Renee Ahdieh Quotes

“In what world did you think you could get away with this?" Jalal seethed. "To my cousin? To my family?" His gleaming hilt continued its punishing onslaught.”

“We believe that an Iraqi founding national assembly, freely elected, must decide the future of Iraq.”

“We must provide all kinds of freedom, personal and economic, to all Iraqis. I will fight for that.”

“I shall stand for freedom of thought and expression in a place where it has been trampled and penalized.”

“A military coup needs a sacrifice and courage that you can't find in an army without morale.”

“Self-determination could mean independence, confederacy, federal and autonomy.”

“All I wanted was to be a university teacher.”

“Without demolishing religious schools (madrassahs) and minarets and without abandoning the beliefs and ideas of the medieval age, restriction in thoughts and pains in conscience will not end. Without understanding that unbelief is a kind of religion, and that conservative religious belief a kind of disbelief, and without showing tolerance to opposite ideas, one cannot succeed. Those who look for the truth will accomplish the mission.Mevlana Jalal ad-Din RUMI”

“At a cellular level of the human mind, Islamophobia is not really a matter of social stigma, rather it is a natural biological fear response of the general human mind, conditioned through countless pairings between terrorist attacks (unconditioned stimulus) and their apparent association with Islam (conditioned stimulus). Hence, Islamophobia cannot be eradicated completely, unless that pairing is severed and thereafter the conditioned stimulus of Islam is paired with something optimistic such as the heartwarming works of the 13th century Persian Muslim poet Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi.”

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”