Arabs

"Few are the nations that excelled the Arabs in civility. No nation has ever achieved the greatest number of inventions within the shortest time as the Arabs did. In fact, the Arabs established one of the strongest religions which prevailed in the world and whose influence is still more vital than that of any other religion. Politically, they founded one of the greatest states known in history and civilized Europe culturally and morally. Few are the ethnic groups which rose and declined like the Arabs. No ethnos like the Arabs could be fit for a living example of the influence of the factors lying behind the foundation, magnificence and decline of states."

"One of the strongest impressions I had when I lived with the Arabs, was the 'everyday-ness' of God. He ruled their eating, their travelling, their business, their loving. He was their hourly thought, their closest friend, in a way impossible to people whose God is separated from them by the rites of formal worship."

"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France belongs to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs."

"Present-day Egyptians speak Arabic, think of themselves as Arabs, and identify wholeheartedly with the Arab Empire that conquered Egypt in the seventh century and crushed with an iron fist the repeated revolts that broke out against its rule."

"Arabs only dominate the plains, because they are by their savage nature, people of pillage and corruption. They pillage everything that they can take without fighting or taking risks, then flee to their refuge in the wilderness, and do not stand and do battle unless in self-defense. So when they encounter any difficulty or obstacle, they leave it alone and look for easier prey. And tribes well-fortified against them on the slopes of the hills escape their corruption and destruction, because they prefer not to climb hills, nor expend effort, nor take risks. Whereas plains, when they can reach them due to lack of protection and weakness of the state, are spoils for them and morsels for them to eat, which they will keep despoiling and raiding and conquering with ease until their people are defeated, then imitate them with mutual conflict and political decline, until their civilization is destroyed. And Allah is capable of their creation, and He is the One, the Victorious, and there is no other lord than Him."

"These people were of all races, colors, and creeds. French were in the north and in the Carolinas. Dutch had built the town on Manhattan island, and their patroons' estates in the Hudson valley; now they were building their own cabins in the Mohawk Indian country that is now New York State. Germans had settled in the Jerseys and in the far west, beyond Philadelphia. Germans and Scotch-Irish were climbing the Carolina mountains; Swedes were in Delaware, English and French and Dutch and Irish were settled in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Grants, Connecticut, and Virginia. Mingled with all these were Italians, Portuguese, Finns, Arabs, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, and Africans from a dozen very different African peoples and cultures. Black, brown, yellow and white, all these peoples were some of them free and some of them slaves. Also they were intermarried with the American Indians."

"One day those Arabs who have been brought to the Kurdish areas will have to be expelled. Syrian government policy has brought many Arabs to the Kurdish areas. All the villages where they live now belong to the Kurds."

"Arab culture is full of great story tellers, and it is one of the favorite pastimes of Arab people. I think that there is a deep hunger in the human psyche for story and the nourishment it gives us. People don't live on one level chatter alone, rhetoric or just the conveyance of news. We need the threading and layering of a day that story gives us, and that's very much from the culture."

"Ali Ibn Abi Talib, said: Verily the Prophet said: God divided the earth in two halves and placed (me) in the better of the two, then He divided the half in three parts, and I was in the best of them, then He chose the Arabs from among the people, then He chose the Quraysh from among the Arabs, then He chose the children of ‘Abd al-Muttalib from among the Banu Hashim, then he chose me from among the children of ‘Abd al-Muttalib, and from them he chose me."

"Arabs are the most noble people in lineage, the most prominent, and the best in deeds. We were the first to respond to the call of the Prophet. We are Allah’s helpers and the viziers of His Messenger. We fight people until they believe in Allah. He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us. As for one who disbelieves, we will fight him forever in Allah’s Cause. Killing him is a small matter to us."

"Bricks are considered to be the first material created by human intelligence from the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. ...The great variety of designs and effects that artists of the past, especially the Arabs... were able to create in their brickwork, assembled with an element so monotonous... can be compared only with the beauty and attractiveness a romantic poet attained by adjusting his verses to the rigidity of a formal meter."

"These Bedouin tribes led predatory lives and on their minds there was nothing but greed, profit worship, and what satisfied their most primitive desires―never wandering beyond the material and the tangible. The moral principle that they boasted of was manliness, while even that meant nothing but vanity and revenge seeking. The bravery and freedom loving that has been attributed to the Arabs manifested itself in looting and seeking vengeance; their life’s sole interests were lust, wine, and fighting."

"They did not move past these to take notice of meanings and values. They could not accept the customs and manners of a civilian life and brought ruin and sedition to their neighboring towns, as they despoiled and plundered. Out of savagery and ferocity, according to ibn Khaldūn, many a time they tore out stones from the foundation of a building to place under their cooking pots, or pulled out ceiling beams to prop up a tent."

"In an era when great civilizations enjoyed full glory and grandeur, culture and refinement eluded these desert rulers entirely, and if they had any occupation besides murder and robbery, it was guarding trade routes and escorting commercial caravans. Thus although old empires such as those of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and Rome did not covet these wastelands, they took the desert rulers into their service for the sake of ensuring the safety of their own trade convoys."