Pope Francis Quotes

Terrorists have hijacked our religion.

Terrorism and extremism bear different names and labels. It uses diverse causes. But in each case, it is driven by distortion of religion and a misguided belief in its power to succeed.

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

I don't think people by nature are extremists. You will never find a population of extremists. Extremists have existed throughout the centuries on all religions. And what happens is, extremists start to have more leverage when the situation is bad.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

Obstinacy in religious understanding leads to backwardness as in Muslims’, prevalence of violence and intolerance.

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism…

unflinching certainty can lead to political violence, as testified by the sad trail of historical events from the Crusades to the Paris terrorist attacks.

Terrorism and religious extremism are huge challenges. They go hand in glove.

Needless to say, oftentimes a 'religion' is not needed to breed extremism. People breed it all by themselves, oftentimes with the subjective morality of modern secularism breeding the worst kind.

Terrorism is perpetrated by individuals and cannot be blamed on any one religion, be it Sikhism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity.

The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not "cowards," as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith—perfect faith, as it turns out—and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be.

In all places, and in all times, those religionists who have believed too much have been more inclined to violence and persecution than those who have believed too little.

We've had mass shootings in the United States in the part of violent antiabortion protesters, in the part of violent pro-ISIS militants. The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I don't think the trap and the horror is fanaticism.

Fanaticism is the greatest threat today. Literally, the 21st century threatened by fanatics, and we have fanatics in every religion, unfortunately, and what can we do against them? Words nothing else, I'm against violence but only words.

I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.

Every nut who kills people has a Bible lying around.

Terrorism takes us back to ages we thought were long gone if we allow it a free hand to corrupt democratic societies and destroy the basic rules of international life.

The terrorists hide behind Allah.

There is a group of individuals who are radical jihadists. We need to call them by name. They believe it is OK to kill people in the name of their religion. It is not all of Islam. It is not all Muslims. But there is a subgroup who believe it is OK. In fact, it is their plan and design to kill people.

To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.

You're always going to have extremists in every religion.

All the Abrahamic faiths are marked by violence.

Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology.

I had been fascinated with Islam since college - particularly how it could inspire such fervor in our modern age and move a significant number of its followers to horrific acts of violence. That invisible hand moved me to study more and more about Islam.