Ashik Uzzaman > Ashik's Quotes

“No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists.”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“Work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes undying part of a totality. That totality is human life. Past and present and to come forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens and thousands of years. And has been growing more elaborate, and on the whole more beautiful.”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“The campaign of anti-Islamic slander was so successful that to this day some textbooks in European and American schools refer to Muhammad as having epilepsy, the Qur’an as being copied from Bible, Muslim armies forcing conversions on people (by the sword), and Islam as being against science and learning. All of these are quite untrue, and enlightened Western authors from Arnold Toynbee and Bertrand Russell to Yvonne Haddad and John Esposito have been dispelling these myths on book after book for decades; nevertheless, the message hasn’t reached the masses, who still believe numerous myths concerning Islam.”
― Yahiya Emerick, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Islam

“Liberal politics are incompatible with . . . a [religious] community, unless it is further believed that the individual members of the community have been endowed with reason and free will by their Creator and that they have no certain knowledge of what were/are the Creator’s intentions. —Leonard Binder, Islamic Liberalism”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Today, the problem is that most contemporary proponents of the Shariah overlook these historical circumstances and insist on a literal implementation that does not pay attention to its purposes. Imam al-Shatibi in the fourteenth century had sorted out the purposes, or “higher objectives,” of the Shariah, listing them simply as the protection of five fundamental values: life, religion, property, progeny, and the intellect.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“These religious Turks soon got their facts right. The liberal West, they realized, was better than the illiberal “Westernizers” at home.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“The medieval Islamic world . . . offered vastly more freedom than any of its predecessors, its contemporaries and most of its successors. —Bernard Lewis, historian of the Middle East1”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“liberalism (a political philosophy based on individual liberties) and democracy (a political system based on representation) often are intertwined.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“It is possible, however, to have a democratic political system without fully acknowledging individual liberties—such as freedom of speech, assembly, religion, or property ownership.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“The democratic process begins with free and fair elections, but the winners of these elections tend to use political power in authoritarian ways, such as the suppression of the opposition or the silencing of critics.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“What is needed, then, is a rule of law whose purpose is to protect not the ruler or a privileged class but the rights of each individual. This was, notably, what law meant in Islamdom. And the key concept was what has recently become a dirty word: the Shariah.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Some liberal theorists have seen a parallelism between this function of Islamic law and the “natural law” tradition of Europe, on which the liberal political tradition rested.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“When Ala-ud-din Khilji, a fourteenth-century Muslim ruler in India, wanted to overtax his wealthy Hindu subjects, he was dissuaded by his top scholar because doing so would violate the property rights recognized by Islam.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Gerber, who studied seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman court decisions, points to examples of Ottoman muftis (official jurists) who, despite being paid by the government, “did not hesitate to speak out against the government when [they] came face to face with an injustice.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“According to Gerber, the Shariah principle here was unmistakably individualist: “The rights of the state are depicted as opposed to the rights of the individual, and the latter are found to be superior.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Other problems in the Shariah, such as misogyny, come from the fact that Islamic law incorporated a great many medieval attitudes, customs, and traditions during its formative centuries. Stoning, which has no basis in the Qur’an, probably came from Judaism.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Saladin even paid for the ransom of some of the Franks, as his personal almsgiving. The Christians were so positively impressed by this humaneness that legends flourished in Europe that Saladin had been baptized a Christian and had been dubbed a Christian knight.34 He was, in fact, simply a Muslim ruler who abided by the Shariah.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“The Prophet brought a message relevant for all ages, in other words, but he lived a life of his own age.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Moreover, unlike the classical period, in which the Shariah was a check on the powers of the executive, it now became an instrument of the executive.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Franz Rosenthal, the late professor of Arabic studies, said the following about him: The modern reader can hardly fail to notice that the Muslim philosopher succeeded in giving a true description of the essentials of democracy. He also captured the full meaning and significance of the concept of political freedom for the happiness and development of the individual.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“When such a freedom-promoting government exists, al-Farabi added, “people from outside flock to it,” and this leads to a “most desirable kind of racial mixture and cultural diversity,” which would guarantee the flourishing of talented individuals such as philosophers and poets.35 Sounds a bit like America, doesn’t it?”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“The answer lay not in faith but in another factor that created trouble for Islam from the very beginning: political power.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Anything in western capitalism of imported origin,” notes Fernand Braudel, the great French historian, “undoubtedly came from Islam.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“The Qur’an promoted work and trade and defined commercial profit as “God’s bounty.”38 The Prophet, himself a merchant, is on the record with such sayings as: “He who makes money pleases God.”39 He is also known to have rejected calls for price-fixing, noting that only God governs the market.40 “Muhammad,” as French historian Maxime Rodinson succinctly put it, “was not a socialist.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality (it means acting to please God, in the ancient language).”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones