Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.
Ironically, the first thing that appealed to me about Islam was its pluralism. The fact that the Koran praises all the great prophets of the past.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the appeal of Islam's inclusive recognition of past prophets, emphasizing its pluralistic nature.
In this quote, Karen Armstrong reflects on her initial attraction to Islam, which she found compelling due to its pluralism. She points out that the Koran honors various prophets from different religious traditions, showcasing Islam's respect for a diversity of spiritual figures and paths. This recognition of pluralism highlights the importance of understanding and respecting different beliefs, fostering a sense of unity and coexistence among various cultures and religions.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about interfaith dialogue to illustrate the importance of recognizing shared values.
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.
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.
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
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.
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.
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There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.
A statement is persuasive and credible either because it is directly self-evident or because it appears to be proved from other statements that are so.
The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.
When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world.
Patriotic feelings will surely swell, prompting proud proclamations of the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice shared by the Framers and reflected in a written document now yellowed with age . . . [F]or many Americans the bicentennial celebration will be little more than a blind pilgrimage to the shrine of the original document now stored in a vault in the National Archives. [Progressive]