The Internet Islamic Art Database | Library of Islamic Art and Quotes | Page 85

“The great majority of people that many scholars call “kuffār” do not even know what they are denying. These persons do not even know what it is to have a relationship with Truth. This is why we have to be very cautious with our judgement. A “kuffār” is someone who knows the Truth and denies the reality of it; it is an intellectual opposition to Truth itself.

“Islam is not about being physically visible. As Muslims living in the West, we need to have an intellectual and spiritual visibility. This is not about political activism; many of us are agitated, they are not activists. There is no vision, no center, no spiritual axes that we need. Being intellectually contributing to the future of our society is the very meaning of “La illaha il Allah.” It is where true freedom starts.

At the end of the day, it is about being human beings, it is about following the footsteps of the Prophet ﷺ: being with Allah, serving Him, and doing the best for the people living in our country, be it the oppressed, the marginalised, women, or our own children.

“For Muslims the Qur’an stands as the Text of reference, the source and the essence of the message transmitted to humanity by the creator. It is the last of a lengthy series of revelations addressed to humans down through history. It is the Word of God — but it is not God. The Qur’an makes known, reveals and guides: it is a light that responds to the quest for meaning. The Qur’an is remembrance of all previous messages, those of Noah and Abraham, of Moses and Jesus. Like them, it reminds and instructs our consciousness: life has meaning, facts are signs.

“We are not following scholars: they are serving the community and should not be served by the community. Our teachers should be means for us to come close to God and our Knowledge should be also means for us to serve Him better and to serve the society.

“As Muslims, we are not worshipping Knowledge. We are using Knowledge to worship God.

“Female excision, forced marriages, honour crimes, for instance, are not Islamic even though certain scholars may have attempted to provide religious justification for them. This critical work is a long way from being completed, and awareness must be raised among Muslims and their fellow citizens about those confusions that lead to the original message being betrayed.

“Islam has no problem with women, but Muslims do clearly appear to have serious problems with them, and the reasons and sometimes the (questionable) justifications for this must be sought from within.

“Listen to the voices that challenge you to improve yourself. Be among the people who are changing the world.

“If you cry, if you smile, remember: the Heart is the noble people’s home. It is where they get their strength, their fragility. Alone, in silence.

“Contemporary scientific discoveries (the neurosciences and neurobiology) confirm that there are biological differences between [men and women], and that it would be insane to deny their existence. Scientists do not deny that our relationship with the social and cultural environment has a determining influence (epi-genesis), but they have found some basic differences: the left hemisphere of the brain is more highly developed in women, who are actually less emotional than men but tend to be better at expressing their emotions because of their greater need to verbalize and communicate. Women have a more highly developed sense of hearing and touch, whereas men’s sight is more highly developed and means that they have a different relationship with visual spatial abilities. An analysis of hormonal functions shows that men and women relate differently to the environment and have different needs in terms of safety, no matter what culture they live in: women have a greater need for protection, and men a greater need for adventure. We are free to reject these scientific discoveries, or to regard them as irrelevant, but we have to admit that we must not confuse ‘equality’ with ‘identity’ in the sense of similarity.

“There is no love based on Piety that does not arouse the jealousy of those who do not understand it.

“What can bring you closer to God can also make you go astray.

“You are humble when you always question your humility.

“When I pretend to be strong, no one sees my hidden tears except Allah. When I’m sad and need a shoulder to cry on, no one supports me but Allah. Pleasing a human is very difficult, pleasing Allah is the easiest. People sometimes punish me for mistakes I have not done, Allah ignores and excuses the ones that I did. This is Allah, The Greatest, The Most Almighty, The Most Beneficent, The Most Merciful, and all praise belongs to Him.

“The sign of the One’s Presence at the time of a person’s death lies not in the occurrence of any miracle but rather in the permanence of the natural order, in the eternity of His creation, crossed here and there by the passage of created beings, who come and depart.

“Because Muhammad’s life expressed the manifested and experienced essence of Islam’s message, getting to know the Prophet is a privileged means of acceding to the spiritual universe of Islam. From his birth to his death, the Messenger’s experience—devoid of any human tragic dimension—allies the call of faith, trial among people, humility and the quest for peace with the One.

“Islam is a message of justice that entails resisting oppression and protecting the dignity of the oppressed and the poor, and Muslims must recognize the moral value of a law or contract stipulating this requirement, whoever its authors and whatever the society, Muslim or not.

“From the very start, the Prophet did not conceive the content of his message as the expression of pure otherness versus what the Arabs or the other societies of his time were producing. Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions (even those produced by a polytheistic society such as that of Mecca at the time).

“Pride is to affirm outward independence by maintaining the illusion of liberty at the heart of one's being. Humility is to rediscover the breath of the primordial need of Him at the heart of our being, in order to live in total outward independence.

“Before your eyes is a child...life, dependence, fragility, and innocence. To be with God is to know how to keep this state: a humble acceptance of your fragility, a comprehension of your dependence—going back to the beginning.

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