Koran Interpretation Quotes

I see no difference between Islam and Islamism. Islam is defined as submission to the will of Allah, as it is described in the Koran. Islamism is just Islam in its most pure form.

History suggests that the main obstacles facing Muslims in their attempts to achieve open political systems and democratic governments are 1) a deeply rooted authoritarian political culture, and 2) manipulated interpretations of the Koran.

There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent.

It is evident that the fanatical interpretation of the Koran is incompatible with our values of freedom and with Christian values.

A lot of the Koran does not speak very eloquently to a Westerner. Much of it is either legalistic or opaquely poetic.

Women who chose to fight for their rights in the context of Islam and its teaching are breaking new paths that had been barred to them for over a millennium. The process has been slow and hard and different in different countries. Throughout, the most effective strategy has been to insist that Islam does not recognize intermediaries between God and the believers, and each Muslim has the right to discover her/his faith and engage with it through the very words of God as recorded in the Koran.

The Holy Koran, the Prophet’s teachings, the majority of Islamic scientists, and the actual facts all prove that the sun is running in its orbit ... and that the earth is fixed and stable, spread out by God for his mankind.... Anyone who professed otherwise would utter a charge of falsehood toward God, the Koran, and the Prophet.

Islamic terrorist organizations use sections of the Koran to recruit and brainwash idealistic young Moslems to engage in violent, murderous attacks on non-Moslems. The important question facing Moslem leaders … is, how do they teach and explain these passages from the Koran to their Moslem congregations and Moslem school students? Is it made absolutely clear that even though those passages are in the Koran, which is their Holy Book, they only applied in the 7th century not the 21st century? It is vitally important that moderate Moslem leaders … do not let Islamic extremists use these passages to recruit vulnerable, Moslem young people into any Islamic terrorist organization.

In Islam, the word of the Prophet is final. No true Muslim can disown these verses or say that they would rewrite the offensive verses of the Koran. If they do, then they would have to run for their lives.

One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.

Because divorce and polygamy are accepted traditions backed by men’s interpretation of the Koran, women have learned to require their future husbands to sign a prenuptial agreement, whereby he forfeits his rights to unconditional divorce or marrying a second wife.

Philosophers are best able to understand properly the allegorical passages of the Koran on the basis of their logical training. There is no religious stipulation that all such passages have to be interpreted literally.

Beating your wife is authorized by the Koran

Secular intellectuals may wax eloquent about 'true Islam' being humane and peaceful, on TV programmes, but it is clear that they have not read any authoritative translations of the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith.

Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage.

If you trace the history of Islamist terrorism, you see that its founders were great admirers of European fascism. They read the texts of European fascism, they quoted them in speeches and letters. This is not from the Koran - the Koran doesn't teach you how to repress people; there's nothing in there about women having to cover their faces, there's certainly nothing about suicide bombing.

To read the Koran rationally is to accept that the Koran is open [to interpretation] and has many meanings. The tradition regards the Koran as one-dimensional and fixed. This approach is not rationalist. To be a rationalist is to accept that each era, with its [particular] methods and discoveries, presents its own reading of the Koran, and this is the way it will be until the end of days. To be a rationalist is to acknowledge that the orthodox approach is fundamentally wrong since it does not accept the multiplicity of readings