Religious Moderation Quotes

I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush.

I think it's been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.

I was involved in an extreme or radical religious path from 1984-1989. I carried knives in the name of religious conflict. In point of fact, I felt something missing with the function of religion. I came to question whether Islam had truly commanded me to be exclusive and to isolate myself from other communities. There was a battle inside me…. I left that extremist group since it was impossible for me to survive in an exclusive community. Because Islam supports civilization, it should work for the betterment of human life. On the contrary, religious extremism and intolerance will destroy human civilization.

Uganda can greatly benefit from American evangelicals if they separate the Scott Lively extremists from the Rick Warren-type of moderate evangelicals.

As to religion a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in god and hate a saint.

The good news is that a vast majority of Indians from different religions see no contradiction between religiosity and liberalism, keep India stable. We religious liberals don't talk loudly enough.

I was brought up in a Jewish home, but I was brought up to be human - not fanatical, which is something that I don't appreciate at all. I learned to become a humanist and not to dwell on the differences between Jews and Christians.

I keep on saying, being moderate is fundamental to Islam.

It's not that we have two different kinds of Islam. I acknowledge the fact that we have two kinds of people. There are moderate Muslims and non-moderate Muslims. But there is really only one Islam, and this is the Islam of the life of Muhammad, of the Quran, of the Hadiths, of the Sunnah.

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing - good for our political culture.

We represent the moderate teachings and principles of Islam.

Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.

The forces that led to radical Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Islamic State, can ultimately only be defeated by moderate Muslims around the globe, countries like U.A.E. that have led the fight within their own border to promote tolerance.

The great divide is not between faiths, but one between intolerant zealots of any tradition and the large numbers of decent, peaceful believers likewise found in each tradition.

I don't think Jerusalem should be controlled 100% by religious people of any denomination, sect, or religion - even my own.

I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion.

There are common denominators that unite all members of al-Nahda: There is no one in al-Nahda who doubts about Islam There is no one in al-Nahda that believes in extremist views of Islam.

Traditional Muslims stand at the foot of the ladder, living in guilt for not really practicing Islam. At the top are fundamentalists, the ones you see in the news killing women and children for the glory of the god of the Qur'an. Moderates are somewhere in between. A moderate Muslim is actually more dangerous than a fundamentalist, however, because he appears to be harmless, and you can never tell when he has taken that next step toward the top. Most suicide bombers began as moderates.

We must not become weary from stating unequivocally that acts of wanton violence and barbarism are contrary to the teachings of Islam. In Islamic ethics, the end does not justify the means. Religious extremism has no virtue in Islam and has been unequivocally condemned by the Prophet of Islam. He is reported in a tradition to have declared thrice, “The extremists shall perish.” For contemporary Muslims this means to acknowledge, no matter how painful it is, that we do have extremists (mutatarrifin) within our ranks. This is off course not unique to Islam. What is peculiar to Islam is that extremists appear to have a disproportionate influence within the house of Islam, not least because of the proclivity of the media for sensationalization.

Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.

I was raised Catholic, and I have an aversion to anyone who takes religion to the extreme.

There is a split between Muslims who want to practice their faith in peace and tolerance with other religions and other people, and these extreme, radical fundamentalists who have shown a total lack of tolerance for people with different views, starting with people who they don't think are good Muslims, and going on to include Christians and Jews.

All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and intent of God exactly and completely.

The Muslim population in India is, largely speaking, not radicalised. From the beginning, they were always very secular-minded.

It’s a mistake to blame Islam, a religion 14 centuries old, for the evil that should be ascribed to militant Islam, a totalitarian ideology less than a century old. Militant Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution.