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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 5c87d79 | The very purpose of designing the Temple of Jerusalem as a series of ever more restrictive ingressions was to maintain the priestly monopoly over who can and cannot come into the presence of God and to what degree. The sick, the lame, the leper, the "demon-possessed," menstruating women, those with bodily discharges, those who had recently given birth--none of these were permitted to enter the Temple and take part in the rituals unless firs.. | priesthood | Reza Aslan | |
| 732c35a | Zeal implied a strict adherence to the Torah and the Law, a refusal to serve any foreign master--to serve any human master at all--and an uncompromising devotion to the sovereignty of God. | Reza Aslan | ||
| 491febe | Muhammad was not yet establishing a new religion; he was calling for sweeping social reforms. He was not yet preaching monotheism; he was demanding economic justice. | muhammad | Reza Aslan | |
| 213a0e4 | pluralism implies religious tolerance, not unchecked religious freedom. | pluralism religion | Reza Aslan | |
| a77fdaf | 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 | ||
| f02b8b3 | In many ways, the partition of India was the inevitable result of three centuries of Britain's divide-and-rule policy. As the events of the Indian Revolt demonstrated, the British believed that the best way to curb nationalist sentiment was to classify the indigenous population not as Indians, but as Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, etc. The categorization and separation of native peoples was a common tactic for maintaining colonial cont.. | Reza Aslan | ||
| 5cd6773 | It is pluralism, not secularism, that defines democracy. A democratic state can be established upon any normative moral framework as long as pluralism remains the source of its legitimacy. England continues to maintain a national church whose religious head is also the country's sovereign and whose bishops serve in the upper house of Parliament. India was, until recently, governed by partisans of an elitist theology of Hindu Awakening (Hind.. | Reza Aslan | ||
| 8fa8005 | The only question that matters with regard to a religion and its mythology is "What do these stories mean?" | Reza Aslan | ||
| 9cd13c8 | Perhaps rather than concerning ourselves with trying to form a relationship with God, we should instead become fully aware of the relationship that already exists. | spirituality-vs-religion | Reza Aslan | |
| b53a389 | 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 | ||
| 74bde46 | There are striking similarities between the Christian and Quranic descriptions of the Apocalypse, the Last Judgment, and the paradise awaiting those who have been saved. | Reza Aslan | ||
| f034001 | 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 | ||
| 28061aa | 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 mea.. | Reza Aslan | ||
| 9249694 | Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword. MATTHEW 10:34 | Reza Aslan | ||
| 357ebea | One would think that Jesus's admonishment not to teach others to break the Law of Moses would have had some impact on Paul. But Paul seems totally unconcerned with anything "Jesus-in-the-flesh" may or may not have said." -- | Reza Aslan | ||
| d07d939 | The Romans may be known for many things, but humor isn't one of them. As usual, this interpretation relies on a prima facie reading of Jesus as a man with no political ambitions whatsoever. That is nonsense. All criminals sentenced to execution received a titulus so that everyone know the crime for which they were being punished and thus be deterred from taking part in similar activity. That the wording on Jesus's titulus was likely genuine.. | pontius-pilate titulus | Reza Aslan | |
| 22323ca | Judea is, for all intents and purposes, a temple-state. | Reza Aslan | ||
| ddc240e | Unlike their heathen neighbors, the Jews do not have a multiplicity of temples scattered across the land. There is only one cultic center, one unique source for the divine presence, one singular place and no other where a Jew can commune with the living God. Judea is, for all intents and purposes, a temple-state. The very term "theocracy" was coined specifically to describe Jerusalem. "Some people have entrusted the supreme political powers.. | Reza Aslan | ||
| 0f7fddf | Obviously James did not himself write the epistle; he was, like his brother Jesus and most of the apostles, an illiterate peasant with no formal education. | Reza Aslan | ||
| edb042f | Little by little over the following decade, the Jewish sect founded by a group of rural Galileans morphed into a religion of urbanized Greek speakers. No longer bound by the confines of the Temple and the Jewish religion, the Hellenist preachers began to gradually shed Jesus's message of its nationalistic concerns, transforming it into a universal calling that would be more appealing to those living in a Graeco-Roman milieu. In doing so, th.. | Reza Aslan | ||
| 95353fa | It is difficult to place Jesus of Nazareth squarely within any of the known religiopolitical movements of his time. He was a man of profound contradictions, one day preaching a message of racial exclusion ("I was sent solely to the lost sheep of Israel"; Matthew 15:24), the next, of benevolent universalism ("Go and make disciples of all nations"; Matthew 28:19); sometimes calling for unconditional peace ("Blessed are the peacemakers for the.. | Reza Aslan | ||
| 7e7f9aa | Prophets such as Micah, Amos, and Jeremiah, who appear to be predicting the coming of a future salvific character from the line of King David that would one day restore Israel to its former glory, are in fact making veiled criticisms of their current king and the present order, which the prophets imply have fallen short of the Davidic ideal. | Reza Aslan | ||
| eb630bd | Jesus was surely not the first exorcist to walk the shores of the Sea of Galilee. In first-century Palestine, professional wonder worker was a vocation as well established as that of woodworker or mason, and far better paid. Galilee especially abounded with charismatic fantasts claiming to channel the divine for a nominal fee. Yet from the perspective of the Galileans, what set Jesus apart from his fellow exorcists and healers is that he se.. | miracles | Reza Aslan | |
| 30bc640 | On occasion they were cut down in cold blood or hanged on the spot; in the saying of the Border, which has passed into the language, they had been taken "red-hand", which was "in the deede doinge", and the law was not likely to call a trod-follower to account if his rage got the better of him and he despatched a reiver out of" | George MacDonald Fraser | ||
| 4b4c14b | And both were more fortunate than Hecky Noble who, within a few nights of Mrs Hetherington's widowhood, was a victim of that gay desperado, Dickie Armstrong of Dryhope,49 and his 100 jolly followers. Apart from reiving a herd of 200 head, and destroying nine houses, the raiders also burned alive Hecky's son John, and his daughter-in-law, who was pregnant. | George MacDonald Fraser | ||
| 0881de1 | If anything in their history demonstrates that the Scots are remarkable, it is that in spite of being physically attached to England, they have survived as a people, with their own culture, laws, institutions, and, like the English, their own ideas. | George MacDonald Fraser | ||
| 2f15610 | England was a menace to Scotland because Scotland was, by its separate existence, a constant anxiety to England. | George MacDonald Fraser | ||
| 3184778 | But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgment --in short, for the true talent for catastrophe -- Elphy Bey stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day. Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such ruinous defeat. It was not e.. | failure military stupidity | George MacDonald Fraser | |
| cf6e7bb | She had no idea where the future would lead her or what it would look like, but whatever happened, she was determined to survive it. | Danielle Steel | ||
| ee44cbb | You need to wake yourself up and take a grab at life. No one is going to hand it to you. | emotions friendship rich surprise tragic | Danielle Steel | |
| e38f760 | It was the cruelest of destiny's tricks, the death of a young person. | emotions family friendship rich surprise tragic | Danielle Steel | |
| 87dcbf4 | that way, the models would be | Danielle Steel | ||
| 18e4fd1 | I had learned firsthand that tragedy and disappointment can strike any of us at any time. | Danielle Steel | ||
| 08798e2 | I never wanted to settle for 'good enough.' I wanted 'great' or nothing. | Danielle Steel | ||
| f0324eb | You have to move forward in life. You can't sit in the same place, unless you want to, that's a choice too. But you can't sit there because someone else says you have to, because your moving forward makes them uncomfortable. | life-changes moving-on | Danielle Steel | |
| f7a35e2 | It just goes to show, never say never, or the next thing you know, you'll be doing what you said you never would, owning a dog you swore you didn't want and walking (or carrying) a tiny, totally enchanting little dog on a rhinestone-studded pink leash. | never-say-never | Danielle Steel | |
| 4ef06e2 | We're all given terrible trials sometimes, things that we think will break our spirit and kill us, and they make us stronger in the end. They seem like the cruelest blows, but in a funny way they're like compliments from God. | Danielle Steel | ||
| 34c4c57 | The weather in Paris was unusually warm as Peter Haskell's plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane taxied neatly to the gate, and a few minutes later, briefcase in hand, Peter was striding through the airport. He was almost smiling as he got on the customs line, despite the heat of the day and the number of people crowding ahead of him in line. Peter Haskell loved Paris. | Danielle Steel | ||
| bf3eed5 | Chapter One The weather in Paris was unusually warm as Peter Haskell's plane landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. The plane taxied neatly to the gate, and a few minutes later, briefcase in hand, Peter was striding through the airport. He was almost smiling as he got on the customs line, despite the heat of the day and the number of people crowding ahead of him in line. Peter Haskell loved Paris. He generally traveled to Europe | Danielle Steel | ||
| 937fd2b | It was frightening to realize how fast things could go wrong. | emotions friendship rich surprise tragic | Danielle Steel | |
| 62353aa | Maybe it was the novels I read - the racier Mills & Boon romances of late, Danielle Steel instructing me on international sex and sin. | Manil Suri | ||
| 1782e64 | In its failure to value differences in the way people learn, the educational process often suppresses intuition, creativity, and your sense of identity. | education-system educational-philosophy inspirational-quotes intuition intuition-quotes laurie-nadel laurie-nadel-quotes power-of-thoughts quote-about-life quote-of-the-day quote-of-the-week quotes-twitter wayne-dyer | Laurie Nadel | |
| ced16e8 | Each of us has more intelligence than we are trained to use and the part that we get graded on in school doesn't amount to much | education-system inspirational-quotes intelligence-quote intuition intuition-quotes laurie-nadel laurie-nadel-quotes power-of-thoughts quote-about-life quote-of-the-day quote-of-the-week quotes-twitter wayne-dyer | Laurie Nadel | |
| 17775a9 | Mitsuru and Yuriko and Kazue didn't mutate; they simply decayed. A biology professor certainly ought to be able to recognize the signs of fermentation and decay. Isn't he the one who taught us all about these processes in organisms? In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water. | Natsuo Kirino |