QuoteLog

“I’m sure the members of the Christian Coalition won’t take my suggestions, but they might want to consider making a rule that anyone who calls himself a Christian has to have some passing acquaintance with the teachings of Jesus. I’m no Biblical scholar but I am absolutely sure that Jesus never suggested assassinating anyone.”

“I was against the invasion of Iraq and would not have voted for George Bush if I were a U.S. citizen, but I’m done with the ‘George Bush made me do it’ excuse. We must accept responsibility for this mess if we are ever to find a way out. And for those non-Muslims who accept the George Bush excuse, I have a question: Do you think Muslims are incapable of accepting responsibility? It is at least in some way bigoted to think that Muslims can only react violently.”

“That’s the trouble with Islam today. We Muslims, including moderates living here in the West, are routinely raised to believe that the Koran is the final and therefore perfect manifesto of God’s will, untouched and immutable. This is a supremacy complex. It’s dangerous because it inhibits moderates from asking hard questions about what happens when faith becomes dogma.”

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

“James Dobson: Who does he think he is, questioning my conservative credentials? Some of his language and conduct is quite un-Christian, and I don’t appreciate it.”

“Although considered as holy in Islam and mentioned in the Quran dozens of times, the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia. This would seem curious to most people because of the fact that to most Muslims, the Bible is a holy book. But when it comes to Saudi Arabia we are not talking about most Muslims, but a tiny minority of hard-liners who constitute the Wahhabi Sect. The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported.”

“This will not be the last thing that you read about that makes me look ridiculous”

“I say this as a believer. The crimes of Nichols are inexcusable. The serenity of Smith is close to inexplicable. But the message of the Gospels is that God works with the crooked timber of human failure. This was an exceptional moment of redemption. But every day, we have smaller, calmer chances to turn another’s life around, to serve, to listen. How often do we simply not see what is in front of us?”

“Already, more people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at Christian churches — and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in the national legislature.”

“In your re-election, God has graciously granted America — though she doesn’t deserve it — a reprieve from the agenda of paganism.”

“Real faith, you see, leads us to deeper reflection and not — not ever — to the thing we as humans so very much want ... Easy certainty.”

“I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I’m gonna kill him and tell God he died.”

“People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don’t think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels. That’s not what America stands for, and I doubt that it’s what God stands for.”

“I don’t really care about that kind of stuff anymore. I meet Christians who are passionate about following in the way of Christ. Some are more biblically conservative than others. If a person is trying to live the Christ life, and that person’s life is gentle and filled with love, then I don’t really care that much about how he or she interprets II Timothy, know what I mean?”

“People have stereotypes in their heads about what Democrats are like and what Republicans are like, and they gravitate toward the party made up of people like themselves. Once they have formed an affiliation, people bend their philosophies and their perceptions of reality so they become more and more aligned with members of their political tribe.”

“Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians — wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.”

“There is a useful article on Islam Online about what Islam teaches about treatment of Prisoners of War. The invocation of the murderers of Peter Berg of the Prophet SAW as justification of their acts was particularly obscene and they will pay a price in hellfire - American first, afterlife second.”

“Treat the prisoners of war kindly.”

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.”

“It may be the explanation for why the world we live in is so weird. On the evidence, our universe was created not by a divine being, but by a physicist hacker.”

“My own question to Pat Robertson is this: The election looks as though it could be close, certainly not a blowout. If George W. Bush loses the election to a Democrat, will you become an atheist?”

“I didn’t really mean for this to be my life’s work, but I’m rapidly becoming a one-woman ambassador to both political liberals and religious conservatives to convince them that not all people of faith want the Ten Commandments in every public building in America and not every Democrat is a religion-hating heathen. It’s definitely slow going.”

“When I try to explain to my husband that, in spite of everything he knows, or thinks he knows about organized religion, Catholics are really a swinging bunch, he gives me ‘the face’. It’s a face only a husband can make that perfectly communicates a mix of skepticism and dismissal.”

“Religiously inspired terrorism is a worldwide phenomenon, and every major world religion has people who have appropriated the label of their religion in order to legitimize their violence.”

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

“Today the United States is the last religious country in the western world, the last in which a majority of the population are practising believers. By contrast, in all the jurisdictions where one church was formally or informally tied to the state -- England, Ireland, France, Spain, Quebec, you name it -- religious observance has withered away to statistically insignificant numbers.”

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

“Do you think Jesus would love me? I’m a Muslim, but do you think Jesus would love me... I think Jesus would have a drink with me and discuss... why you acting like that? Now, he would be cool. He would talk to me. No Christian ever did that and said in the name of Jesus even... They’d throw me in jail and write bad articles about me and then go to church on Sunday and say Jesus is a wonderful man and he’s coming back to save us. But they don’t understand that when he comes back, that these crazy greedy capitalistic men are gonna kill him again.”

“Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.”

“These hijackings are manifestations of satanic consciousness. I see no point in pretending spiritual love by showing tolerance for them. Evil is not tolerant of Good. Good cannot excuse evil in the name of spirituality. We must sternly oppose sin, while at the same time always wishing good to all sinners. It would be undharmic, which is to say unrighteous, to do nothing: It would show nothing but spinelessness.”

“This is totally wrong. I’m talking according to my faith. I’m a practicing Muslim. Allah says in the Koran that anyone who kills an innocent is like someone who kills all of humanity ... The word Islam, in Arabic, means peace.”

“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”

“It often happens that I wake up at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.”