Tariq Ramadan
One does not always know how to express the sorrow of the soul. One does not always know how to silence the joy of the heart.Collection: Heart
Stand up for your values, be courageous and humbleCollection: Humble
Intellect is a part of a good faith. Intellect is the light, the heart is the direction.Collection: Faith
The universality of Islam is not uniformity, it is unity with diversity.Collection: Diversity
A time will come when you're going to be numerous but your impact in the world will be like nothingCollection: Impact
A Muslim should be sincerely religious AND politically aware.Collection: Religious
Integration is a word of the past, the word of the future and the word of the present is contribution.Collection: Past
Fear is created which can lead to racism. However, we can overcome that fear through trust.Collection: Racism
We need to realize that we should be on the side of any human being who is oppressed.Collection: Needs
The best measure of a successful life is the way we turn away, we renounce, and even by the way we depart it.Collection: Successful
Intellectual modesty is humility as to what I know; intellectual humility is modesty as to what I do not knowCollection: Humility
We fail when we try to give simple answers to complicated problems.Collection: Simple
There is nothing more Islamic than critical thinking.Collection: Islamic
Nature is telling us that if you don't respect the environment then you are living with artificial needs and a consumerism that is destroying the very conditions we need to survive.Collection: Needs
Greek philosophy departs from the assumption that we can understand the world autonomously using our rational faculties. Islam is not saying this.Collection: Philosophy
Muslims, scholars or not, are on the side of the oppressed and never on the side of the oppressors. Some scholars claim they don't do politics but if you listen to their statements in the Middle East or in other conferences, they support corrupt regimes and despots, such as as-Sissi.Collection: Support
Sometimes people confuse silence as wisdom when in fact it is compromise.Collection: People
The United States of America or the Western countries, they don't have a problem with Islamists as long as they are neoliberal capitalists and promoting the economic order. And the best example is the petro-monarchies. The petro-monarchies, they don't want democracy. They say there is no democracy in Islam. But they are within the economic system.Collection: Country
Anyone who tries to separate or divorce domestic politics from international politics does not get it, and that might be dangerous for the future of Western Muslims.Collection: Divorce
I don't buy anything which is Islamization of knowledge. I don't understand what it means in fact.Collection: Mean
The fact that this organisation is called the Islamic State reveals something even deeper. In fact, it implies that every single Islamist party in Egypt, Iraq or Tunisia are not really representing Islam and Muslim people. Nowadays, political Islam is going through a crisis, however this crisis is necessary, for it will lead to a changing way of thinking. In order to make it out of this dead-end, reviewing political Islam becomes mandatory.Collection: Islamic
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'.Collection: Islamic
We cannot have a free market since it does not really set us free. It's free for interest, speculation and consumerism to create false needs.Collection: Doe
Saying that the origin of the Islamic State (IS) is within the Muslim Brotherhood organisation only strengthens IS. This is what the Israeli government asserts when claiming that Hamas and IS are the exact same thing. By saying so, the historical resistance [against the Israeli occupation] is viewed as unlawful, called extremism and terrorism.Collection: Islamic
What is irreversible in the Arab world is this intellectual revolution, the awakening that we can get rid of dictators. That is here, and the people have this sentiment and this political power. They feel that they can do it, and it's still there. At the same time, we don't know what is going to happen. So to be very quick by saying, "Oh, revolutions and Arab Spring," and - you know, what I'm advocating is to take a cautious optimism as the starting point of our analysis and to look at what is happening.Collection: Spring
You cannot limit the debate to being solely in favour or against. It should be more complex. When you condemn, you need to understand what led to it. In general, if it is our responsibility to condemn terrorist actions after they had happened, we have an even greater responsibility beforehand to make sure they won't happen.Collection: Responsibility
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Islamic
The Islamic world is obsessed with the notion of strong leaders. This is a mistake. We don't need powerful leaders, but rather unconventional, progressive thinkers with the courage to open our minds.Collection: Strong
Even the concept of the infidel is misleading, because the infidel is normally someone with a different faith, someone who refuses to recognize the truth of the words of the Koran, as revealed by God. He has every right to do so, as long as he does not question my right to believe in my truth.Collection: Believe
You're asking me how not to doubt. Good question.My answer is, you can't. This is lifeCollection: Doubt
Acknowledged differences may create mutual respect, but hazy misunderstandings bring forth nothing but prejudice and rejection.Collection: Differences
Serve humanity, regardless of religion. Show solidarity for those suffering and oppressed.Collection: Humanity
The suicide bomber who blows up Israeli children cannot transform himself into a martyr. The Palestinian problem is not an Islamic problem.Collection: Suicide
Prayer is better than to sleep. Wake up. Wake up & pray. This is the way you free yourself.Collection: Prayer
The BRIC countries - Brazil, India, China, Turkey, South Africa, Indonesia even, and Russia - are now new actors. Over the last eight years, China multiplied by seven its economic presence and penetration in the Middle East. And if this happens on economic terms and there is a shift towards the East, the relationship between these countries and Israel is completely different from the United States. And it means that the challenges are going to be different, because China is not supporting Israel the way the U.S. are supporting Israel.Collection: Country
We have to be very cautious not to accept the scam of polarization we see in the media. It is not in fact between secularists and Islamists, it is a battle within the Islamic reference.Collection: Islamic
I wrote a call to the contemporary Muslim conscience, saying to the ordinary people that we might not like the video or the cartoons, but that violence certainly isn't the right answer. I don't think laws are going to solve the problem.Collection: Thinking
Pushing the limits, to be thought provoking, pushing people to think and question the limits, it's not always bad for the rules if you're confident because it can even strengthen your understanding of religion in the process.Collection: Thinking
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."Collection: Israel
Because ethics is fundamentally about questioning the ends, the goals and aims of our actions, we must come back to the rules and ask why. So we must return to the philosophy of law, the raison d'etre and the point of what we're asked to do. It's not easy, it's very demanding and it needs intellectual courage.Collection: Philosophy
One would love nonetheless to know how to be a man, how to be a woman before God, in the mirror of one's own conscience, in the looks of those who surround us. One would wish to find the strength to beautify one's thoughts and to purify one's heart. It is everyone's hope and expectation to live in serenity and to plod along in transparency: the palms of the hands patiently directed towards heaven, at the heart of all this modernity.Collection: Heart
We want to tell people how great Islam is yet we are not great Muslims.Collection: People
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.Collection: Understanding
Drafting of the constitutions is interesting and the discussions around them revealing in many ways. I take it as a discussion of very important symbols revealing many different problems. My take at the beginning was to warn that Tunisia might be the only successful country, the only one to justify us in talking about the spring, while all the other countries were less successful, if not failing. Now the point is that even in Tunisia it is not going to be easy, and this is where we have a problem.Collection: Country
The collective psychology is something very close to being sacred - we can do it but we don't do it. We should understand that the Holocaust in the European conscience is reaching a point which is very close to what is sacred for people in the Southern countries, whether they are Muslims or not. Because of that we need to try to have intellectual empathy.Collection: Country
51% of the French people - who are not very religious - were thinking that what "Charlie Hebdo" did was unwise. They aren't asking for a law to prevent Charlie Hebdo from publishing caricatures, but they are calling on its editors to be a bit more sensible.Collection: Religious
It's okay to feel the need for protection if there is a real external threat. But to feel protective from the inside, it's a kind of jail: you get so protective that you cannot get out of the box.Collection: Real
The question about the Salafi is an important question as I say in Arab Awakening, and have often repeated since. I am really underlining the importance of this, because we really don't have very good memories. Remember - the Taliban in Afghanistan were not at all politicised in the beginning. They were just on about education. And then they were pushed by the Saudi and the Americans to be against the Russian colonisation, and as a result they came to be politicised.Collection: Memories