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Quote by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“Tariqah [The Spiritual Path] without the Sharia [Islamic Law] is like having a pistachio tree without the shell. Or a walnut, a walnut cannot grow on a tree without having a shell, and the food that you eat is inside the shell.”

Quote by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Author

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Seyyed Hossein Nasr is a distinguished Iranian philosopher, intellectual, and scholar of Islamic studies. Born on April 7, 1933, he has made significant contributions to the field of Islamic philosophy and comparative religion. His work emphasizes the importance of understanding Islamic thought in its historical and cultural context. more

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“The Shariah has many other functions but also protects the tarqiah; it protects the spiritual path.”

Spiritual Path Protect Function Spiritual Path

Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“There is no religion in the world where there is a possibility of spiritual development outside of the context of that religion. This is only a modern invention. For example, Christian mystics were also Christians. They also went to Church and followed Christian laws. Hindu mystics were practicing Hindus; they didn't kill cows and have steak. They follow the Hindu laws and so on and so forth down the line and Sufism is no exception.”

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Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“There is an idea that you can take the spiritual teachings of a religion outside of a religion and practice them; these ideas are brought forward. That appears to be easy. You can say, "Oh, well. I don't have to bother about not eating pork, and not drinking wine, and all you have to do is read the beautiful poetry of Rumi and talk about wine, women and song. Or something like that." This kind of attitude. This is the antipode of the other attitude which says Islam is nothing but throwing bombs, it has nothing to do with internal or inward purification.”

“There are millions and millions of Sufis who have existed in Islamic history and have the deepest impact on every aspect of Islamic culture and civilization to philosophy to art to science to social structure to economics who have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj.”

Art Philosophy Culture Social Destiny Millions Civilization Mets Aspect Economics Impact Structure Islamic Als Sufi Social Structure Islamic Culture

Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“Al-Hallaj has a special destiny. He came at a time when worldliness, the luxury, were inundating the Islamic world. His function was to act as kind of an antithesis to this, and he paid for it with his life, and he was very happy to do so. He smiled as he went to the executioner. That was done because it shook the conscience of the Islamic peoples of that time. But the vast majority, the vast, vast, vast majority of Sufis, they have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj. They have spoken about reaching "the Truth" and there is nothing dangerous about it.”

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Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“Look at Senegal, about 90% of the Muslims in Senegal are Tijani or Qadiri Sufis. Among them, they have very great teachers who have written poems about al-Hallaj, and they have not been killed. In fact, it's Sufism that brought Islam through all of Senegal, right under our noses the last couple of centuries. And you can go down the same line through Indonesia and Malaysia.”

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Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“How did the Turks become Muslim? They became Muslim through the Sufis. The Arabs never conquered the Turks. There were people in early Islam who were speaking like Hallaj, who spoke about the Truth, about reaching the Truth, about being one with the Truth, and not only they were not killed, but they were great heroes of their own culture, and there is a university in Turkey named after one [Sufi Saint.]”

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Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“300 years after the rise of Islam there were Zoroastrians in Iran. The Muslim armies never forced people to accept Islam. It was only within Arabia that God ordered the idolaters to have a choice of either embracing Islam or fight against Muslims, because He wanted to remove this terrible idolatry that exited there. But outside Arabia where Islam met Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus, they were given a choice by and large. That's why many Christians and Jewish communities survived in the Muslim world, but gradually many of them embraced Islam for different reasons.”

“The Islamic world doesn't stop in the Arab world or Persia. There is the whole Turkic world, the Central Asian world, South Asian world, Southeast Asian world, and African world.”

World Whole South Islamic Asian Arab World Persia

Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“If you have a billion Muslims, 900 million of them were not brought into Islam by any kind of invasion, but most of them through the Sufis, because human beings are such that they are affected by people of spiritual character. Certainly when they display nobility and hospitality and gentility and love and are not selfish or aggressive, and they are honest.”