Irshad Manji quotes

I have to be honest with you. Islam is on very thin ice with me... Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We're in crisis and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?
-- Irshad Manji

#Islamic #Self #Ice

Bin Laden-ism, I don't think, is dead yet. And I think there's a long way to go before we can legitimately say that, you know, it is no longer in our midst.
-- Irshad Manji

#Thinking #Long #Isms

Guys like Bin Laden have been responsible for injuring and maiming and murdering more Muslims than any foreign imperial power has in the last hundred years.
-- Irshad Manji

#Years #Guy #Lasts

A lot of Arabs have proven to themselves that there is an alternative to Bin Laden-ism if they want to do away with the corrupt, autocratic regimes in their countries.
-- Irshad Manji

#Country #Alternatives #Isms

We often hear Islamists declare, 'We love death as much as you people in the west love life.' Well, if we're going to now celebrate and jubilate in the death of Bin Laden, I have to say, I think that comes eerily close to mimicking the likes of the Islamists. And that gives me the creeps.
-- Irshad Manji

#Love Life #Thinking #People

Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the recognition that some things are more important than fear - and what's more important to me is faith.
-- Irshad Manji

#Important #Recognition #Absence

If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it’s now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?
-- Irshad Manji

#Islamic #God Love #Moments

I'm asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first place? My question for non-Muslims is equally basic: Will you succumb to the intimidation of being called "racists," or will you finally challenge us Muslims to take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam?
-- Irshad Manji

#Responsibility #Challenges #Islam

One of the enduring lessons of history is that whenever an empire becomes insular to 'protect' itself, intellectual decline and cultural intolerance are sure to follow.
-- Irshad Manji

#Intellectual #Lessons #Empires

We have been given a role to play. We have been asked to provide, to give lectures on the role of Islamic development and the way we do it here, so the people who are Muslims there would understand what the role of Islam is.

I studied adab for thirty years and I studied knowledge for twenty years.

I don't recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.

Happiness is attained, not through self-interest, but through unconditional fidelity in endless love of eternal light.

The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It's been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going.

At one time, the treatment for a certain kind of psychosis had been to push an ice pick up through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobe; the ice pick was then stirred around until it reduced the problematic brain tissue to non-functioning porridge.

It takes a great deal of labor and love to make ice wine. When you have it with dessert, you miss the point of enjoying it on its own.

Take ice. Ice is fascinating to me. Ice is the one thing in our world that went from an agricultural product to being manufactured.

You are ice and fire the touch of you burns my hands like snow.