My mom and my aunties are really devout Christians. My mom married a Muslim when I was 12, so I got teachings from both sides and then other sides because I wanted to find out which way to go. So not only Christianity and Islam, but Confucianism, Shintoism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Judaism. I tried to read everything.
I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India and Islam.
The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.
Hindu nationalist outfits like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh perpetuate a false notion of the 'love jihad' - the false idea that young Muslim men are making Hindu girls fall in love with them to trick them into converting to Islam.
While there are corporal descriptions of what the afterlife is like in Christianity, Islam and Judaism, what's going on there is the finite trying to describe the infinite. If God knows everything, started everything and is the only one who knows how it's going to end, how can any human know what God wants?
Donald Trump giving a speech on Islam is like me giving a speech titled, 'The Best Haircuts to Have If You Really Want to Succeed in Corporate America.' I could do it. But I'd mostly be making it up as I went along.
Pakistanis can't trust. They've seen in history that people, particularly politicians, are corrupt. And they're misguided by people in the name of Islam. They're told: 'Malala is not a Muslim, she's not in purdah, she's working for America.'
In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that's happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition.
Things that become important to economies become ritualized and become deified. Because I'm Jewish, I always thought it was interesting that in Judaism, salt seals a bargain, particularly the covenant with God. Some people, when they bless bread, they dip it in salt. Same thing exists in Islam.
My father, in 1952, just in his 20s, my father became the chief spokesman for the Nation of Islam. From 1952 to 1959, there were four temples. My father was responsible and credited for having maximized this membership. From four temples to 50 temples, there was so much work involved.
Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith - even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity.
Personality cults are an insult to Islam.
Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.
Deep down in my heart and what I've seen and what I've been around, there is nothing better than Islam.
If a big number of young pupils felt secularism was an attack on them, it was because the term had been misused and deformed in the public debate for years by the extreme-right and the right as an attack on Islam. The term had often been misused to point out how Muslims were different to others, and that is clearly problematic.
Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers.
The U.S. is friends with dictatorial regimes, then invades places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what happens afterwards is a catastrophe. In the place of their leaders, fundamentalist movements that use the name of Islam spring up, and all that's left is terror and bloodshed.
You see in Islam, you see in Christianity, you see in Africa, in different religions, in Buddhism and Hinduism, there is a strong commitment to refugee protection.
I like to read about different religions - Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.
We're going to have to rely on the world of Islam, major Islamic nations, to take the lead in helping promote a very different view of Islam - peace and understanding, as opposed to the radicalization going on. The Saudis and UAE and Qatar and others are going to have to take a leading role in changing hearts and minds in the world of Islam.