stages in the Quran:
1) Destruction of a nation (i.e. Nation of Prophets Nuh & Lut)
2) Warning of Judgment Day
3) Warning of Hellfire
All 3 kinds of warnings are related. Allah is telling us that if we are one of the nations that will be destroyed here, then we are really going to take a beating on Judgment Day, and that will feel like a vacation compared to Hellfire. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

153:Indeed, for the righteous is attainment - Gardens and grapevines And full-breasted [companions] of equal age And a full cup. No ill speech will they hear therein or any falsehood - [As] reward from your Lord, [a generous] gift [made due by] account, [From] the Lord of the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them, the Most Merciful. They possess not from Him [authority for] speech.

[The Quran, 78:31-37] ~ Anonymous,

154:The Sufi saint Mazhar Jaan Jana of 18th century Delhi believed that the Quran condemns bowing before deities because in pre-Islamic idol worship stones were considered god. But Hindus pray to god through that idol, which is a reflection of god. In Vedas god is nirguna and nirankara, that is, he has no attributes and no shape, that is the real belief of Hindus. As Muslims visit graves, so Hindus worship idols. ~ Asghar Ali Engineer,

155:Also, it has been mentioned to show one of the secrets of the Quran. Those who are heedless of this secret can not realize the pearls hidden in the Quran (that is, the deep meanings of the Quran). When one has the intention to do so, he should exert much effort and seek the help of those who are well-versed in the religious knowledge. One cannot be successful in this field with the help of his limited reason. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,

156:education is our basic right. Not just in the West; Islam too has given us this right. Islam says every girl and every boy should go to school. In the Quran it is written, God wants us to have knowledge. He wants us to know why the sky is blue and about oceans and stars. I know it’s a big struggle—around the world there are fifty-seven million children who are not in primary school, thirty-two million of them girls. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

157:She could hold in her heart a belief in Islam as well as the unwavering belief that every human had the right to choose who they loved, and how, and that belief was in exact accordance with her faith: that it is the individual’s right to choose, and the individual’s duty to empathize with one another. Didn’t the Quran itself contain the verse, We have created you from many tribes, so that you may know one another. ~ Fatima Farheen Mirza,

158:Ibn Taymiyyah was a worrying figure to the establishment. His return to the fundamentals of the Quran and sunnah and his denial of much of the rich spirituality and philosophy of Islam may have been reactionary, but it was also revolutionary. He outraged the conservative ulama, who clung to the textbook answers, and criticized the Mamluk government of Syria for practices which contravened Islamic law as he understood it. ~ Karen Armstrong,

159:Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Moreover, the true believers in each of these faiths are atheists regarding the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths. Christianity rejects the proposition that the Quran contains the infallible words of the creator of the universe. Muslims and Jews reject the divinity of Jesus. ~ Lawrence M Krauss,

160:In Pakistan when women say they want independence, people think this means we don’t want to obey our fathers, brothers or husbands. But it does not mean that. It means we want to make decisions for ourselves. We want to be free to go to school or to go to work. Nowhere is it written in the Quran that a woman should be dependent on a man. The word has not come down from the heavens to tell us that every woman should listen to a man. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

161:Like so many prophets before him, Muhammad never claimed to have invented a new religion. By his own admission, Muhammad’s message was an attempt to reform the existing religious beliefs and cultural practices of pre-Islamic Arabia so as to bring the God of the Jews and Christians to the Arab peoples. “[God] has established for you [the Arabs] the same religion enjoined on Noah, on Abraham, on Moses, and on Jesus,” the Quran says (42:13). ~ Reza Aslan,

162:Adat bersendi syarak, syarak bersendi kitabullah, syarak mengata, adat memakai. Maknanya, adat Minangkabau itu merujuk pada agama dan agama merujuk pada Al-Quran. Agama yang memberikan fatwa, adat yang melaksanakannya. Antara agama dan adat itu tidak untuk dipertentangkan, tapi saling bersandar satu sama lain. Kalian amalkan agama, tapi kalian hormati pula adat istiadat kita yang kaya ini. Adat yang baik kita pakai, yang buruk kita buang. ~ Ahmad Fuadi,

163:The mission in question is when you do something positive of high quality and at the same time enjoy the process. If you feel good about doing something with minimal effort, maybe that is your God-given mission in life. Look for your own missions. Perhaps your mission is to learn Al-Quran, perhaps to be an orator, perhaps to read poetry, perhaps to write, perhaps anything at all. Find it and hopefully you all will become happy people.” -100 ~ Ahmad Fuadi,

164:With what work at you occupied,
and for what purpose are you purchased?
What sort of bird are you,
and with what digestive are you eaten?
Pass up this shop of hagglers
and seek the shop of Abundance where God is the purchaser [Quran 9:111].
There Compassion has bought
the shabby goods no one else would look at.
With that Purchaser no base coin is rejected,
for making a profit is not the point.

Masnavi 6.1264 – 1267 ~ Rumi,

165:The scriptures of all three of the great monotheisms show that they began similarly as popular movements in protest against the privilege and arrogance of power, whether that of kings as in the Hebrew bible, or the Roman Empire as in the Gospels, or a tribal elite as in the Quran. All three, that is, were originally driven by ideals of justice and egalitarianism, rejecting the inequities of human power in favor of a higher and more just one. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

166:Do Muslims believe the Quran to be God’s “literal” word? Yes and No. Yes, in the sense that the Quran is seen as representing the exact words of the original text as revealed by God. And No, in the sense that the Quran is not a book that is devoid of metaphor and allegory. What would be more correct then is to say that Muslims believe the Quran to be “God’s immutable word” because they believe it to be unchanging over time and unable to be changed. ~ Anonymous,

167:Her resolute du’aas and her steadfast reliance upon Allah, even in the face of a screaming child and judging eyes, was a testimony of her faith that I have never forgotten. Throughout the rest of my childhood, she taught me many du’aas from the Quran and hadith, and I guarded them close to my heart because I knew their power. I had seen them strengthen her in a time of fear and need, and that left a mark on me far deeper than any physical scar. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

168:There's this ayah from the Quran that my dad always quotes when he sees something bad on TV. A fire or a flood or a bombing. "Whoever kills one person, it is as if he has killed all of mankind... And whoever saves one person, it is as if he has saved all of mankind." When I was a little kid, that always made me feel better. Because no matter how bad things get there are always people who rush in to help. And according to my dad they are blessed. ~ G Willow Wilson,

169:There are certain verses in the Quran which convey injunctions similar to the following: 'Kill them wherever you find them.' (2:191)
Referring to such verses, there are some who attempt to give the impression that Islam is a religion of war and violence. This is total untrue. Such verses relate in a restricted sense, to those who have unilaterally attacked the Muslims. The above verse does not convey the general command of Islam. (pp. 42-43) ~ Maulana Wahiduddin Khan,

170:The Prophet himself sometimes openly suppressed or negated older verses, considering them to have been replaced by newer ones. That is because Muhammad did not consider the Quran to be a static Revelation, which may be why he never bothered to authorize its collection into a codified book. The Quran was for Muhammad a living scripture that consciously evolved alongside the Ummah, continually adapting itself to meet the specific needs of the developing community. ~ Reza Aslan,

171:Surah 57 Ayah 25 from the Sahih International English Translation of Al-Quran.

We have already sent Our messengers with clear evidences and sent down with them the Scripture and the balance that the people may maintain [their affairs] in justice. And We sent down iron, wherein is great military might and benefits for the people, and so that Allah may make evident those who support Him and His messengers unseen. Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Exalted in Might. ~ Anonymous,

172:But perhaps the most important innovation in the doctrine of jihad was its outright prohibition of all but strictly defensive wars. “Fight in the way of God those who fight you,” the Quran says, “but do not begin hostilities; God does not like the aggressor” (2:190). Elsewhere the Quran is more explicit: “Permission to fight is given only to those who have been oppressed … who have been driven from their homes for saying, ‘God is our Lord’ ” (22:39; emphasis added). ~ Reza Aslan,

173:Some of our religious people saw Osama bin Laden as a hero. In the bazaar you could buy posters of him on a white horse and boxes of sweets with his picture on them. These clerics said 9/11 was revenge on the Americans for what they had been doing to other people around the world, but they ignored the fact that the people in the World Trade Center were innocent and had nothing to do with American policy and that the Holy Quran clearly says it is wrong to kill. ~ Malala Yousafzai,

174:But perhaps the most important innovation in the doctrine of jihad was its outright prohibition of all but strictly defensive wars. “Fight in the way of God those who fight you,” the Quran says, “but do not begin hostilities; God does not like the aggressor” (2:190). Elsewhere the Quran is more explicit: “Permission to fight is given only to those who have been oppressed ... who have been driven from their homes for saying, 'God is our Lord' ” (22:39; emphasis added). ~ Reza Aslan,

175:Muslims believe that every single word of the Quran was dictated verbatim by Allah, through the Archangel Gabriel, to Muhammad. The Quran is therefore not only inspired at the level of meaning but at the deeper level of the words themselves. For this reason, Muslims do not consider the Quran translatable. If it is rendered in any language other than Arabic, it is not Quran but rather an interpretation of the Quran. A book can be a true Quran only if written in Arabic. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

176:Dignity and honor are gifts: “[O God], You exalt whomever You will, and You debase whomever You will” (QURAN, 3:26). Proofs of this Divine law abound. There are many accounts, for example, of people who were once in positions of authority and wealth, who then find themselves paupers completely stripped of their former glory, reduced, in many instances, to wards of the state. God is powerful over all things, and all good, authority, and provision are in His hand, not ours. ~ Hamza Yusuf,

177:The Quran says nothing about the veil, except for an injunction to veil the bosom, which is obvious. As for the face, Muhammad's wife Khadijeh never wore the veil, nor did the other wives of the Prophet after Khadijeh died. [...] The ulema have twisted the Quran with their hadith, always twisting it toward those in power, until the message Muhammad laid out so clearly, straight from God, has been reversed, and good Muslim women are made like slaves again, or worse. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson,

178:O Lord, have Mercy and Compassion, for if Thou dost not have Mercy, who will have mercy?” The heartfelt prayer of this simple pilgrim epitomizes the quintessential Islamic attitude toward God as the source of compassion and mercy. No matter what one has done in life, one should never lose hope in His Compassion and Mercy, for as the Quran states, “And who despaireth of the Mercy of his Lord save those who go astray” (15:56), and “Do not despair of God’s Mercy” (39:53). ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,

179:The repentance accepted by Allah is only for those who do wrong in ignorance [or carelessness] and then repent soon after. It is those to whom Allah will turn in forgiveness, and Allah is ever Knowing and Wise.But repentance is not [accepted] of those who [continue to] do evil deeds up until, when death comes to one of them, he says, "Indeed, I have repented now," or of those who die while they are disbelievers. For them We have prepared a painful punishment. Quran The Women 4 :18-19 ~ Anonymous,

180:Glorified is my Lord . . . Who is my Lord? Who are You, Lord? Are You Allah, the God of my father and forefathers? Are You the God I have always worshiped? The God my family has always worshiped? Surely You are the one who sent Muhammad 1 as the final messenger for mankind and the Quran as our guide? You are Allah, the God of Islam, aren’t You? Or are You . . .” I hesitated, fighting the blasphemy I was about to propose. But what if the blasphemy was the truth? “Or are You Jesus? ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

181:Misi yang dimaksud adalah ketika kalian melakukan sesuatu hal positif dengan kualitas sangat tinggi dan di saat yang sama menikmati prosesnya. Bila kalian merasakan sangat baik melakukan suatu hal dengan usaha yang minimum, mungkin itu adalah misi hidup yang diberikan Tuhan. Carilah misi kalian masing-masing. Mungkin misi kalian adalah belajar Al-Quran, mungkin menjadi orator, mungkin membaca puisi, mungkin menulis, mungkin apa saja. Temukan dan semoga kalian menjadi orang yang berbahagia. ~ Ahmad Fuadi,

182:Shia scholars would maintain that he had a clear intimation of mortality, and that he prefaced his declaration with these words: “The time approaches when I shall be called away by God and I shall answer that call. I am leaving you with two precious things and if you adhere to both of them, you will never go astray. They are the Quran, the Book of God, and my family, the People of the House, Ahl al-Bayt. The two shall never separate from each other until they come to me by the pool of Paradise. ~ Anonymous,

183:Do not praise your own faith exclusively so that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this you will miss much good. Nay, you will miss the whole truth of the matter. God, the Omniscient and the Omnipresent, cannot be confined to any one creed, for He says in the Quran, wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah. Everybody praises what he knows. His God is his own creature, and in praising it, he praises himself. Which he would not do if he were just, for his dislike is based on ignorance. ~ Ibn Arabi,

184:Don't go into Ramadan having hurt anyone without seeking their forgiveness. The last thing you'd want on the day of judgment is to find that your entire Ramadan with all of its quran recitation, fasting, taraweeh prayers, laylatul qadr, etc. went completely to waste because your pride stopped you from saying “I'm sorry”. With that being said, I'm sorry if I've written, said, or done anything to offend you. Please find it in your heart to forgive and make dua that Allah grants me guidance and sincerity. ~ Omar Suleiman,

185:Why does Allah compare the Quran to water?
Besides the fact that the Quran came down from the sky, it also brings dead hearts back to life, like water brings life to the dead earth. Similarly as to how water is completely pure, the Quran is pure and purifies everything else. We are completely incapable of creating water ourselves yet benefit from what it produces in the earth, the same way the Quran is not and cannot be the work of a human being but we can extract benefit from the guidance it offers. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,

186:We are told in the Quran: “…whoever rejects evil and believes in God hath grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold that never breaks. And God hears and knows all things.” (Qur’an, 2: 256) There is a crucial lesson in this verse: that there is only one hand-hold that never breaks. There is only one place where we can lay our dependencies. There is only one relationship that should define our self-worth and only one source from which to seek our ultimate happiness, fulfillment, and security. That place is God. ~ Yasmin Mogahed,

187:Namun kewajipan ini tidak akan menjadi nyata dengan hanya menjadikan al-Quran dan hadith sebagai panduan utama melainkan adengan turut berpegang pada method yang diguna oleh para salaf yang soleh dalam memahami kitab Allah dan sunnah Rasulullah s.a.w. Mengikut para salaf kerana alasan mereka adalah golongan Islam yang terawal bukanlah sesuatu yang harus dan mesti, tetapi kerana mereka adalah golongan muslimin terawal yang paling berupaya memahami ayat-ayat suci dan sunnah Rasulullah s.a.w. ~ Muhammad Sa id Ramadhan Al Buthy,

188:Sura 2:223 says that ‘your wife is as your farm to you, so treat her as you would your farm.’ The ulema have quoted this as if it meant you could treat women like the dirt under your feet, but these clerics, who stand as unneeded intercessors between us and God, are never farmers, and farmers read the Quran right, and see their wives are their food, their drink, their work, the bed they lie on at night, the very ground under their feet! Yes, of course you treat your wife as the ground under your feet! ~ Kim Stanley Robinson,

189:Perlu diingatkan bahawa oleh kerana al-Quran datangnya daripada Allah dan ilmu dan hikmah-Nya yang disampaikan dalam al-Quran tidak terbatas kepada atau dihabiskan oleh sesuatu masyarakat dan sejarahnya, maka tujuan pendekatan sosiologi bukanlah untuk mengaitkan hikmah Ilahi dan menghadkannya kepada detik-detik sosiosejarah yang khusus. Tujuanya ialah untuk memperakui kebijaksanaan-Nya mengendalikan makhluk-Nya yang wujud dan bertindak tanpa peralatan yang terdapat dalam dunia perseptual dan konseptual. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud,

190:Don't let this Ramadan be just a holiday of rituals. Don't finish reading the Quran without it transforming you. Don't feed your body at suhoor, but starve your heart of Qiyam. Don't reduce this downpour of mercy to just a month of sweets and lavish iftars. Seek Him, you will find. Take a sincere step towards change, transformation, redemption. If you do, you will find Him in front of you. Find Him this month. He's been there all along. Closer than your jugular vein. Look and you'll find. Walk and you'll arrive. ~ Yasmin Mogahed,

191:I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville,

192:Al-Quran juga mengisyaratkan bahawa terdapat sumber-sumber ilmu yang lain yang jika diiringi dengan kajian dan orientasi yang betul akan dapat menyempurnakan kebenaran ilmu wahyu; sebab pada akhirnya ia berasal daripada sumber yang sama: Allah, tempat asal semua perkara. Walau bagaimanapun oleh kerana ilmu bukan wahyu (aqli) tidak dianugerahkan oleh Allah secara langsung kepada manusia dan ia terdedah kepada begitu banyak batasan-batasan metodologi dan sistem nilai, maka ia tidak mendokong status yang sama seperti wahyu. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud,

193:Blessed is He in whose hand is dominion, and He is over all things competent.
[He] who created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed - and He is the Exalted in Might, the Forgiving .
And] who created seven heavens in layers. You do not see in the creation of the Most Merciful any inconsistency. So return [your] vision [to the sky]; do you see any breaks?
Then return [your] vision twice again. [Your] vision will return to you humbled while it is fatigued.”
( A translation of holy Quran, 67:1-4) ~ Anonymous,

194:The Quran mentions the story of Moses and Khidr [a prophet mentioned in the Quran who guided Moses on a revelatory journey], a famous story, in which Moses represents sort of the external understanding of the religion and Khidr represents the inner spiritual understanding of the religion. Moses went on a journey with Khidr and Khidr said, "I will not accept you unless you stop questioning things," which from an external point of view seems strange, but inwardly is very meaningful. This is exactly the question of spiritual guidance. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,

195:Hamid notes that the four main schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that this verse means “that Muslims must fight non-Muslims and offer them the following choices: Convert to Islam, pay a humiliating tax called jizyah or be killed.” Indeed, he adds, “A basic search of almost ALL approved interpretations for the Quran supports the same violent conclusion. The 25 leading approved Quran Interpretations (commentaries)—that are usually used by Muslims to understand the Quran—unambiguously support the violent understanding of the verse.”15 ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

196:Among the many instances of the absurdity of some of the experimentation with Islamization was the recommendation in 1980 by a leading nuclear scientist that ‘djinns [or genies], being fiery creatures, ought to be tapped as a free source of energy’. He expected Pakistan’s energy problems to be finally solved by this means. Dr Bashiruddin Mahmood noted that King Solomon— a Biblical figure also mentioned in the Quran—had harnessed energy from djinns. ‘I think that if we develop our souls we can develop communications with them,’ he explained. ~ Husain Haqqani,

197:Alexis de Tocqueville on Islam: “I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself. ~ Robert Spencer,

198:Oh Jerusalem, the city of sorrow
A big tear wandering in the eye
Who will halt the aggression?
On you, the pearl of religions?
Who will wash your bloody walls?
Who will safeguard the Bible?
Who will rescue the Quran?
Who will save Christ,
From those who have killed Christ?
Who will save man?

يا قدسُ، يا مدينةَ الأحزان
يا دمعةً كبيرةً تجولُ في الأجفان
من يوقفُ العدوان؟
عليكِ، يا لؤلؤةَ الأديان
من يغسل الدماءَ عن حجارةِ الجدران؟
من ينقذُ الإنجيل؟
من ينقذُ القرآن؟
من ينقذُ المسيحَ ممن قتلوا المسيح؟
من ينقذُ الإنسان؟ ~,

199:In each of the early surahs, God spoke intimately to the individual, often preferring to pose many of his teachings in the form of a question - 'Have you not heard?' 'Do you consider?' 'Have you not seen?'. Each listener was thus invited to interrogate him or herself. Any response to these queries was usually grammatically ambiguous or indefinite, leaving the audience with an image on which to meditate but with no decisive answer. This new religion was not about achieving metaphysical certainty; the Quran wanted people to develop a different kind of awarness. ~ Karen Armstrong,

200:O People of the Book (Jews and Christians)! Do not exceed the limits in your religion, and attribute to God nothing except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was only a Messenger of God, and His command that He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in God and in His Messengers, and do not say: ‘God is a Trinity.’ Give up this assertion; it would be better for you. For God is indeed (the only) One God. Far be it from His glory that He should have a son. To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and in the earth. And God is sufficient for a guardian.” (Quran 4:171) ~ Anonymous,

201:Like all Arabians, the Jews spoke of God as al-Lah, the high one, and often used the honorific that would become familiar in the Quran, ar-Rahman, the merciful, just as the newly completed Babylonian Talmud used Rahmana. It seemed clear to Muhammad that Jews and Muslims were the common descendants of Abraham, the first hanif: two branches of the same monotheistic family. They were cousins, not strangers. And since the Jews were the original upholders of din Ibrahim, the tradition of Abraham, he took it for granted that he would have not merely their assent, but their enthusiastic support. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

202:Said the Prophet, on him be peace: ‘On the Day of Resurrection, three people will find themselves on a ridge of black musk. They will have no reckoning to fear, nor any cause for alarm while human accounts are being settled. First, a man who recites the Quran to please God, Great and Glorious is He, and who leads the Prayer to people’s satisfaction. Second, a man who gives the Call to Prayer in a Mosque, inviting people to God, Great and Glorious is He, for the sake of His good pleasure. Third, a man who has a hard time making a living in this world, yet is not distracted from the work ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,

203:Muslims believe that every single word of the Quran was dictated verbatim by Allah, through the Archangel Gabriel, to Muhammad. The Quran is therefore not only inspired at the level of meaning but at the deeper level of the words themselves. For this reason, Muslims do not consider the Quran translatable. If it is rendered in any language other than Arabic, it is not Quran but rather an interpretation of the Quran. A book can be a true Quran only if written in Arabic. This is why it is such an important belief for Muslims that the Quran has always been exactly the same — word for word, dot for dot. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

204:The latter interpretation is obviously more tenuous, but only if one believes in the doctrine of abrogation. Surah 2:116 and 16:101 of the Quran both apparently teach that Allah can cancel older sections of the Quran with newer ones. Traditionally, Muslims developed a field of Quranic exegesis called “the abrogator and the abrogated” in which they strove to determine the criteria and history of Quranic abrogation. Some Muslim scholars taught that up to five hundred verses of the Quran no longer apply because later verses abrogated them. Other Muslim scholars taught that as few as five verses were abrogated. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

205:Janganlah hanya faham erti kata-kata yang tertulis dalam Al-Quran
kerna dibawah yang tertulis terdapat erti yang tersembunyi
di bawah erti lapis kedua ada lagi erti baru,
yang menyilaukan fikiran dan pandangan

Erti keempat, kecuali Nabi, tak ada yang pernah memahami
kebesaran Tuhan, yang tiada tanding dalam Keghaiban
hitunglah erti tersembunyi itu sampai tujuh
kisah bermakna yang mengagumkan dari langit
Wahai kawan, janganlah memandang jilid Al-Quran.
Bagi setan, manusia hanyalah sepotong daging.
Bagaikan manusialah Al-Quran itu,
Bentuk lahir diluar dengan ruh diam-diam didalamnya. ~ Rumi,

206:45 When you recite the Quran, We place an invisible barrier between you and those who do not believe in the Hereafter. 46 We put veils over their hearts to prevent them from comprehending it, and We afflict their ears with deafness. When you mention your one and only Lord in your recitation of the Quran, they turn their backs in aversion. 47 We are fully aware of what they wish to hear when they listen to you; and what they say when they converse in private; and when the wrongdoers say, ‘You are only following a man who is bewitched!’ 48 See to what they liken you! But they are lost and cannot find the right path. ~ Anonymous,

207:Muhammad had become the head of a collection of tribal groups that were not bound together by blood but by a shared ideology, an astonishing innovation in Arabian society. Nobody was forced to convert to the religion of the Quran, but Muslims, pagans and Jews all belonged to one ummah, could not attack one another, and vowed to give each other protection. News of this extraordinary new ‘supertribe’ spread, and though at the outset nobody thought that it had a chance of survival, it proved to be an inspiration that would bring peace to Arabia before the death of the Prophet in 632, just ten years after the hijrah. ~ Karen Armstrong,

208:Şeytan möminlərə qarşı da fəaliyyəti davam etdirir.Məsələn, mö- minin digər möminə hirslənməsi və ya Quran oxumağı ağlından ke- çirdikdə əsassız bir bəhanə tapıb bundan imtina etməsi bu fəaliyyətin nəticəsidir. Ancaq şeytan möminə: “Quran oxuma”, “Allah`ı anma”, - demir.Çünki bunun təsirsiz olacağını bilir. Onun əvəzinə, insanın beynini boş və mənasız, uzun-uzadı işlərlə məşğul edir.Əgər insan bu təsir altına düşürsə, axirəti unudub dünya həyatına bağlanırsa, bu qəflətin təsirindən Quranın əmr etdiyi şəkildə yaşamaqdan uzaqlaşır. Bu tələyə düşməməyin yeganə yolu şeytanın pıçıltılarını vaxtında bilib Allah`a sığınmaqdır. ~ Anonymous,

209:I see a bird carrying me and carrying you, with us as its wings, beyond the dream, to a journey that has no end and no beginning, no purpose and no goal. I do not speak to you, and you do not speak to me; we listen only to the music of silence. Silence is the friend's trust of friend, imagination's self-confidence between rain and rainbow.
A rainbow is inspiration provoking the poet, uninvited, the infatuation of the poet with the prose of the Quran.
Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown?
We are absent, you and I; we are present, you and I.
And absent.
Which of your Lord's blessings do you disown? ~ Mahmoud Darwish,

210:Penekanan al-Quran terhadap hubungan intim antara epistemologi dan aksiologi dan kerohanian bukan bertujuan untuk merubah keobjektifan data dan fakta yang telah disahkan dengan betul. Sebaliknya ia bertujuan untuk memberi petunjuk yang sempurna, hikmah dan makna berhubung pelbagai dimensi usaha-usaha epistemologi. Justeru itu konsep ilmu dalam Islam mempunyai tujuan, yang ekoran daripadanya pula sejajar secara idealnya dengan keperluan-keperluan weltanshauungnya. Pendapat kesemua sarjana Islam adalah tepat bahawa tujuan utama ilmu adalah untuk mengenali Allah. Walaupun mereka berselisih tentang darjah-darjah ilmu ini. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud,

211:Submission, when it is submission to the truth — and when the truth is known to be both beautiful and merciful — has nothing in common with fatalism or stoicism as these terms are understood in the Western tradition, because its motivation is different. According to Fakhr ad-Din ar-RazT, one of the great commentators upon the Quran: The worship of the eyes is
weeping, the worship of the ears is listening, the worship of the tongue is praise, the worship of the hands is giving, the worship of the body is effort, the worship of the heart is fear and hope, and the worship of the spirit is surrender and satisfaction in Allah. ~ Fakhr Al Din Al Razi,

212:Since his sister had wisely neglected to inform him of this, he’d had no idea. In a fury, he went storming into her house, ready to lay about him with fists and whip, only to find a small group sitting peaceably on the floor, chanting verses from the Quran. They continued calmly despite Omar’s bursting in, disconcerting him enough to make him stand still. The musicality of the verses began to reach through the fog of rage and alcohol, and he sat down to listen. “How fine and noble are these words,” he said when they had finished, and asked to be taken to Muhammad to make the shahada, the formal pledge of belief. He’d never touch alcohol again. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

213:Hide Not Behind The Veil, My Love
Hide not behind the veil, my love,
I long to have a glimpse of you.
Without my love, I feel like mad,
People around me laugh at me.
He should come and cheer me up,
This alone remains my plea,
Hide not behind the veil, my love,
I long to have a glimpse of you.
Your slave is being auctioned free
Come my love and rescue me
No longer can I perch elsewhere
I am the Bulbul of your tree
Hide not behind the veil, my love,
I long to have a glimpse of you.
Bulleh! Who is He?
A queer type friend!
He has the Quran in His hand and
And in the same the holy thread
~ Bulleh Shah,

214:If they lived in Saudi Arabia, under Shari’a law, these college girls in their pretty scarves wouldn’t be free to study, to work, to drive, to walk around. In Saudi Arabia girls their age and younger are confined, are forced to marry, and if they have sex outside of marriage they are sentenced to prison and flogged. According to the Quran, their husband is permitted to beat them and decide whether they may work or even leave the house; he may marry other women without seeking their approval, and if he chooses to divorce them, they have no right to resist or to keep custody of their children. Doesn’t this matter at all to these clever young Muslim girls in America? ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

215:The fact that the descent of the Quran led not only to the foundation of one of the world’s great civilizations, but also to the creation of one of the major scientific, philosophical, and artistic traditions in global history was not accidental. Without the advent of the Quran, there would have been no Islamic sciences as we know them, sciences that were brought later to the West and we therefore would not have words such as “algebra,” “algorithm,” and many other scientific terms of Arabic origin in English. Nor would there be the Summas of St. Thomas Aquinas, at least in their existing form, since these Summas contain so many ideas drawn from Islamic sources. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,

216:The Quran says, “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256), and in most periods of Islamic history there was no forced conversion of the “People of the Book.” In fact, forced conversion is an affront to God and the dignity of the human conscience created by Him. Arabia at the time of the Quranic revelation was an exception. There the pagan Arabs who practiced a most crass form of polytheism were given the choice of either becoming Muslims or battling against them. It was very similar to the choice offered by Christian to European “pagans” once Christianity gained power on that continent. But even in Arabia, the Jews and Christians were not forced to become Muslims. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,

217:In old pictures, Srinagar is elegant; latticed houses, mosques, and temples admiring each other from the banks of theriver Jhelum; people strolling on the seven wooden bridges spanning it, wandering into old bazaars selling spices, lovingly embroidered shawls and carpets, and samovars with intricate engravings, or stepping with a prayer and an expectation into
a medieval shrine flaunting verses from the Quran and poems of mystics on windows and facades, and the gende greens and blues of papier mache interiors. But elegance is granted little space in an age of wars. Those wooden bridges have either collapsed or were murdered. Their skeletons remain, in the shadow of new arcs of concrete. ~ Basharat Peer,

218:On the ethics of war the Quran and the New Testament are worlds apart. Whereas Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, the Quran tells us, 'Whoso commits aggression against you, do you commit aggression against him' (2:194). The New Testament says nothing about how to wage war. The Quran, by contrast, is filled with just-war precepts. Here war is allowed in self-defense (2:190; 22:39), but hell is the punishment for killing other Muslims (4:93), and the execution of prisoners of war is explicitly condemned (47:4). Whether in the abstract is is better to rely on a scripture that regulates war or a scripture that hopes war away is an open question, but no Muslim-majority country has yet dropped an atomic bomb in war. ~ Stephen R Prothero,

219:It was common, back then," said Vikram, rolling his tea glass between his palms. "Living books. Alchemists were always trying to create them. There was the Quran, which shattered language and put it back together again in a way no one had been able to replicate, using words whose meanings evolved over time without the alteration of a single dot or brushstroke. As above, so below, the alchemists reasoned-they thought they could reverse-engineer the living word using chemical compounds. If they could create a book that was literally alive, perhaps it would also produce knowledge that transcended time."
"That's pretty blasphemous," said the convert.
"Oh, very. Heretics, my dear. They made the hashisheen look orthodox. ~ G Willow Wilson,

220:And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, "Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds?

Verily, you practise your lusts on men instead of women. Nay, but you are a people transgressing beyond bounds (by committing great sins)."

And the answer of his people was only that they said: "Drive them out of your town, these are indeed men who want to be pure (from sins)!"

Then We saved him and his family, except his wife; she was of those who remained behind (in the torment).

And We rained down on them a rain (of stones). Then see what was the end of the Mujrimun (criminals, polytheists, sinners, etc.).”
( A translation of Quran,7;80-84) ~ Anonymous,

221:It is known that the Quran leaves an analytical reader the impression of disarrangement, and that it seems to be a compound of diverse elements. Nevertheless, the Quran is life, not literature. Islam is a way of living rather than a way of thinking. The only authentic comment of the Quran can be life, and as we know, it was the life of the prophet Muhammad. Islam is in its written form (the Quran) may seem disorderly, but in the life of Muhammad it proves itself to be a natural union of love and force, the sublime and the real, the divine and the human. This explosive compound of religion and politics produced enormous force in the life of the peoples who accepted it. In one moment, Islam has coincided with the very essence of life. ~ Alija Izetbegovi,

222:Jelasnya, keutamaan al-Quran untuk menitikberatkan perbuatan dan proses mengetahui daripada tempat fizikal ilmu. Proses berfikir dan mengetahui dalam al-Quran dijelaskan oleh beberapa kata kerja seperti 'aqila, faqiha, tafakkara, hasiba, zanna, i'tibara, tadabbara dan hakima yang semuanya mesti bermula daripada data dan fakta persepsi indera. Pemikiran dalam Islam seharusnya berteraskan fakta atau data sama ada tentang alam, tabii, hakikat fizikal dan psikologi manusia dan aliran sejarah. Malahan, dalam pemikiran dan renungan mengenai kewujudan Allah yang ghaib umpamanya, al-Quran menarik perhatian akal manusia supaya berhujah daripada persekitara tabii, sejarah dan kejiwaannya dan pengalamannya, yang bertebaran di sepanjang halamannya. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud,

223:There are two distinct methods of interpreting the Quran. The first, tafsir, is primarily concerned with elucidating the literal meaning of the text, while the second, ta’wil, is more concerned with the hidden, esoteric meaning of the Quran. Tafsir answers questions of context and chronology, providing an easily understandable framework for Muslims to live a righteous life. Ta’wil delves into the concealed message of the text, which, because of its mystical nature, is comprehensible only to a select few. While both are considered equally valid approaches, the tension between tafsir and ta’wil is but one of the inevitable consequences of trying to interpret an eternal and uncreated scripture that is nevertheless firmly grounded in a specific historical context. For ~ Reza Aslan,

224:In fact, the term “holy war” originates not with Islam but with the Christian Crusaders who first used it to give theological legitimacy to what was in reality a battle for land and trade routes. “Holy war” was not a term used by Muslim conquerors, and it is in no way a proper definition of the word jihad. There are a host of words in Arabic that can be definitively translated as “war”; jihad is not one of them. The word jihad literally means “a struggle,” “a striving,” or “a great effort.” In its primary religious connotation (sometimes referred to as “the greater jihad”), it means the struggle of the soul to overcome the sinful obstacles that keep a person from God. This is why the word jihad is nearly always followed in the Quran by the phrase “in the way of God. ~ Reza Aslan,

225:And recite to them the news of Abraham
When he said to his father and his people: What do you worship?
They said, "We worship idols and remain to them devoted.
He said, "Do they hear you when you supplicate?
Or do they benefit you, or do they harm?
They said, "But we found our fathers doing thus.
He said, "Then do you see what you have been worshipping,
You and your ancient forefathers?
Indeed, they are enemies to me, except the Lord of the worlds,
Who created me, and He [it is who] guides me.
And it is He who feeds me and gives me drink.
And when I am ill, it is He who cures me
And who will cause me to die and then bring me to life
And who I aspire that He will forgive me my sin on the Day of Recompense.
(A Translation of Quran , 69-82) ~ Anonymous,

226:They say: "If it had been the will of The Most Gracious, we should not have worshiped such (deities)!" Of that they have no knowledge! they do nothing but lie! Indeed, have We given them a Scripture before this, to which they are holding fast? Nay! they say: "We found our fathers following a certain religion, and we do guide ourselves by their footsteps." Just in the same way, whenever We sent a Warner before thee to any people, the wealthy ones among them said: "We found our fathers following a certain religion, and we will certainly follow in their footsteps." He said: "Even if I brought you better guidance than that which ye found your fathers following?" They said: "For us, we deny that ye are sent!" So We exacted retribution from them: now see what was the end of those who rejected! ~ Quran 43:20-25,

227:Did the latter[The Messenger] have a predecessor, who envisaged
revelation as taking place by direct contact with a divine being rather than by
a book being sent down (whether as a whole or in instalments), who claimed
to have enjoyed such contact himself and who objected to the pagan angels—
not because they violated the dividing line between God and created beings
but rather because they were female? We do not hear of such a predecessor
elsewhere in the Quran, but we do learn that the Messenger had competitors in
his own time, at least in Yathrib (2:79, where they share his concept of revelation
as a book), so there is nothing implausible about the proposition that there
were preachers before him too, including some whose preaching anticipated
features of his own. ~ Patricia Crone,

228:kita menjadi kabilah
yang diburu dan dijadikan penjahat seperti kaum Musa as
oleh agama yang kita pegang dan junjung dengan percaya
dijadikan syariat dan jalan kebenaran; cahaya dan penyuluh
sedang mereka dengan keangkuhan dan kesombongan Firaun
menjulang pedang tajam kebebasan serta tombak kenihilan
untuk merobek agama dan kebenaran Tuhan yang kita miliki
atas nama hak asasi manusia, kesamarataan dan kebebasan berfikir
maka al-Quran mereka jadikan buku dari tangan manusia
yang boleh ditafsir akal sesuka hati dan dimaknakan semahunya
suara-suara mereka lagi mengatakan bahawa nabi-nabi
hanya mitos yang dicipta oleh agama - maksum itu hanya dongeng
dan Islam adalah nama yang diberikan warna penuh kelabu
untuk dilihat dengan penuh sinis dan prasangka gelap.

(Perjalanan 2) ~ S M Zakir,

229:Love Is Ever New And Fresh
Love is ever new and fresh
The day I learn the lesson of Love
I was scared of the mosque and dreaded fasts
I looked around and entered a temple
Where sounded many a drum-blast
Love is ever new and fresh
Tired of reading the Vedas and Quran
Kneeling and prostrating my forehead shorn
At Mathura or Mecca He does not dwell
He who has found Him, only he can tell
Love is ever new and fresh
Burn the prayer mat, break the water pot
Quit the rosary, threw away the staff
Lovers say at the top of their voice
Leave the kosher and eat the shot
Love is ever new and fresh
Heer and Ranjha have already met
In vain she looks for him in the orchard
Ranjha lies in the folds of her arms
Having her love, she has gained him hard
~ Bulleh Shah,

230:Yes. You do understand, you do. I knew you would. It was that analogy you made to the Quran that got me thinking in the first place. Metaphors: knowledge existing in several states simultaneously and without contradiction. The stag and the doe and the trap. Instead of working with linear strings of ones and zeroes, the computer could work with bundles that were one and zero and every point in between, all at once. If, if, if you could teach it to overcome its binary nature."
"That sounds very complicated indeed."
"It should be impossible, but it isn't." Alif began typing furiously. "All modern computers are pedants. To them the world is divided into black and white, off and on, right and wrong. But I will teach yours to recognize multiple origin points, interrelated geneses, systems of multivalent cause and effect. ~ G Willow Wilson,

231:Sebagaimana yang dikatakan tadi pintu-pintu yang terbuka untuk dimasuki oleh syaitan ke dalam hati adalah sangat banyak. Tetapi pintu untuk dimasuki oleh malaikat hanyalah sebuah sahaja. Sungguhpun demikian manusia masih terus terkeliru bila bedepan dengan pintu-pintu tersebut. Ianaya adalah sepeti seorang musafir yang sedang berada di tengah-tengah padang pasir yang mempunyai banyak jalan yang berliku-liku di tengah-tengah malam yang gelap gelita. Ia hanya dapat mengesan jalannya melalui mata hati dan terbitan matahari dengan sinarannya yang terang-benderang. Mata hati di sini ialah hati yang putih bersih bersalut taqwa, dan matahari yang terang-benderang ialah ilmu pengetahuan yang banyak diperolehi dari Al-Quran dan sunnah Rasulullah SAW yang mana memberinya petunjuk dan memimpinnya ke arah jalan lurus yang patut diikutinya. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,

232:Beyta, they weren’t following Hazrat Isa. They stopped following him a long time before. They turned Jesus into a god, and so they dishonored Hazrat Isa and blasphemed Allah! That is why Allah sent Muhammad and Islam as the final message for all of mankind. It embodies all the messages that Allah sent through the prophets: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, David, Elijah . . . all of them brought messages from Allah to their people, and although the people accepted their messages at first, later generations corrupted them all. Light gets dimmer the farther it gets from its source! That is why we cannot trust the Bible today; it is corrupted. Only the Quran is perfect. Only Islam is incorruptible. Allah will guard it until the message spreads and the world becomes Muslim. That is when the day of judgment will come. That is the day Islam will be victorious. ~ Nabeel Qureshi,

233:The possibility of an ideal society became impossible from the moment of creation, the moment of the "humanization of man." From that moment on, man has been faced with eternal conflict, disquiet, dissatisfaction, drama. "Get you down, all (you people) with enmity between yourselves" (Quran, 2:36). The ideal society is a monotonous and infinite succession of depersonalized generations which bring forth, produce, consume, and die, and so on to the "wrong" eternity. The fact of creation and of God's interference in the human existence made this "mechanism" impossible and illusory; hence, the fanatic opposition of all utopias to God and religion. So, while prophets of utopia proclaimed society and its interests to be the supreme value, God wanted that role to be man's. He gave freedom in order to make this world a temptation and to affirm man and his soul as the highest value. ~ Alija Izetbegovi,

234:The cure for hatred is straightforward. One should pray for the person toward whom he feels hatred; make specific supplication mentioning this person by name, asking God to give this person good things in this life and the next. When one does this with sincerity, hearts mend. If one truly wants to purify his or her heart and root out disease, there must be total sincerity and conviction that these cures are effective.
Arguably, the disease of hatred is one of the most devastating forces in the world. But the force that is infinitely more powerful is love. Love is an attribute of God; hate is not. A name of God mentioned in the Quran is al-Wadud, the Loving one. Hate is the absence of love, and only through love can hatred be removed from the heart. In a profound and beautiful hadith, the Prophet said, "None of you has achieved faith until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. ~ Hamza Yusuf,

235:Umar, despite his strong character and impressive personality, had lost control of himself for a short while, his emotions seizing him so strongly that it brought out a heretofore unsuspected fragility, causing him to react like a child refusing the ruling of God, of reality, of life. By contrast, Abu Bakr, who was normally so sensitive, who wept so abundantly and so intensely when he read the Quran, had received the news of the Prophet’s death with deep sorrow but also with extraordinary calm and unsuspected inner strength. At that particular moment, the two men’s roles were inverted, thus showing that through his departure the Prophet offered us a final teaching: in the bright depths of spirituality, sensitivity can produce a degree of strength of being that nothing can disturb. Conversely, the strongest personality, if it forgets itself for a moment, can become vulnerable and fragile. The ~ Tariq Ramadan,

236:And finally, when the celebrated Quranic commentator Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi (1149–1209) interpreted the verse “[God] created spouses for you of your own kind so that you may have peace of mind through them” (3:21) as “proof that women were created like animals and plants and other useful things [and not for] worship and carrying the Divine commands . . . because the woman is weak, silly, and in one sense like a child,” his commentary became (and still is) one of the most widely respected in the Muslim world.
This last point bears repeating. The fact is that for fifteen centuries, the science of Quranic commentary has been the exclusive domain of Muslim men. And because each one of these exegetes inevitably brings to the Quran his own ideology and his own preconceived notions, it should not be surprising to learn that certain verses have most often been read in their most misogynist interpretation. ~ Reza Aslan,

237:Although signs may be found in everything that comes to us, as though a river at our doorstep carried these messages on its surface, the Quran (like other sacred books) speaks in terms of empirical experience, since it is intended to endure through the ages and cannot bind itself to the ‘scientific’ theories of any particular time. Its images are the phenomena of nature as they appear to us in our experience — the rising and setting of the sun, the domed sky above and the mountains, which are like weights set upon the earth. Scientific observations change according to the preconceptions of the observer and the instruments at his disposal, and the speculations which blinkered human minds construct on the basis of these observations change no less swiftly. But man’s experience of the visual universe does not change. The sun ‘rises’ for me today as it ‘rose’ for the man of ten thousand years ago. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton,

238:After the loss of so much of the learning of the past, the destruction of manuscripts and the slaughter of scholars, it was more important to recover what had been lost than to inaugurate more change. Because the Mongol military code made no provision for civil society, the ulama continued to govern the lives of the faithful, and their influence tended to be conservative. Where Sufis such as Rumi believed that all religions were valid, by the fourteenth century the ulama had transformed the pluralism of the Quran into a hard communalism, which saw other traditions as irrelevant relics of the past. Non-Muslims were forbidden now to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and it became a capital offence to make insulting remarks about the Prophet Muhammad. The trauma of the invasions had, not surprisingly, made Muslims feel insecure. Foreigners were not only suspect; they could be as lethal as the Mongols. ~ Karen Armstrong,

239:What comes to us - or may come to us - is a gift from God which is adjusted to our receptivity, but is none the less out of all proportion to our deserts. Our principle task is to make ourselves ready. What is offered is clear and simple but, faced even with the possibility of this gift, we find ourselves to be a mass of contradictions, not merely unfit to receive it but incapable of taking it in.

The profane man's selfhood is a debris of memories and dreams, false hopes and lingering guilts, or hard little pebbles of self-concern, desire and fear. This is the 'hardened heart' of which the Quran speaks of so often. A vessel must be emptied before it can be refilled, and only someone who has expelled this debris from the centre of his being can hope that something of the divine plenitude may flow into him. There is not room in the human heart for two, as the mystics have said on a number of occasions. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton,

240:But later that night, as I brush my teeth in the bathroom, I overhear Baba and Thaya Jaan talking in the guest room next door. “

All this music all the time. You shouldn’t let Amina do so much singing and piano,” Thaya Jaan says.

I stop brushing and strain to hear every word, trying to follow.

“But, Bhai Jaan, she is so talented. Her music teachers say she is really quite gifted.”

“Yes, but music is forbidden in Islam. It’s a waste of time and has no benefit. Instead of filling her head with music, she should focus on memorizing Quran.”

The toothpaste suddenly tastes bitter. I spit it out and wait to hear what Baba will say. Surely he’ll say the things he’s always told me, like how music makes him feel closer to God and that my talent is a gift from Allah.

But all Baba says is, “Yes, Bhai Jaan,” and then he stays quiet.

I am numb. Is Thaya Jaan right? Am I doing something wrong? ~ Hena Khan,

241:But there were ulama who refused to accept the closing of the “gates of ijtihad.” Throughout Islamic history, at times of great political crisis—especially during a period of foreign encroachment—a reformer (mujdadid) would often renew the faith so that it could meet the new conditions. These reforms usually followed a similar pattern. They were conservative, since they attempted to go back to basics rather than create an entirely new solution. But in this desire to return to the pristine Islam of the Quran and sunnah, the reformers were often iconoclastic in sweeping away later medieval developments that had come to be considered sacred. They were also suspicious of foreign influence, and alien accretions, which had corrupted what they saw as the purity of the faith. This type of reformer would become a feature of Muslim society. Many of the people who are called “Muslim fundamentalists” in our own day correspond exactly to the old pattern set by the mujdadids. ~ Karen Armstrong,

242:The humiliation of the ummah was not merely a political catastrophe, but touched a Muslim’s very soul. This new weakness was a sign that something had gone gravely awry in Islamic history. The Quran had promised that a society which surrendered to God’s revealed will could not fail. Muslim history had proved this. Time and again, when disaster had struck, the most devout Muslims had turned to religion, made it speak to their new circumstances, and the ummah had not only revived but had usually gone on to greater achievements. How could Islamdom be falling more and more under the domination of the secular, Godless West? From this point, a growing number of Muslims would wrestle with these questions, and their attempts to put Muslim history back on the straight path would sometimes appear desperate and even despairing. The suicide bomber—an almost unparalleled phenomenon in Islamic history—shows that some Muslims are convinced that they are pitted against hopeless odds. ~ Karen Armstrong,

243:There is absolutely nothing divine about the Shariah and in no way can it possibly be considered fixed and infallible. The argument that the Shariah derives its divine nature from its first and primary source, the Quran, falls flat when one recognizes that the Quran, unlike the Torah, is not a book of laws. The Quran is God’s direct self-revelation to humanity. Certainly, it contains the moral framework for living a holy and righteous life as a Muslim. But it was never meant to function as a legal code, which is precisely why scholars had to rely so heavily on extra-Quranic sources like ijma (consensus), qiyas (analogy), istislah (which refers to the common good of the people), and ijtihad (independent juristic reasoning)—all of them, by definition, reliant on human judgment and historical context—in order to construct the Shariah in the first place. To say the Shariah is divine because the Quran is divine is akin to arguing that water and wine are the same, since water is a primary ingredient in wine. ~ Reza Aslan,

244:Justeru itu, boleh dikatakan bahawa al-Quran menimbangkan beberapa saluran bagi manusia mendapat petunjuk, bagi memahami tujuan dan peraturan kehidupan dan kewujudan yang lebih tinggi. Di satu sudut terdapat petunjuk berbentuk kitab yang diturunkan dalam bahasa tertentu bagi menghadapi keperluan penting sesuatu umat dan melaluinya ditujukan kepada seluruh manusia. Di sudut yang lain, terdapat bimbingan universal dalam fenomena tabii, sejarah dan psikologi insan yang boleh dimanfaatkan oleh manusia. Kedua-duanya saling melengkapi dan yang satu tidak dapat mencapai tahap tertinggi pembangunan individu dan kolektif tanpa yang satu lagi. Sejarah telah menyaksikan bahawa umat Islam menjadi 'mundur' apabila mereka berpegang teguh kepada petunjuk yang pertama sahaja, sementara orang moden menjadi 'sedih' dan 'sesat' dengan menggunakan petunjuk yang kedua sahaja. Ilmu tentang alam semesta dan kekuasaan ke atasnya adalah untuk lebih menyedari kemurahan, kebijaksanaan dan kekuasaan Allah dan seterusnya memperbaiki kebajikan manusia. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud,

245:Mary peace be upon her the Choosen and the Pure women of the Whorld the Honor Women the Chapter 19 of QURAN named by her names Mary Maryam in Arabic :
"[Mention, O Muhammad], when the wife of 'Imran said, "My Lord, indeed I have pledged to You what is in my womb, consecrated [for Your service], so accept this from me. Indeed, You are the Hearing, the Knowing." But when she delivered her, she said, "My Lord, I have delivered a female." And Allah was most knowing of what she delivered, "And the male is not like the female. And I have named her Mary, and I seek refuge for her in You and [for] her descendants from Satan, the expelled [from the mercy of Allah ]." So her Lord accepted her with good acceptance and caused her to grow in a good manner and put her in the care of Zechariah. Every time Zechariah entered upon her in the prayer chamber, he found with her provision. He said, "O Mary, from where is this [coming] to you?" She said, "It is from Allah . Indeed, Allah provides for whom He wills without account." Quran Family of Imran 3 : 35-37. ~ Anonymous,

246:The traditional Islamic worldview is totally opposed to the prevalent modern paradigm of the relation between human beings and nature, which has caused unprecedented harm to the natural environment, has led to the loss of many species, and now threatens the very future of human life on earth. Islam sees men and women as God’s vicegerents on earth. Therefore, in the same way that God has power over His creation but is also its sustainer and protector, human beings must also combine power over nature with responsibility for its protection and sustenance. The Quran is replete with references to nature, and the phenomena of nature are referred to as God’s signs and are therefore sacred. In traditional Islamic society human beings lived in remarkable harmony with their natural environment, as can be seen in the urban design of traditional Islamic cities and also in the life in the villages, which, as in other premodern parts of the world, is still based on remarkable harmony with the rhythms of nature and makes full use of what is now called recycling. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,

247:Enough Of Learning, My Friend!
Enough of learning, my friend!
An alphabet should do for you
To it there is never an end
An alphabet should do for you
It's enough to help you fend.
Enough of learning, my friend!
Enough of learning, my friend!
You've amassed much learning around
The Quran and its commentaries profound
There is darkness amidst lighted ground
Without the guide you remain unsound
Enough of learning, my friend!
Learning makes you Sheikh or his minion
And thus you create problem trillion
You exploit oyhers who know not what
Misleading them with wild opinion
Enough of learning, my friend!
You meditate and you say your prayers
You go and shout at the top of the stairs
You cry reaching the high skies
It's your avarice which ever belies
Enough of learning, my friend!
The day I learnt love's lesson
I plunged into the river of devine passion
An overwhelming gale. I was confused and lost
When Shah Inayat cruised me across
Enough of learning, my friend!
~ Bulleh Shah,

248:To break the mummified silence, Reyha says, "Thank you, Mom, it is delicious."
A gold-rimmed china bowl filled with lettuce, wheat sprouts, and beans. I have requested a massacre of plants for lunch. The sound of the lettuce crunching between my teeth echoes in my ears...
"Lettuce and carrots love human teeth," I say.
They don't know that they should laugh. Mother's skin is so fair. Her lips bitterly curved downward, just like Reyhaneh's, show no sign of her usual naive smile.
"It's great that you all eat meat. If everyone was a vegetarian, the sheep would die of hunger."
I laugh at my own inane joke, dig out the unchewable lettuce string stuck between my teeth, and I put it on the side of the bowl.
"At the front they used to tell us that if we were martyred, we would go to heaven. I have heard that in heaven, the instant you crave grapes or apples, the tree branches bend down to you. But the Quran doesn't say if there are carrots in heaven or not. Our house is better than heaven. It has lettuce, it has carrots. And I crave these every day... ~ Shahriar Mandanipour,

249:I thought that perhaps Boqol Sawm was translating the Quran poorly: Surely Allah could not have said that men should beat their wives when they were disobedient? Surely a woman’s statement in court should be worth the same as a man’s? I told myself, “None of these people understands that the real Quran is about true equality. The Quran is higher and better than these men.” I bought my own English edition of the Quran and read it so I could understand it better. But I found that everything Boqol Sawm had said was in there. Women should obey their husbands. Women were worth half a man. Infidels should be killed. I talked to Sister Aziza, and she confirmed it. Women are emotionally stronger than men, she said. They can endure more, so they are tested more. Husbands may punish their wives—not for small infractions, like being late, but for major infractions, like being provocative to other men. This is just, because of the overwhelming sexual power of women. I asked, “What if the man provokes other women?” Sister Aziza said, “In an Islamic society, that’s impossible.” Furthermore, ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

250:The suggestion that the Alf Yeom is the work of jinn is surely a curious one. The Quran speaks of the hidden people in the most candid way, yet more and more the educated faithful will not admit to believing in them, however readily they might accept even the harshest and most obscure points of Islamic law. That God has ordained that a thief must pay for his crime with his hand, that a woman must inherit half of what a man inherits-these things are treated not only as facts, but as obvious facts, whereas the existence of conscious beings we cannot see-and all the fantastic and wondrous things that their existence suggests and makes possible-produces profound discomfort among precisely that cohort of Muslims most lauded for their role in that religious "renaissance" presently expected by western observers: young degree-holding traditionalists. Yet how hollow rings a tradition in which the law, which is subject to interpretation, is held as sacrosanct, yet the word of God is not to be trusted when it comes to His description of what He has created.
I do not know what I believe. ~ G Willow Wilson,

251:...it is reasonable to maintain that the spectacle of human nature extended to its uttermost limits has much to teach us about ourselves and is therefore, after its fashion, a 'sign for those who understand'. According to a famous hadith of the Prophet, Adam was created 'in the image of God'; and we are Adam's progeny , 'the tribe of Adam', as the Quran has it. There is something in man, precisely because the One-without-associate, the Independent, the Self-sufficient is in some mysterious way reflected in his nature, which demands such freedom from constraint as only an absolute ruler has. But because man is not God this opportunity to extend himself limitlessly leads to destruction; in the desire for great power and in its exercise there are certainly elements of greed and arrogance, but there may also be an element of nobility striving for a supreme mode of self-expression. These men we have been considering revealed human nature, stripped to the bone, in all its grandeur, its instability and its ferocity; and those who find such men totality alien know very little about themselves. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton,

252:The evidence is all around us. There are a thousand ways in which our existence may be terminated between one moment and the next; a simple drug will transform the most intelligent among us into an idiot, or the bravest among us into a coward; and we know from our reading if not from experience that techniques of torture, more widely practised today than at any time in the past, can destroy every vestige of human dignity in a very short time. Such human dignity as we may have - and the Viceregent of God is indeed a figure of great dignity - is a robe loaned to us, just as a woman’s beauty is loaned to her, just as our skills, whether hereditary or acquired, are on loan, as are our strengths and our virtues. We can claim nothing as being truly ours except for our weaknesses and our vices, together with the ill we do in the world; for the Quran assures us that all good comes from God, all ill from man. We do not even control the breath of life within us, and: ‘No soul knoweth what it will earn tomorrow nor doth any soul know in what land it will die. Truly Allah is the Knower, the Aware!’ (Q.31.34). ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton,

253:What earth is this so in want of you they rise up on high to seek you in heaven? Look at them staring at you right before their eyes, unseeing, unseeing, blind. . . . I was patient, but can the heart be patient of its heart? My spirit and yours blend together whether we are near one another or far away. I am you, you, my being, end of my desire, The most intimate of secret thoughts enveloped and fixed along the horizon in folds of light. How? The "how" is known along the outside, while the interior of beyond to and for the heart of being. Creatures perish in the darkened blind of quest, knowing intimations. Guessing and dreaming they pursue the real, faces turned toward the sky whispering secrets to the heavens. While the lord remains among them in every turn of time abiding in their every condition every instant. Never without him, they, not for the blink of an eye -- if only they knew! nor he for a moment without them. [1520.jpg] -- from Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Quran, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings (Classics of Western Spirituality), by Michael A. Sells

~ Mansur al-Hallaj, If They Only Knew
,

254:Everyday i get closer to our meeting
i feel like i've been walking this path for a thousand years
towards you..
and yet i'm still not there
so close, and yet so far
but i keep walking
despite the tears
despite the wind
despite the skinned knees and broken bones
despite the bruises and scars that made this heart what it is today
i keep walking
towards you
there's only one direction
one direction:
towards you...
from you, to you
i have nothing else
nothing
that is my poverty
i keep walking
because behind every sun's setting is a rising
behind every storm is a refuge
behind every fall is a rise
behind every tear is a cleansing of the eyes
and in every spot i've ever been stabbed, is a healing
and the creation of skin stronger than it was
i keep walking
because WALLAHI i've nothing but your mercy
i've nothing but your promise
your words
your promise that:
يَا أَيُّهَا الْإِنسَانُ إِنَّكَ كَادِحٌ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ كَدْحًا فَمُلَاقِيهِ - 84:6
O mankind, indeed you are laboring toward your Lord with [great] exertion and will meet it. [Quran 84:6] ~ Yasmin Mogahed,

255:Sure, we can hear the reverberating echoes of the Big Bang. Yet that cosmic vibration tells us nothing about what was before the Big Bang, or what was before that, or how or why there was even a bang to be binged at all. This mostly wet ball full of ptarmigans, ponytails, and poverty is floating in space among a billion other balls, and there are galaxies swirling and there is a universe expanding, which itself may actually just be an undulating freckle on the cusp of something we can’t even conceive of, amid an endless soup of ever more unfathomables. And I find such a situation to be utterly, manifestly, psychedelically amazing—and far more spine-tinglingly awe-inspiring than any story I’ve ever read in the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, the Upanishads, Dianetics, the Doctrine and Covenants, or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. So smell that satchel of tangerines and nimbly hammer a dulcimer or pluck a chicken and listen to your conscience or master a new algorithm or walk to work or hitch a ride. Because we’re here. And we will never, ever know why or exactly how this all comes about. That’s the situation. Deal with it. Accept it. Let the mystery be. ~ Phil Zuckerman,

256:On September 16,1978, there was an eclipse of the moon in Riyadh. Late one afternoon it became visible: a dark shadow moving slowly across the face of the pale moon in the darkening blue sky. There was a frantic knocking on the door.When I opened it, our neighbor asked if we were safe. He said it was the Day of Judgment, when the Quran says the sun will rise from the west and the seas will flood, when all the dead will rise and Allah's angels will weigh our sins and virtue, expediting the good to Paradise and the bad to Hell. Though it was barely twilight, the muezzin suddenly called for prayer—not one mosque calling carefully after the other, as they usually did, but all the mosques clamoring all at once, all over the city. There was shouting across the neighborhood. When I looked outside I saw people praying in the street. Now more neighbors came knocking,asking us to pardon past misdeeds. They told us children to pray for them, because children's prayers are answered most. The gates of Hell yawned open before us. We were panicked.... but the next morning, the sun was safely in its usual place, fat and implacable, and the world wasn't ending after all. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

257:At what point will I be able to write an e-mail to my grandson in Bahrain merely by thinking it?"

"Thinking it?" Alif smiled contemptuously. "I expect never. Quantum computing will be the next thing, but I don't think it will be capable of transcribing thought."

"Quantum? Oh dear, I've never heard of that."

It will use qubits instead of-well, that's kind of complicated. Regular computers use a binary language to figure things out and talk to each other-ones and zeroes. Quantum computers could use ones and zeroes in an unlimited number of states, so in theory, they could store massive amounts of data and perform tasks that regular computers can't perform."

"States?"

"Positions in space and time. Ways of being."

"Now it is you who are metaphysical. Let me rephrase what I think you have said in language from my own field of study: they say that each word in the Quran has seven thousand layers of meaning, each of which, though some might seem contrary or simply unfathomable to us, exist equally at all times without cosmological contradiction. Is this similar to what you mean?"

"Yes," he said. "That is exactly what I mean. I've never heard anybody make that comparison. ~ G Willow Wilson,

258:Sharia law uses the sacred texts of Islam as the basis for moral behavior, the way Jews are supposed to use the Talmud and Christians the Bible—and, in Muslim countries, it uses the Quran explicitly as the basis for legal codes. Just before we elected our forty-fourth non-Muslim president in a row, people on the right began fantasizing that American Muslims were scheming to supplant U.S. jurisprudence with Islamic jurisprudence. The definitive text is a 2010 book called Shariah: The Threat to America. Its nineteen authors included respectable hard-right conservatives and national security wonks. We’re “infiltrated and deeply influenced,” the book says, “by an enemy within that is openly determined to replace the U.S. Constitution with shariah.” The movement took off, and in short order the specter of sharia became a right-wing catchphrase encompassing suspicion of almost any Islamic involvement in the U.S. civic sphere. The word gave Islamophobia a patina of legitimacy. It was a specific fantasy—not I hate Muslims or I hate Arabs but rather I don’t want to live under Taliban law, and therefore it could pass as not racist but anti-tyranny. It was also a shiny new exotic term, a word nobody in America but a few intellectuals knew. ~ Kurt Andersen,

259:The violent secularism of al-Nasser had led Qutb to espouse a form of Islam that distorted both the message of the Quran and the Prophet’s life. Qutb told Muslims to model themselves on Muhammad: to separate themselves from mainstream society (as Muhammad had made the hijrah from Mecca to Medina), and then engage in a violent jihad. But Muhammad had in fact finally achieved victory by an ingenious policy of non-violence; the Quran adamantly opposed force and coercion in religious matters, and its vision—far from preaching exclusion and separation—was tolerant and inclusive. Qutb insisted that the Quranic injunction to toleration could occur only after the political victory of Islam and the establishment of a true Muslim state. The new intransigence sprang from the profound fear that is at the core of fundamentalist religion. Qutb did not survive. At al-Nasser’s personal insistence, he was executed in 1966.

Every Sunni fundamentalist movement has been influenced by Qutb. Most spectacularly it has inspired Muslims to assassinate such leaders as Anwar al-Sadat, denounced as a jahili ruler because of his oppressive policies towards his own people. The Taliban, who came to power in Afghanistan in 1994, are also affected by his ideology. ~ Karen Armstrong,

260:Jerusalem! My Love,My Town

I wept until my tears were dry
I prayed until the candles flickered
I knelt until the floor creaked
I asked about Mohammed and Christ
Oh Jerusalem, the fragrance of prophets
The shortest path between earth and sky
Oh Jerusalem, the citadel of laws
A beautiful child with fingers charred
and downcast eyes
You are the shady oasis passed by the Prophet
Your streets are melancholy
Your minarets are mourning
You, the young maiden dressed in black
Who rings the bells at the Nativity Church,
On sunday morning?
Who brings toys for the children
On Christmas eve?
Oh Jerusalem, the city of sorrow
A big tear wandering in the eye
Who will halt the aggression
On you, the pearl of religions?
Who will wash your bloody walls?
Who will safeguard the Bible?
Who will rescue the Quran?
Who will save Christ, From those who have killed Christ?
Who will save man?
Oh Jerusalem my town
Oh Jerusalem my love
Tomorrow the lemon trees will blossom
And the olive trees will rejoice
Your eyes will dance
The migrant pigeons will return
To your sacred roofs
And your children will play again
And fathers and sons will meet
On your rosy hills
My town
The town of peace and olives ~,

261:Sema is a pure Semitic reference that most probably has been interpreted later on in other cultures to be a 'third eye' as I am witnessing to the works of my friends such as Richard Cassaro and Gary Osborn. However, after establishing the link between Egypt and Mecca, I cannot evade observing the fact that the Shen sign could only have originally referred to 'protection' for that my additional proof lies in Quran where the position of such symbolism is clearly distinguished to be within the Eyes (Quran 52:48). Sema is the concept with which ancient Egyptians unequivocally aspired to Mecca's heritage. They used it to tighten their claim on divine civilization knowing the significance of the mother of all cities (i.e., Mecca). The Symbolism of Sema Tawy is a pure Semitic construct, it is so Semitic that the purest Semitic tongue (i.e., Arabic) and the one nearest to the Proto-Semitic language (according to western scholars themselves) has articulated itself unambiguously in the most influential Semitic book (i.e., Quran) saying: 'Their Sema(s) are on their faces from the trace of prostration'. What this demonstrates to us is that ancient Egypt confused the divine function of protecting the believer with that of the human function of worshipping the creator in its symbolism. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim,

262:In Sura 18 ayahs 59-81, Khidr figures in a mysterious episode, a thorough study of which would require an exhaustive confrontation with the earliest Quran commentaries. He is represented as Moses' (PBUH) guide, who initiates Moses (PBUH) "into the science of predestination." Thus he reveals himself to be the repository of an inspired divine science, superior to the law (shari'a); thus Khidr is superior to Moses (PBUH) in so far as Moses (PBUH) is a prophet invested with the mission of revealing a shari'a. He reveals to Moses (PBUH) precisely the secret, mystic truth (haqiqa) that transcends the shari'a, and this explains why the spiritually inaugurated by Khidr is free from the servitude of the literal religion. If we consider that Khidr's mission is likewise related o the spiritual mission of the Imam through the identification of Khidr with Elijah (PBUH), it becomes evident that we have here one of the scriptural foundations on which the deepest aspiration of Shi'ism is built. And indeed Khidr's pre-eminence over Moses (PBUH) ceases to be a paradox only if we consider it in this light; otherwise, Moses (PBUH) remains one of the six pre-eminent prophets charged with revealing a shari'a, while Khidr is merely one of the hundred and eighty thousand nabis, mentioned in our traditions. ~ Henry Corbin,

263:I found it remarkable how many esteemed Muslim thinkers had philosophized at such length about precisely how much female skin could be bared without causing chaos to break out across the landscape. Of course, almost all these thinkers agreed that once a girl reaches puberty, every part of her body except her face and her hands must be covered when in the company of any men who are not immediate family, and at all times outside the home. This was because her bare skin would involuntarily cause men to feel an uncontrollable frenzy of sexual arousal. But not all thinkers agreed on exactly which parts of a woman’s face and hands were so beguiling that they must be covered. Some scholars held that the eyes of women were the strongest source of sexual provocation: when the Quran said women should lower their gaze, it actually meant they should hide their eyes. Another school of thought held that the very sight of a woman’s lips, especially full ones that were firm and young, could bring a man into a sexual state that could cause his downfall. Yet other thinkers spent pages and pages on the sensual curve of the chin, a pretty nose, or long, slender fingers and the tendency of some women to move their hands in a way that attracted attention to their temptations. For every limitation the Prophet was quoted. Even ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

264:He did not come floating off the mountain as though walking on air. He did not run down shouting “Hallelujah” and “Bless the Lord.” He did not radiate light and joy. There were no choirs of angels, no music of the heavens. No elation, no ecstasy, no golden aura surrounding him. No sense of his absolute, foreordained, unquestionable role as the messenger of God. Not even the whole of the Quran fully revealed, but only a few brief verses. In short, Muhammad did none of the things that might seem essential to the legend of a man who had just done the impossible and crossed the border between this world and another—none of the things that might make it easy to cry foul, to denigrate the whole story as an invention, a cover for something as mundane as delusion or personal ambition. On the contrary: he was convinced that what he had encountered could not be real. At best it must be a hallucination: a trick of the eye or the ear, or his own mind working against him. At worst, possession, and he had been seized by an evil jinn, a spirit out to deceive him, even to crush the life out of him. In fact he was so sure that he could only be majnun, literally possessed by a jinn, that when he found himself still alive, his first instinct had been to finish the job himself, to leap off the highest cliff and escape the terror of what he had experienced by putting an end to all experience. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

265:Pada zahirnya setiap golongan cuba mempertahankan atau menerangkan Tuhan berdasarkan prinsip-prinsip tertentu yang disanjung secara terpisah kerana kekurangan pemahaman yang padu dan jelas tentang pandangan alam al-Quran. Justeru itu kita lihat golongan Muktazilah mempertahankan keesaan dan keadilan Allah dengan mengorbankan sifat Maha Pemurah dan Maha Pengampun-Nya; sementara ahli falsafah pula mengecilkan-Nya kepada satu prinsip tanpa makna yang terputus daripada makhluk-Nya dan sejarah. Golongan Mutakallimun yang pada umumnya mendokong aspek kekuasaan dan iradah-Nya mengalami kesukaran untuk menyelaraskan hal ini dengan kenyataan al-Quran tentang kebebasan dan tanggungjawab insan. Golongan ahli tasawuf yang berusaha memperoleh hubungan erat dengan Tuhan, yang mana merupakan ideal al-Quran pula, lemas dalam perjuangan 'haloba' (yang mementingkan diri) yang mengabaikan semua perhatian sosiopolitik. Walhal keprihatinan sosiopolitik yang dapat dijelmakan dengan sempurna merupakan kandungan penting dalam kejayaan dan ketakwaan Islam. Beberapa golongan Ahli Sunnah wal Jamaah yang mengajar keterangan al-Quran secara harfiah yang ketat terjebak dalam kesulitan antromorfisma yang merbahaya yang menafikan kenyataan al-Quran yang paling mustahal tentang Allah. "Tidak ada satu pun yang serupa dengan-Nya." (Surah al-Syuura 42:11) atau "Tidak ada sesuatu pun yang setara dengan-Nya." (Surah al-Ikhlas 112:4) ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud,

266:Years ago, a Muslim woman called my radio show and asked me why I was not a Muslim. She asked this question with complete sincerity, and I answered her with equal sincerity.
The name of her religion, I told her, is Islam, which in Arabic means submission (to God). The name of the Jewish people is Israel, which in Hebrew means struggle with God. I’d rather struggle with God, I said, than only submit to God.
She thanked me and hung up. The answer apparently satisfied her.
Arguing/struggling with God is not only Jewishly permitted, it is central to the Torah and later Judaism. In this regard, as in others, the Torah is unique. In no other foundational religious text of which I am aware is arguing with God a religious expectation. The very first Jew, Abraham, argues with God, as does the greatest Jew, Moses. (It is worth noting that though Muslims consider Abraham their father as well, arguing with God has no place in the Quran or in normative Islam.)
It is difficult to overstate the importance of this Jewish concept. For one thing, it enabled Jews to believe in the importance of reason — God Himself could be challenged on the basis of reason and morality; one does not have to suspend reason to be a believing Jew. Indeed, it assured Jews that belief in God was itself the apotheosis of reason. For another, it had profound psychological benefits to Jews. We do not have to squelch our questioning of, or even our anger at, God. One can be both religious and real. ~ Dennis Prager,

267:The mystics have always stressed the religious aspect of Islam, the rationalists the other one. All the same, both of them have always had difficulties with Islam, simply because it cannot be put into any of their classifications. Take wudu as an example. A mystic will define it as a religious ablution with symbolic meaning. A rationalist will look upon it as a matter of hygiene only. They are both right, but only partly. The defectiveness of the mystic explanation lies in the fact that it lets the hygienic side of wudu become a mere form. Following the same logic in other questions, this approach will reduce Islam to pure religion, by eliminating all physical, intellectual, and social components from it. The rationalists take quite the opposite way. By neglecting the religious side, they degrade Islam to a political movement only, creating a new type of nationalism from it, a so called Islamic nationalism, deprived of ethical-religious substance, empty and equal to all other nationalisms in this regard. To be a Muslim in this case, does not represent an appeal or a duty, a moral or a religious obligation, or any attitude to the universal truth. It means only belonging to a group different from the other one. Islam has never been only a nation. Rather, Islam is a call to a nation, " to enjoin the right and to forbid the wrong" Quran- that is, to perform a moral mission. If we disregard the political component of Islam and accept religious mysticism , we silently admit dependence and slavery. On the contrary, if we ignore the religious component , we cease to be any moral force. ~ Alija Izetbegovi,

268:The religious scholar and Muslim Brotherhood ideologist Sayyid Qutb articulated perhaps the most learned and influential version of this view. In 1964, while imprisoned on charges of participating in a plot to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser, Qutb wrote Milestones, a declaration of war against the existing world order that became a foundational text of modern Islamism. In Qutb’s view, Islam was a universal system offering the only true form of freedom: freedom from governance by other men, man-made doctrines, or “low associations based on race and color, language and country, regional and national interests” (that is, all other modern forms of governance and loyalty and some of the building blocks of Westphalian order). Islam’s modern mission, in Qutb’s view, was to overthrow them all and replace them with what he took to be a literal, eventually global implementation of the Quran. The culmination of this process would be “the achievement of the freedom of man on earth—of all mankind throughout the earth.” This would complete the process begun by the initial wave of Islamic expansion in the seventh and eighth centuries, “which is then to be carried throughout the earth to the whole of mankind, as the object of this religion is all humanity and its sphere of action is the whole earth.” Like all utopian projects, this one would require extreme measures to implement. These Qutb assigned to an ideologically pure vanguard, who would reject the governments and societies prevailing in the region—all of which Qutb branded “unIslamic and illegal”—and seize the initiative in bringing about the new order. ~ Henry Kissinger,

269:What do you mean, words whose meanings evolved?" asked Alif. "That doesn't make sense. The Quran is the Quran."
Vikram folded his legs-Alif did not watch this operation closely-and smiled at his audience.
"The convert will understand. How do they translate ذرة in your English interpretation?"
"Atom," said the convert.
You don't find that strange, considering atoms were unknown in the sixth century?"
The convert chewed her lip. "I never thought of that," she said.
"You're right. There's no way atom is the original meaning of that word."
"Ah." Vikram held up two fingers in a sign of benediction. He looked, Alif thought, like some demonic caricature of a saint. "But it is. In the twentieth century, atom became the original meaning of ذرة, because an atom was the tiniest object known to man. Then man split the atom. Today, the original meaning might be hadron. But why stop there? Tomorrow, it might be quark. In a hundred years, some vanishingly small object so foreign to the human mind that only Adam remembers its name. Each of those will be the original meaning of ذرة.
Alif snorted. "That's impossible. ذرة must refer to some fundamental thing. It's attached to an object."
"Yes it is. The smallest indivisible particle. That is the meaning packaged in the word. No part of it lifts out-it does not mean smallest, nor indivisible, nor particle, but all those things at once. Thus, in man's infancy, ذرة was a grain of sand. Then a mote of dust. Then a cell. Then a molecule. Then an atom. And so on. Man's knowledge of the universe may grow, but ذرة does not change."
"That's..."The convert trailed off, looking lost.
"Miraculous. Indeed. ~ G Willow Wilson,

270:Consider, for example, how the following verse (4:34) regarding the obligations of men toward women has been rendered into English by two different but widely read contemporary translators of the Quran. The first is from the Princeton edition, translated by Ahmed Ali; the second is from Majid Fakhry’s translation, published by New York University: Men are the support of women [qawwamuna ’ala an-nisa] as God gives some more means than others, and because they spend of their wealth (to provide for them).… As for women you feel are averse, talk to them suasively; then leave them alone in bed (without molesting them) and go to bed with them (when they are willing). Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made some of them excel the others, and because they spend some of their wealth.… And for those [women] that you fear might rebel, admonish them and abandon them in their beds and beat them [adribuhunna]. Because of the variability of the Arabic language, both of these translations are grammatically, syntactically, and definitionally correct. The phrase qawwamuna ’ala an-nisa can be understood as “watch over,” “protect,” “support,” “attend to,” “look after,” or “be in charge of” women. The final word in the verse, adribuhunna, which Fakhry has rendered as “beat them,” can equally mean “turn away from them,” “go along with them,” and, remarkably, even “have consensual intercourse with them.” If religion is indeed interpretation, then which meaning one chooses to accept and follow depends on what one is trying to extract from the text: if one views the Quran as empowering women, then Ali’s; if one looks to the Quran to justify violence against women, then Fakhry’s. ~ Reza Aslan,

271:In language that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, a young Moroccan named Brother Rachid last year called out President Obama on YouTube for claiming that Islamic State was “not Islamic”: Mr President, I must tell you that you are wrong about ISIL. You said ISIL speaks for no religion. I am a former Muslim. My dad is an imam. I have spent more than 20 years studying Islam. . . . I can tell you with confidence that ISIL speaks for Islam. . . . ISIL’s 10,000 members are all Muslims. . . . They come from different countries and have one common denominator: Islam. They are following Islam’s Prophet Muhammad in every detail. . . . They have called for a caliphate, which is a central doctrine in Sunni Islam. I ask you, Mr. President, to stop being politically correct—to call things by their names. ISIL, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Taliban, and their sister brand names, are all made in Islam. Unless the Muslim world deals with Islam and separates religion from state, we will never end this cycle. . . . If Islam is not the problem, then why is it there are millions of Christians in the Middle East and yet none of them has ever blown up himself to become a martyr, even though they live under the same economic and political circumstances and even worse? . . . Mr. President, if you really want to fight terrorism, then fight it at the roots. How many Saudi sheikhs are preaching hatred? How many Islamic channels are indoctrinating people and teaching them violence from the Quran and the hadith? . . . How many Islamic schools are producing generations of teachers and students who believe in jihad and martyrdom and fighting the infidels?1 ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali,

272:Consider, for example, how the following verse (4:34) regarding the obligations of men toward women has been rendered into English by two different but widely read contemporafirst is from the Princeton edition, translated by Ahmed Ali; the second is from Majid Fakhry’s translation, published by New York University:

Men are the support of women [qawwamuna ‘ala an-nisa] as God gives some more means than others, and because they spend of their wealth (to provide for them). . . . As for women you feel are averse, talk to them suasively; then leave them alone in bed (without molesting them) and go to bed with them (when they are willing).

Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made some of them excel the others, and because they spend some of their wealth. . . . And for those [women] that you fear might rebel, admonish them and abandon them in their beds and beat them [adribuhunna].

Because of the variability of the Arabic language, both of these translations are grammatically, syntactically, and definitionally correct. The phrase qawwamuna ‘ala an-nisa can be understood as “watch over,” “protect,” “support,” “attend to,” “look after,” or “be in charge of” women. The final word in the verse, adribuhunna, which Fakhry has rendered as “beat them,” can equally mean “turn away from them,” “go along with them,” and, remarkably, even “have consensual intercourse with them.” If religion is indeed interpretation, then which meaning one chooses to accept and follow depends on what one is trying to extract from the text: if one views the Quran as empowering women, then Ali’s; if one looks to the Quran to justify violence against women, then Fakhry’s.translators of the Quran. ~ Reza Aslan,

273:The call for justice was a protest as fierce as those of the biblical prophets and of Jesus, and the similarity of the call was no coincidence. As with early Judaism and early Christianity, early Islam would be rooted in opposition to a corrupt status quo. Its protest of inequity would be an integral part of the demand for inclusiveness, for unity and equality under the umbrella of the one god regardless of lineage, wealth, age, or gender. This is what would make it so appealing to the disenfranchised, those who didn't matter in the grand Meccan scheme of things, like slaves and freedmen, widows and orphans, all those cut out of the elite by birth or circumstance. And it spoke equally to the young and idealistic, those who had not yet learned to knuckle under to the way things were and who responded to the deeply egalitarian strain of the verses. All were equal before God, the thirteen-year-old Ali as important as the most respected graybeard, the daughter as much as the son, the African slave as much as the highborn noble. It was a potent and potentially radical re-envisioning of society.

This was a matter of politics as much as of faith. The scriptures of all three of the great monotheisms show that they began similarly as popular movements in protest against the privilege and arrogance of power, whether that of kings as in the Hebrew bible, or the Roman Empire as in the Gospels, or a tribal elite as in the Quran. All three, that is, were originally driven by ideals of justice and egalitarianism, rejecting the inequities of human power in favor of a higher and more just one. No matter how far they might have strayed from their origins as they became institutionalized over time, the historical record clearly indicates that what we now call the drive for social justice was the idealistic underpinning of monotheistic faith. ~ Lesley Hazleton,

274:The hadith, insofar as they addressed issues not dealt with in the Quran, would become an indispensable tool in the formation of Islamic law. However, in their earliest stages, the hadith were muddled and totally unregulated, making their authentication almost impossible. Worse, as the first generation of Companions passed on, the community had to rely increasingly on the reports that the second generation of Muslims (known as the Tabiun) had received from the first; when the second generation died, the community was yet another step removed from the actual words and deeds of the Prophet. Thus, with each successive generation, the “chain of transmission,” or isnad, that was supposed to authenticate the hadith grew longer and more convoluted, so that in less than two centuries after Muhammad’s death, there were already some seven hundred thousand hadith being circulated throughout the Muslim lands, the great majority of which were unquestionably fabricated by individuals who sought to legitimize their own particular beliefs and practices by connecting them with the Prophet. After a few generations, almost anything could be given the status of hadith if one simply claimed to trace its transmission back to Muhammad. In fact, the Hungarian scholar Ignaz Goldziher has documented numerous hadith the transmitters of which claimed were derived from Muhammad but which were in reality verses from the Torah and Gospels, bits of rabbinic sayings, ancient Persian maxims, passages of Greek philosophy, Indian proverbs, and even an almost word-for-word reproduction of the Lord’s Prayer. By the ninth century, when Islamic law was being fashioned, there were so many false hadith circulating through the community that Muslim legal scholars somewhat whimsically classified them into two categories: lies told for material gain and lies told for ideological advantage. In ~ Reza Aslan,

275:As for the negation of the Christian Trinity in the Quran - and this negation is extrinsic and conditional - we must take account of certain shades of meaning. The Trinity can be envisaged according to a "vertical" perspective or according to either of two "horizontal" perspectives, one of them being supreme and the other not. The vertical perspective- Beyond-Being, Being and Existence - envisages the hypostases as "descending" from Unity or from the Absolute - or from the Essence it could be said - which means that it envisages the degrees of Reality. The supreme horizontal perspective corresponds to the Vedantic triad Sat (supraontological Reality), Chit (Absolute Consciousness) and Ananda (Infinite Beatitude), which means that it envisages the Trinity inasmuch as It is hidden in Unity(1). The non-supreme horizontal perspective on the contrary situates Unity as an essence hidden within the Trinity, which is then ontological and represents the three fundamental aspects or modes of Pure Being, whence the triad : Being, Wisdom, Will (Father, Son, Spirit).

Now the concept of a Trinity seen as a deployment (tajalli) of Unity or of the Absolute is in no way opposed to the unitary doctrine of Islam ; what is opposed to it is solely the attribution of absoluteness to the Trinity alone, or even to the ontological Trinity alone, as it is envisaged exoterically. This last point of view does not, strictly speaking, attain to the Absolute and this is as much as to say that it attributes an absolute character to what is relative and is ignorant of Maya and the degrees of reality or of illusion ; it does not conceive of the metaphysical - but not pantheistic - identity between manifestation and the Principle; still less, therefore, does it conceive of the consequence this identity implies from the point of view of the intellect and the knowledge which delivers.

(1) The Absolute is not the Absolute inasmuch as it contains aspects, but inasmuch as It transcends them; inasmuch as It is Trinity It is therefore not Absolute. ~ Frithjof Schuon,

276:The Shame Of Return
To catch the last train I reached the station running.
I noticed the signal of blue light on.
The train, like Despair, suddenly left the station
playing on its cruel whistle.
They, with whom I was promised to go to city, got
anxious
and started staring at me through the windows.
They only consoled me by shaking their hands.
While coming from home, I was goaded by my
father
into hurrying off lest I should miss the train.
Mother said, 'Don't sleep tonight. Pass time
by reading books as you often do .'
But I fell asleep.
In a dreamless sleep I remained dead
on my bed.
But Jahanara never misses her train .
Forhad always reaches station
half an hour ago. Laily sends her servant
with all her luggage to book ticket.
Nahar never touches rice in excitement
before going anywhere.
But I'm one of their brothers, having walked seven
miles at a stretch,
trembling into fog at a dirty station at the late
night.
I have to go back home penetrating the white
curtain of fog.
My trouser will get wet with dews.
And suddenly the red sun,diminishing the winterdrops
gathered on my eyelids, will rise in the sky.
The sunrays will descend on my face and I, like a
defeated man,
will notice my ever known river in front of mine.
I will notice the scattered houses of my village.
The flock of cranes will fly away towards the bog.
45
Finally, like a horror, our old utchala will float
into my view ,
will float the small plantain garden .
Long leaves of the trees
will tremble saying, 'Come not! Come not!'
My father, having noticed me, will set his eyes at
the holy Quran
and will recite-- Fabi Aiyee Ala-ee-Rabbikuma Tukazziban.
Seeing me at the yard ,my mother will smile happily
having unwashed plates in hands .
She will say, 'It's fine you have come back.
In your absence the whole house seems very lonely.
Go to the pond and wash your face.
Your breakfast ready.'
I will then, embracing my mother, wipe off
the shame of my return, rubbing again and again,
from my whole face.
[Translated by Sayeed Abubakar]
~ Al Mahmud,

277:Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 221-228 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:41:32 Those who are introduced to the Quran only through the media, generally have the impression that the Quran is a book of jihad, and jihad to them is an attempt to achieve one’s goal by means of violence. But this idea is based on a misunderstanding. Anyone who reads the Quran for himself will easily appreciate that its message has nothing to do with violence. The Quran is, from beginning to end, a book which promulgates peace and in no way countenances violence. It is true that jihad is one of the teachings of the Quran. But jihad, taken in its correct sense, is the name of peaceful struggle rather than of any kind of violent action. The Quranic concept of jihad is expressed in the following verse, ‘Do greater jihad (i.e strive more strenuously) with the help of this [Quran]’ (25:52). Obviously, the Quran is not a weapon, but a book which gives us an introduction to the divine ideology of peaceful struggle. The method of such a struggle, according to the Quran, is ‘to speak to them a word to reach their very soul’ (4:63). ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Note at location 228 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:41:45 jihad ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 232-235 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:43:12 It is true that there are certain verses in the Quran, which convey injunctions similar to the following, ‘Slay them wherever you find them’ (2:191). Referring to such verses, there are some who attempt to give the impression that Islam is a religion of war and violence. This is totally untrue. Such verses relate, in a restricted sense, to those who have unilaterally attacked the Muslims. The above verse does not convey the general command of Islam. ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 239-244 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:44:16 This division of commands into different categories is a natural one and is found in all religious books. For instance, the Gita, the holy book of the Hindus, pertains to wisdom and moral values. Yet along with this is the exhortation of Krishna to Arjuna, encouraging him to fight (Bhagavad Gita, 3:30). This does not mean that believers in the Gita should wage wars all the time. Mahatma Gandhi, after all, derived his philosophy of non-violence from the same Gita. The exhortation to wage war in the Gita applies only to exceptional cases where circumstances leave no choice. But for general day-to-day existence it gives the same peaceful commands as derived from it by Mahatma Gandhi. ========== Quran: A Simple English Translation (Goodword ! Koran) (Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin;Goodword) - Your Highlight at location 244-245 | Added on Friday, 10 April 2015 19:44:39 Similarly, Jesus Christ said, ‘Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ (Matthew, 10:34). ========== ~ Anonymous,

278:I'M Going Together With Jogi
Going to Makkah is not the ultimate
Even if hundreds of prayers are offered
Going to River Ganges is not the ultimate
Even if hundreds of cleansing (Baptisms) are done
Going to Gaya is not the ultimate
Even if hundreds of worships are done
~ Bulleh Shah

the ultimate is
When the "I" is removed from the heart
[He] Read a lot and became a scholar
But [he] never read himself
[He] goes enters into the temple & mosque
But [he] never entered into his own heart
He fights with the devil every day for nothing
He never wrestled with his own ego
~ Bulleh Shah

he grabs for heavenly flying things
But doesn't grasp the one who's sitting at home
Religious scholars stay awake at night
But dogs stay awake at night, higher than you
They don't cease from barking at night
Then they go sleep in yards, higher than you
They [dogs] don't leave the beloved's doorstep
Even if they're beaten hundreds of times, higher than you
~ Bulleh Shah

get up and make up with the beloved
Otherwise dogs will win the contest, better than you
O friends, don't call Ranjha a shepherd
I shy away from calling him a shepherd
22
I am like a thousand Heers to him
Who am I, like countless others
He's the ruler of Hazara's throne
And I am forever the plain Heer
~ Bulleh Shah

may God hear my wail
And I'll become shepherded by the Shepherd
Ranjha became a Jogi and arrived
He exchanged into a unique disguise
He changed his name from Ahad (One God) to Ahmad (Prophet Mohammad
PBUH)
I'm going together with Jogi
Someone's with someone else, this one's with that one
I'm together with Jogi
Since I have become Jogi's
I have no "I" left in me
Repeating Ranjha Ranjha
I became Ranjha myself
Call me Ranjha
Nobody call me Heer
It's not me, it's he himself
He amuses his own self
The one with whom I connected my heart
I became just like him, O friends
Jogi is with me
I am with Jogi
I'm going together with Jogi
After putting earrings in my ears
and decorating my forehead with Tilak
Hey he's not [a] Jogi
23
He's some form of God
He's disguised as Jogi
This Jogi has attracted me
This Jogi has established residence in my heart
I swear by the Quran it's true
Jogi is my belief and faith
This Jogi has marked me
Hey I belong to him
Now I'm not worth any one else (Now there's no other Jogi)
I'm floating, I've drifted across, O people
My eyes inter-meshed with Jogi's, O people
Call me Jogi's female Jogi
Heer is dead, O people
In Khayrray they have deep talks
I have to listen to accusations about
I don't know anything about anyone else
If I know anything, I only know Jogi
No one has attained what he has attained
His shadow is on both worlds
His fame is celebrated in both world
His shoes were kissed by Heaven
This Jogi is full of wonders
In his hand is the rosary of "There is Nothing But One God"
Hey, his name is [Mohammad] "The One With The Shawl"
If Jogi comes to my home
All your fights will end
I will embrace him
And celebrate a million praises
24
~ Bulleh Shah

a Jogi came
To our door….(…? …)
He stole away Heer of Sayal
He came in a disguise
~ Bulleh Shah,

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