Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.
Karen ArmstrongRead
Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fundamentalist movements perceive secular societies as threats to their religious beliefs and existence.
Karen Armstrong highlights the deep-rooted fear among fundamentalist groups in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that secular, liberal societies are actively trying to eradicate their religious practices and beliefs. This fear fuels a sense of urgency and resistance within these movements, often leading to a defensive posture against what they see as existential threats to their faith.
Themes
FundamentalismReligionSecularismBeliefsSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about the role of religion in public policy, this quote can illustrate the concerns of fundamentalist groups.
More from Karen Armstrong
All quotes βYet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.
Karen ArmstrongRead
When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too.
Karen ArmstrongRead
Far from being the father of jihad, [Prophet] Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of his closest companions because he was determined to effect a reconciliation with Mecca
Karen ArmstrongRead
Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage.
Karen ArmstrongRead
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.
Karen ArmstrongRead
Similar quotes
Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.
Christopher HitchensRead
There are nettles everywhere, but smooth, green grasses are more common still; the blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningRead
It is from your hands that Our Lord, in the person of the sick, seeks relief.
St. VincentRead
If you are on an honest journey to find yourself, you'll find God.
Martin SheenRead
The Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life's different stresses. Our duty is not to abandon ship, but to keep her on her course.
Saint BonifaceRead
Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.
Albert CamusRead