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Religious Extremism Quotes

Browse 194 quotes about Religious Extremism.

Religious Extremism Quotes

“In your imagination, 16,000 animals can fit into a boat that is only 440 feet long, 73 feet wide and 44 feet high. You can even decapitate a boy and then fit an elephant’s head on his headless body to bring him back to life. You can construct a demon with as many as ten heads and conceive him to be immortal unless he is hit at his navel. As far as your imagination is concerned, there is no boundary to perception.”

“The world needs the kind of religion that sets humanity free, not the kind that binds it with textual fanaticism. The world needs the kind of religion that humanizes the society, not the kind that dehumanizes it.”

“Acceptance does not mean accepting those who disregard humans on the basis of race, religion and sexual orientation.”

“Accepting evil is worse than committing evil.”

“Accepting evil is worse than committing evil. You must – I repeat – you must, as a human being, stand up on the side of humanism, against barbarian inhumanism, for it is your action, that shall determine whether your children shall live in a world of peace and harmony or a world of chaos and discriminations.”

“Killing a bunch of Jihadis may be morally justified, to save humanity from their wrath, but it won't terminate Jihad for long. Jihad or Holy war would keep festering one way or another, until religious fundamentalism is eradicated from the human society. Until the whole humanity learns to scrutinize its most revered scriptures with the sharp tool of reasoning, Jihad will keep on striking over the world. If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society, it is merely a pest from the stone-age. No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self. There shall be hope for harmony and peace in the world, only when fundamentalism is destroyed forever. Harmony is not a luxury, it is an existential necessity of the species. And to achieve it, if a hundred Bibles have to be sacrificed, then be it. But for no Bible, Quran or Gita, can harmony be compromised.”

“If you think your religion requires discrimination, you're probably misreading your faith.”

“If we ask a random orthodox religious person, what is the best religion, he or she would proudly claim his or her own religion to be the best. A Christian would say Christianity is the best, a Muslim would say Islam is the best, a Jewish would say Judaism is the best and a Hindu would say Hinduism is the best. It takes a lot of mental exercise to get rid of such biases.”

“It’s time that Christianity should be redefined by the world based upon the original teachings of Jesus, instead of the Old and New Testaments which have been interpreted, reinterpreted and distorted by all the Ecumenical Councils, i.e. the Church Councils.”

“Christ did to the Jewish orthodoxy, what Buddha did to the Hindu orthodoxy.”

“Jesus recognized that God within him and became Christ - so did Siddhartha Gautama and became Buddha - so did I - and so can you.”

“I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots—written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements—and found that they called themselves Gush Emunim or—it sounded just as bad in English—'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they took the land because god had given it to them from time immemorial. In the noisome town of Hebron, where all of life is focused on a supposedly sacred boneyard in a dank local cave, one of the world's less pretty sights is that of supposed yeshivah students toting submachine guns and humbling the Arab inhabitants. When I asked one of these charmers where he got his legal authority to be a squatter, he flung his hand, index finger outstretched, toward the sky.”

“Love has no gender - compassion has no religion - character has no race.”

“Being homosexual is no more abnormal than being lefthanded.”

“Either you are homophobic or you are a human - you cannot be both.”

“In the unification of two minds, orientation of sexuality is irrelevant.”

“Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist ape - a theoretical pest from the stone-age, that somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect.”

“Homosexuals are not made, they are born.”

“Homosexuality is immutable, irreversible and nonpathological.”

“Discriminations suit animals, not humans. And yet, the unfortunate reality is, it is the humans that discriminate each other on the grounds of imaginary labels, not the animals. This way, animals are more civilized than humans.”

“Mother Nature created God as a neurological anti-depressant sentiment, but Man tore that God apart into pieces and made citadels of differentiation out of them.”

“Doctrines, no matter which path of human endeavor they come from, must serve the humans, not the humans serving the doctrines. “Love thy neighbor” - is a great doctrine, but more importantly, it is an unparalleled piece of magnificent human teaching – as such, whoever practices it, becomes a better human, a real human. On the other hand, there is another doctrine that says “God may purify the believers and destroy the disbelievers” – now would you, as a real conscientious human being, consider this one as a great beneficial doctrine or teaching for humanity? Far from being great, doctrines like this are the ones that compel the human society to forget its innate humanism.”

“Religious fundamentalism advocates homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, polygamy and many other primitive evils. Can you imagine, somebody telling you, your love for your dearly beloved is a sin! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, women are inferior to men, and are meant only serve the men! Can you imagine, somebody telling you, a man can have multiple wives, and yet be deemed civilized! Here that somebody is a fundamentalist – a theoretical pest from the stone-age, who somehow managed to survive even amidst all the rise of reasoning and intellect. Such a creature with no modern mental faculty whatsoever, knows nothing beyond the words of a book, written hundreds or thousands of years ago, when ignorance was the default mode of thinking in the society. It does not only believe every single word of a book to be literally true, but puts all its efforts to convince others to believe the same. This way, it would be an understatement to say, such is a worthless creature. In reality, such a creature can cause a catastrophic contagion in a society, especially if that society is already going through socio-political turmoil.”

“In the ancient times, when ignorance was the default mode of thinking, Krishna may have proven to be a glorious figure to be adored and relied on in times of distress, but in the modern world of conscientious humans, no Krishna is higher than the Human Self.”

“All the terrorism in the world that fester in the name of religion, are in fact not religious in nature, rather they are socio-political. Their roots are not religion, but socio-political condition. Religion is only used as a divine tool of authoritative justification in the search of absolution.”

“Inside a jihadi brain, the neuropsychological elements of aggression and rage run rampant, due to socio-political conditions. These overwhelming mental elements of young souls, when attached to the sacred texts of the Quran, by the authoritarian groups of fundamentalists, become weapons of mass destruction in the pursuit of the exclusive supremacy of one religion over the others.”

“More muslims die from Islamist extremism than any other people. So don't you dare tell me, Islam is the same as Islamism! Islam is a people, Islamism is a sickness, just like Christianity is a people, Christian nationalism is a sickness - Hinduism is a people, Hindutva is a sickness - Atheism is a people, militant atheism is a sickness. And unless the peaceloving humans from each of these communities reach out to one another with a hand of integration, the nutcases from each of these communities will drag us all down the road of death and despair.”

“Unless you know how to use facts like a decent human being, you are better off without facts - just like, unless you know how to interpret the scripture like a decent human being, you are better off without a scripture.”

“Weapons are essentially the invention of science, be it our modern nukes or ancient swords and arrows. Yet most of the bloodshed throughout history has been blamed totally upon religion, without a single mention of science being a party to it. If religion has done harm, so has science. If science has done good, so has religion. The fact of the matter is, neither science nor religion is the cause of good and evil in the world, they are merely an excuse. It's the human mind that's the root of all good and evil - science and religion are merely accessory to the intention.”

“If you need a god, keep it - everybody has imaginary friends, my imaginary friend is my late teacher, and I find it therapeutic to talk to him whenever I hit rock bottom. It's just something we humans need to survive, quite like water and food! The last thing this world needs is more war to prove whose imaginary friend is better than the rest.”

“Humans awake with humanity need no bible, quran or gita to tell right from wrong - they don't need humanitarian institutions to tackle crisis of human rights. They just stand up and act as human, and the whole planet is revolutionized.”

“Divinity for Sale (The Sonnet) When a book becomes religion, And doctrines become divinity, Holiness remains speculation, Society loses sight of humanity. When institutions claim authority, And sleeping masses comply, Religion disappears altogether, What remains is potential gone awry. When popes and pundits sell faith, In the name of divine supremacy, Rigidity overrules common sense, And reason is hailed as blasphemy. But there is a cure for all this atrocity. It is called individual curiosity.”