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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
f1d0940	In short, Islam is not just a faith; Islam is an identity. That is true of all religions. In the United States, polls show that some 70 percent of the population identifies itself as Christian. That does not mean that seven out of ten Americans go to church on Sundays, that seven out of ten Americans read the New Testament, that, in fact, seven out of ten Americans know anything at all about Christianity save that Jesus was born in a manger..			Reza Aslan
0520458	In first-century Palestine, simply saying the words "This is the messiah," aloud and in public, can be a criminal offense, punishable by crucifixion."			Reza Aslan
8696674	the gospel writers for whom history was not a matter of uncovering facts, but of revealing truths.			Reza Aslan
783b0d2	twofold profession of faith, or shahadah, that would henceforth define both the mission and principles of the movement: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God's Messenger.			Reza Aslan
09db50d	Iran's previous attempts at democracy were thwarted by foreigners--the British and Russians in 1905-1911; the United States in 1953--whose interests were served by suppressing all democratic aspirations in the region.			Reza Aslan
0fec363	Islam and Judaism in seventh-century Arabia operated within "the same sphere of religious discourse," in that both shared the same religious characters, stories, and anecdotes, both discussed the same fundamental questions from similar perspectives, and both had nearly identical moral and ethical values."			Reza Aslan
8c2d9ea	Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith. It is an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors (read rituals and myths) that provides a common language with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence.			Reza Aslan
6509d7c	como <>, o <>, en el siglo I en Palestina eran grupos distintos y separados, y Jesus mantenia relaciones diferentes con cada uno de ellos.			Reza Aslan
a602037	manism (ancestor cults)--but it was not as concerned			Reza Aslan
806a1e8	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 (..			Reza Aslan
f0741e7	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..			Reza Aslan
22826ea	For European colonialists like Alfred, Lord Cromer, the British consul general to Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century, the veil was a symbol of the "degradation of women" and definitive proof that "Islam as a social system has been a complete failure." Never mind that Cromer was the founder of the Men's League for Opposing Women's Suffrage in England. As the quintessential colonialist, Cromer had no interest in the plight of Muslim w..			Reza Aslan
ac787d0	the War on Terror is in fact a war against Islam. After all, this was never conceived of as a war against terror per se. If it were, it would have included the Basque separatists in Spain, the Christian insurgency in East Timor, the Hindu/Marxist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Maoist rebels in eastern India, the Jewish Kach and Kahane underground in Israel, the Irish Republican Army, the Sikh separatists in the Punjab, the Marxist Mujahadin..			Reza Aslan
90887fc	But no religion is inherently violent or peaceful; people are violent or peaceful.			Reza Aslan
4b6039e	Cognitive theorists have a term for what Eve just experienced. They call it her Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device, or HADD. This is a biological process that arose deep in our evolutionary past, all the way back in the days when hominids were still stooped and hairy. In its simplest terms, HADD leads us to detect human agency, and hence a human cause, behind any unexplained event: a distant sound in the woods, a flash of light in the s..			Reza Aslan
a88d24a	the Religious Zionists have shown that they would prefer civil war in Israel to peace with the Palestinians. That is because these Jews define their national identity in terms not of civic loyalty to the state but of religious obligation to the land.			Reza Aslan
fbe0974	Let your yes be yes and your no be no.			Reza Aslan
2e8a961	Los judios incluso estaban exentos de rendir culto directo al emperador, algo que Roma imponia practicamente a cualquier otra comunidad religiosa bajo su dominio. Todo			Reza Aslan
39b69e3	Muhammad may have been, there is one detail that should not be lost in the tumult and confusion			Reza Aslan
9bf72f8	As the ninth-century legal scholar Malik ibn Anas, founder of the Maliki school of law, once quipped, "This religion is a science, so pay close attention to those from whom you learn it."		religion science islam	Reza Aslan
86ff2f5	It is a shame that this word, myth, which originally signified nothing more than stories of the supernatural, has come to be regarded as synonymous with falsehood, when in fact myths are always true. By their very nature, myths inhere both legitimacy and credibility. Whatever truths they convey have little to do with historical fact. To ask whether Moses actually parted the Red Sea, or whether Jesus truly raised Lazarus from the dead, or wh..			Reza Aslan
8b29724	All religions are inextricably bound to the social, spiritual, and cultural milieux from which they arose and in which they developed. It is not prophets who create religions. Prophets are, above all, reformers who redefine and reinterpret the existing beliefs and practices of their communities, providing fresh sets of symbols and metaphors with which succeeding generations can describe the nature of reality. Indeed, it is most often the pr..			Reza Aslan
878d7da	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
12cad10	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
4bdc893	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, becaus..			Reza Aslan
fb7ea1a	An individual enters the final stages of the Way when the nafs begins to release its grip on the qalb, thus allowing the ruh--which is present in all humanity, but is cloaked in the veil of the self--to absorb the qalb as though it were a drop of dew plunged into a vast, endless sea. When this occurs, the individual achieves fana: ecstatic, intoxicating self-annihilation. This is the final station along the Sufi Way. It is here, at the end ..			Reza Aslan
ab941fc	Grateful for their generosity, Muhammad orders the land to be leveled, the graves dug up, and the palm trees cut down for timber to build a modest home. He envisions a courtyard roofed in palm leaves, with living quarters made of wood and mud lining the walls. But this will be more than a home. This converted drying-ground and cemetery will serve as the first masjid, or mosque, of a new kind of community, one so revolutionary that many year..			Reza Aslan
3eed86c	Caesar Augustus once famously quipped, "I would rather be Herod's pig than his son."			Reza Aslan
c89db98	Poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and social activist Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) would come to be known as the father of Islamic radicalism. Born in Upper Egypt, he had, like al-Banna, moved to Cairo during the turbulent 1920s. After a brief stint in the Ministry of Education, Qutb traveled to the United States in 1948 to research its educational system. What he discovered was a nation committed to individual freedom, yet "devoid of human symp..			Reza Aslan
57e299c	Indeed, everything that is currently being said about America's diverse Muslim population--that they are foreign and exotic and un-American--was said about Catholic and Jewish immigrants nearly a century ago.			Reza Aslan
750b1be	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) h..			Reza Aslan
c033010	there is no mistaking the tension that exists in the gospels between how the early church viewed Jesus and how Jesus seems to view himself.			Reza Aslan
9fca23c	Rhodes, founder of the De Beers diamond company and at one time the virtual dictator of modern-day South Africa, famously declared, "We Britons are the first race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race." Among"			Reza Aslan
8eff431	Acesta este locul in care vei fi cel mai aproape de Dumnezeu. Duhoarea carnagiului este imposibil de ignorat. Intra in piele si in par ca o povara otravitoare de care vei scapa cu greu. Preotii ard tamaie pentru a alunga duhoarea si boala, dar amestecul de mirt, scortisoara, sofran si tamaie nu poate masca mirosul pestilential al macelului.			Reza Aslan
86051b9	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..			Reza Aslan
9a0f35e	Nor is it surprising that three of the first four leaders of Islam were killed by fellow Muslims, though it is important to recognize that both the rebels who murdered Uthman and the Kharijites who assassinated Ali were, like their spiritual successors among the Jihadists of today, far more concerned with maintaining their personal ideal of Muhammad's community than with protecting that community from external enemies. After			Reza Aslan
a7b399a	To accommodate the rapid influx of Europeans, entire cities were built on the outskirts of Cairo, far away from the indigenous population. The foreigners quickly took charge of Egypt's principal export of cotton. They built ports, railroads, and dams, all to implement colonial control over the country's economy. With the construction of their crowning achievement, the Suez Canal, Egypt's fate as Britain's most valuable colony was sealed. To..			Reza Aslan
39e7c12	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..			Reza Aslan
7415d45	At the center of Zoroastrian theology was a unique monotheistic system based on the sole god, Ahura Mazda ("the Wise Lord"). Like most ancients, Zarathustra could not easily conceive of his god as being the source of both good and evil. He therefore developed an ethical dualism in which two opposing spirits, Spenta Mainyu ("the beneficent spirit") and Angra Mainyu ("the hostile spirit"), were responsible for good and evil, respectively."			Reza Aslan
61ade98	What most puzzled Rome about the Jews was not their unfamiliar rites or their strict devotion to their laws, but rather what the Romans considered to be their unfathomable superiority complex.			Reza Aslan
96fd680	The relationship between the Jews and pagan Arabs was symbiotic in that not only were the Jews heavily Arabized, but the Arabs were also significantly influenced by Jewish beliefs and practices.			Reza Aslan
fab70c8	Pilate, as the histories reveal, was not one for trials. In his ten years as governor of Jerusalem, he had sent thousands upon thousands to the cross with a simple scratch of his reed pen on a slip of papyrus. The notion that he would even be in the same room as Jesus, let alone deign to grant him a "trial," beggars the imagination. Either the threat posed by Jesus to the stability of Jerusalem is so great that he is one of only a handful o..		pilate trial	Reza Aslan
60e2009	Whereas a religion of many gods posits many myths to describe the human condition, a religion of one god tends to be monomythic; it not only rejects all other gods, it rejects all other explanations for God.			Reza Aslan
da01b06	A king with no place to lay his head. A king who came to serve, not to be served.			Reza Aslan

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