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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Tolerance always has limits - it cannot tolerate what is itself actively intolerant.
Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.
Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.
And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning.
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
People will always prefer black-and-white over shades of grey, and so there will always be the temptation to hold overly-simplified beliefs and to hold them with excessive confidence