Religious Extremism Quotes

“We humans are naturally disposed to worship gods and heroes, to build our pantheons and valhallas. I would rather see that impulse directed into the adoration of daft singers, thicko footballers and air-headed screen actors than into the veneration of dogmatic zealots, fanatical preachers, militant politicians and rabid cultural commentators.”
― Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

“Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings.

I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest—if they were lucky—or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin muktar to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, and in the mid-nineteenth century, on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews?

I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don't mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.”
― Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates

“I told the priest
my god is a black woman
he poured holy water on me
and scheduled me for an exorcism”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“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.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Ah well, I suppose that's the problem with trying to make others follow your own beliefs: what starts out as spiritual ardor too often becomes arrogance and bigotry.”
― Persia Woolley, Child of the Northern Spring

“During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the town of Zenica, where there was reported to be a serious infiltration of outside Muslim extremists: a charge that was often used to slander the Bosnian government of the time. We found very little evidence of that, but the community itself was much riven as between Muslim, Croat, and Serb. No faction was strong enough to predominate, each was strong enough to veto the other's candidate for the chairmanship of the city council. Eventually, and in a way that was characteristically Bosnian, all three parties called on one of the town's few Jews and asked him to assume the job. We called on him, and found that he was also the resident intellectual, with a natural gift for synthesizing matters. After we left him, Susan began to chortle in the car. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'Do you think that the only dentist and the only shrink in Zenica are Jewish also?' It would be dense to have pretended not to see her joke.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It’s not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything—it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naïve statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“The dangerous enemies of your species are fundamentalism, intolerance, separatism, extremism, hostility and prejudicial fear, be it religious, atheistic or political.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality

“When evil forces seize power, you can expect tyranny, brutality , and disaster.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“The spiritual pride, which in mine Host of the Candlestick mantled in a sort of supercilious hypocrisy, was in this man's face elevated and yet darkened by genuine and undoubting fanaticism. It was impossible to behold him without imagination placing him in some strange crisis, where religious zeal was the ruling principle. A martyr at the stake, a soldier in the field, a lonely and banished wanderer consoled by the intensity and supposed purity of his faith under every earthly privation; perhaps a persecuting inquisitor, as terrific in power as unyielding in adversity; any of these seemed congenial characters to his personage. With these high traits of energy, there was something in the affected precision and solemnity of his deportment and discourse that bordered upon the ludicrous; so that, according to the mood of the spectator's mind, and the light under which Mr. Gilfillan presented himself, one might have feared, admired or laughed at him.”
― Walter Scott, Waverley

“Everybody thinks they're the chosen ones,
and everybody else is living in sin.
Only the brand of the bottle changes,
not the prejudice and bigotry within.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Divine Refugee

“I believe in the right to belief,
but not as excuse for discrimination.
My holiness has place for all myths,
but not for myths used for division.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“God is Schrodinger's cat, one moment it's there, the next it's not - all depends on the state of mind - God is the oldest fear-bending construct. Problem is when apes use God to enforce fear, a healthy refuge is rendered harmful refuse.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“I believe in the right to belief.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“I accept the bible, but not nazism.
I accept the koran, but not islamism.
I accept the gita, but not hindutva.
I accept the torah, but not zionism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Little Planet on The Prairie: Dunya Benim, Sorumluluk Benim

“The least holy boast of scripture.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Little Planet on The Prairie: Dunya Benim, Sorumluluk Benim

“Dogma deserted is harmony harvested.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“What’s needed, is not the end of religion, but the end of religious intolerance.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn

“The world needs missionaries of love, missionaries of reason, not mercenaries of organized religion, out to harvest convert vegetation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“Compulsion of religion is a thing of the past, conversion of faith, trivial as changing clothes; mark of a holy being is not belief, but behavior - clothes, creed, all wither, not character's glow.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“Compulsion of religion is a thing of the past,
conversion of faith, trivial as changing clothes;
mark of a holy being is not belief, but behavior -
clothes, creed, all wither, not character's glow.

Christian on Sunday, Atheist on Monday,
Buddhist on Tuesday, Sikh on Wednesday,
Hindu on Thursday, Muslim on Friday,
Jewish on Saturday, try the rest the next day.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“Faith is a private pill, not public law.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“I have no problem with you shouting, that your religion is the only true religion, at most, I'll ignore you like a raving lunatic - but the moment you start persecuting others, your lunacy becomes a medical emergency.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“Don't take a hammer to the pulpit, to defy those selling mindless creed, just don't visit, it's that simple - because vandalizing pulpits is just as fanatic as religious fanaticism. Mocking faith doesn't end fanaticism, extremism doesn't cure extremism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“World has no shortage of monkeys who want to christianize, islamize, zionize or saffronize the society, but humans who behave human are in short supply.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Mirage mistaken as message, when ethnic cleansing feels enlightened, Sinai becomes septic, Bethlehem becomes Bedlam.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Pilgrim's Regress (Sonnet 2324)

Mirage mistaken as message,
when ethnic cleansing feels enlightened,
Sinai becomes septic,
Bethlehem becomes Bedlam.

Dogma decreed as divine,
when superstition feels highly sacred,
Vrindavan becomes a garbage dump,
Ayodhya becomes capital of savages.

When another's belief is delusion,
but our belief is religion,
Mecca becomes a pilgrimage of maniacs,
Damascus becomes ulcer to civilization.

The confidence of ignorance is always
louder than the confidence of knowledge.
Truth raises more questions than answers,
whereas lies are snugly, sure and doubtless.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“What an irony that modern man, engaged as he is in the pursuit of knowledge, allows himself to be stymied by the dogmas of the Dark Ages, perpetrated as religious tenets.”
― B.S. Murthy, Benign Flame: Saga of Love