Best 291 quotes of Tariq Ramadan on MyQuotes

I am not a politician. I have often been approached in this regard, but I have always declined these sorts of offers. I view myself as an independent, critical intellectual, as someone who tries to stimulate thought on the left and the right, to encourage intellectual evolution.

I am portrayed as a dangerous individual who can be fought thanks to their ideas.

I am saying the same to Muslims in the global South, telling them: "Just ignore what is done." However, in the Southern countries they are not living in a comfortable society like you and me. They deal with unemployment, corruption, and surviving. For the majority of them, their religion is helping them survive.

I am talking about anything that is a provocation - ignore it. When something falls under freedom of expression, you can read it and take a critical distance.

I am too old to think that numbers are creating change

I can see both trends among the youths: people who are ready for a constructive, critical and active presence, and others who are ready to become invisible Muslims and to compromise to be accepted. I put my hope in the former and pray for the latter.

I don't like this vision that Turkey is successful because it is as successful as the western powers in economic terms. But I do think they are trying to find a new space in the multi-polar world, and this is what I am advocating. I don't think that Muslims have an alternative model.

I don't like what you`re doing, but I won't insult you. Why? Because who you are tomorrow may be better than who I am today

I don't think we should take the emotional reactions of a few people as more representative than those of the millions of people who took to the street in a non-violent way against dictators.

I'd say that the modern social sciences are just showing us why the conditions for implementing Hudud are so demanding, and thus Hudud should only be for the absolutely last resort.

If Barack Obama was to say Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood, is an ally, he's going to be destroyed here by, you know, the opposition saying, "How come you can say that the Islamists are your ally when these people are the same who are Hamas, and Hamas is against Israel?" It's the end of it. So he's saying, "We are just wait and see; we are trying to deal.

I focus on Islamic applied ethics in many fields, and here I am saying that coming back to the Qu'ran and the sunnah as our reference point does not mean that we depend for our ethics on 'Islam as opposed to the others'.

If people who cherish freedom, who know the importance of mutual respect and are aware of the imperative necessity to establish a constructive and critical debate, if these people are not ready to speak out, to be more committed and visible, then we can expect sad, painful tomorrows. The choice is ours.

If there is a smoke, there is a fire, the saying goes, That is quite true, but one should find what the fire is, and who lit it.

If we agree to say that those terrorists are indeed Muslim, I have no problem whatsoever to condemn their actions. I won't apologise though, or justify my point of view.

"If we had not created a set of people against another the world would have been corrupt", and "against" here means two things: Against in the fact that they are challenging you with their diversity, challenging your intelligence and to challenge is not negative, it can be very positive depending on how you are challenged.

If you are only concerned with international issues and/or the power of some lobbies that are influencing American policy, then you are isolating yourselves. You are powerless in your mind when you don't understand the meaning and quality of your own real power.

If you do your work, if you are committed at the grassroots level, if you have a vision for the long run (not only short-sighted interest), you can change public opinion.

If you look at how great artists of the past, like Beethoven, for example dealt with art and morality, you see that there was torture and pain in their work, but there was also dignity in the way that was dealt with. So I don't buy this contemporary notion that the only way to be artistic is to be arrogant, offensive or immoral.

If you look at how we are destroying and disrespecting Creation it is obvious that is something is not clear in our understanding. We overemphasize rules but we don't understand the objective.

If you read the Qur'an with your head, you find repetition. If you read it with your heart, you find depth.

If you want to have a good life, never forget that you are going to die

I had no intention to cover my tracks since I am not a politician and I do not represent anybody.

I have learned that one should say "Peace!" to those who shout their hatred for one's being and presence or at one's passage.

I have never, so far, in all the studies I have done, met a contradiction between what the human, experimental and natural sciences are telling us and the Islamic rules. In fact, the opposite is true: anything that is coming from the modern sciences is helping me better understand the text. It's not a contradiction. It's a relation.

I keep on repeating something told to me by an American psychologist: "When you are making a joke about someone and you are the only one to laugh, it is not a joke. It is a joke only for yourself." If people are making a joke they have the right to laugh at me but I will ignore them. Ignoring doesn't mean that you don't understand. You understand it so much that you don't want to react.

I look to Islamic ethics to find something that can provide the basis for shared values with other traditions, and ultimately universal values. This ties into the point I made in a book, 'The Quest for Meaning', that the only way for values to be universal is if they are shared universal values. My main point is, in this quest for value the aim is not to express your distinctness from others, but about being able to contribute to the discussion of universal value.

I'm not talking about reforming #Islam..it is to reform the #Muslim minds & the Muslim understandings of the texts.

I'm working on different fields. One of my next books Insha'Allah will be a novel because it's important to explore the heart and imagination, the spiritual side. I've been working for twenty five years in the legal field and now I'm reaching what I want, which is an Islamic applied ethics and I'm also dealing with Muslims in the West.

In 2012, those French Muslim people voted massively for Francois Hollande against Nicolas Sarkozy. With the results of elections getting even tighter, those votes can make the difference. I am obviously not in favour of a "community electorate," however, pressure is so great on them that I can easily understand how it can affect their votes.

In fact all the Islamists, that is the reformists not the Salafis, now they all say that they want a civil state, a civil state with Islamic reference points. They are not talking about an Islamic state, or sharia in the way this was once understood in the fight against the colonisers, or just afterwards in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

In Islam, rules are important, like the Prophet said innal halaala bayyinun, wa innal haraama bayyinun ["what is halal is clear, what is haram is clear"]. The goal is not to diminish the importance of rules, but to have the right priorities.

In its haste to bolster nationalism, in its obsession with security, Europe is losing its soul.

In my book Radical Reform I made it clear that we cannot talk about the environment or ecology if we don't also deal with the economy. There is a direct link between how we deal with the economy and how we deal with nature.

In my book, the Arab Awakening, I talk about the fact that we have to move from this. All the contemporary ideologies of political Islam have been based on the nation state. The nation state is very problematic but I'm not sure if we have an alternative political model.

In Ramadan, you should eat less and think more.

In sha Allah, God willing, must be the expression of humility of the active actors and it must never be the justification of the passive observers

Instead of looking outside of ourselves and counting potential enemies, fasting summons us to turn our glance inward, and to take the measure of our greatest challenge: the self, the ego, in our own eyes and as others see us.

Integration is a word of the past, the word of the future and the word of the present is contribution.

Intellect is a part of a good faith. Intellect is the light, the heart is the direction.

Intellectual modesty is humility as to what I know; intellectual humility is modesty as to what I do not know

In the Muslim-majority countries you can't do without Islam, we can't do without their culture, in which way they are going to come back to this Islamic reference to find a way to deal with the true challenges and not the superficial political questions.

In the West or anywhere else, the treatment of people in an undignified way (structural and institutionalized racism against Latinos or African American citizens) as well as a dangerous dehumanization of some people (in Palestine, Iraq, Africa or Asia) are simply unacceptable.

I opposed the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I read the book and took a critical distance. I did not think The Satanic Verses is a blasphemous book. I did not consider the book as being a great read, but as an intellectual I read, I assess, and I respond. I make a difference between true freedom of expression to which we owe a response and provocation, which we ignore.

IS [Islamic State] has played a major role in helping Bashar al-Assad to reposition Syria on the international scene. Now, it is almost impossible to come up with a solution that would exclude him. The political game appears to be very cynical indeed.

Islam, as a religion, has been established in France for a long time, and the religious question has been resolved in this country. Islam does not threaten France's future in any way.

Islam came to teach us that there is no faith without intelligence and here we are: destroying our intelligence in the name of faith.

Islam can only be modernized from within. If I state that I condemn the practice of stoning, that this punishment is despicable, it changes nothing. My fellow Muslims will say: Brother Tariq, you became a European, a Swiss citizen, so you are no longer one of us.

Islam doesn't need reform, we need to reform the Muslim mind.

Islam has no problem with women, but Muslims do clearly appear to have serious problems with them