Tariq Ramadan Quotes

We are in a world that is connected, but is not communicating.

I want the American Muslims to tell the leaders what they are telling me all the time. I want this internal debate to happen and the Muslims cannot just criticize the leadership without being involved. At the end of the day, you have the leadership you deserve.

If you are not at peace with yourself then you cannot spread peace.

Islam can only be modernized from within. If I state that I condemn the practice of stoning, that this punishment is despicable, it changes nothing. My fellow Muslims will say: Brother Tariq, you became a European, a Swiss citizen, so you are no longer one of us.

This is the problem we have with many Muslim leaders: They claim to differentiate between domestic and foreign issues and they are obsessed with being accepted, at sitting at the table of power in order to talk (or rather to listen) and to be tolerated. This is the starting point of our weakness. It is in our minds because we do not realize we are part of the system.

While criticism of Israel is legitimate and justifiable, it cannot be an excuse – in any way, shape or form – for anti-Semitism.

Very often when I see people who are perceived to be, or who call themselves progressives, sometimes I see an imbalance. Yes I understand the courage in their mind but I don’t see the spirituality in their heart, good you are questioning the limits, but what about yourself, are you also liberating yourself?

To be more precise, it’s ethics and liberation, and as a consequence there is an ethics of liberation.

To be courageous is to be a voice for the voiceless

A good Muslim is not one who is strictest in his judgment, but who is most patient in listening.

In fact all the Islamists, that is the reformists not the Salafis, now they all say that they want a civil state, a civil state with Islamic reference points. They are not talking about an Islamic state, or sharia in the way this was once understood in the fight against the colonisers, or just afterwards in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

If you know how to live, even death is good news