Critics Of Islam

"They know me well. How could they conceal a resplendent sun?"

"ولو أنّي حُبِيتُ الخُلْدَ فَرْداً لمَا أحبَبْتُ بالخُلْدِ انفِرادا فلا هَطَلَتْ عَلَيّ ولا بأرْضي سَحائبُ ليسَ تنْتَظِمُ البِلادا"

"اِثْنَانِ أَهْلُ الْأَرْضِ ذُو عَقْلٍ بِلَا دِينٍ وَآخَرُ دَيِّنٌ لَا عَقْلَ لَهُ"

"Methink I am thrice-imprisoned—ask not me Of news that need no telling— By loss of sight, confinement in my house, And this vile body for my spirit’s dwelling."

"We laugh, but inept is our laughter; We should weep and weep sore, Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter Re-moulded no more!"

"The holy fights by Moslem heroes fought, The saintly works by Christian hermits wrought And those of Jewry or of Sabian creed— Their valour reaches not the Indian's deed Whom zeal and awe religiously inspire To cast his body on the flaming pyre."

"Whenever I reflect, my reflecting upon what I suffer only rouses me to blame him that begot me. And I gave peace to my children, for they are in the bliss of non-existence which surpasses all the pleasures of this world. Had they come to life, they would have endured a misery casting them to destruction in trackless wildernesses."

"Do not unjustly eat what the water has given up, and do not desire as food the flesh of slaughtered animals, Or the white (milk) of mothers who intended its pure draught for their young, not for noble ladies. And do not grieve the unsuspecting birds by taking their eggs; for injustice is the worst of crimes. And spare the honey which the bees get betimes by their industry from the flowers of fragrant plants; For they did not store it that it might belong to others, nor did they gather it for bounty and gifts. I washed my hands of all this; and would that I had perceived my way ere my temples grew hoar!"

"The social order of Islam is opposed to our Western values. Human rights and democracy are as incompatible with the Muslim religious doctrine as is the equality of women. In Islam, the individual and his free will count for nothing; faith and religious struggle – jihad, the holy war – for everything."

"Men of acute mind call me an ascetic, but they are wrong in their diagnosis. Although I disciplined my desires, I only abandoned worldly pleasures because the best of these withdrew themselves from me."

"Haider: Someone who is capable of work, but is not willing to work — to take up a related or similar or approximately similar job — should be given the sanction of being forced to take on a job by having his unemployment benefit reduced. MP Günther Hausenblas: That amounts to forced work placement! Haider: Then I ask you: How do you justify this to the thousands and thousands of hardworking Austrian employees who fulfil their work obligations year after year? How do you defend that to somebody who for example has lost his job as a joiner, but then takes on a similar job in construction, just so that he doesn't have to go on unemployment benefit? And he is paying his hard earned money in ever higher deductions, so that a few can lounge around in the hammock of the social welfare state. That is not a system we can really defend. Hausenblas: We once had what you're calling for — in the Third Reich! Haider: No, they didn't have that in the Third Reich, because in the Third Reich they had a proper employment policy, which not even your government in Vienna can manage to bring about. That has to be said."

"Sometimes you may find a man skillful in his trade, perfect in sagacity and in the use of arguments, but when he comes to religion he is found obstinate, so does he follow in the old groove. Piety is implanted into human nature; it is deemed a sure refuge. To the growing child, that which falls from his mother's lips is a lesson that abides with him all his life. Monks in their cloisters and devotees in their mosques accept their creed just as a story is handed down from him who tells it, without distinguishing between a true interpreter and a false. If one of these had found his kin among the Magians, or among the Sabians, he would have become nearly or quite like them."

"Some worse people than I have entered Paradise! But it is not everybody’s fortune to be granted forgiveness, it is like wealth in the Fleeting World."

"History shows that many freethinkers, not daring to express their thoughts freely, have sheltered themselves behind a religion in which they disbelieved. Such was Euripides, and such was Ma'arri. In the works of both we find three elements:"

"His poems generally known as the Luzumiyat arrest attention by their boldness and originality as well as by the sombre and earnest tone which pervades them."

"If I had but a garden for a bower Wherein the roses of Damascus flower, How happy, with the Luzumiyat in hand, To pass the afternoon and sunset hour!"

"His asceticism, his deep sense of right and wrong, his powerful intellect, his prodigious memory, and his wide range of learning, are alike acknowledged by both friend and foe."

"How sad that I returned, how sad, Instead of dying at Baghdad! I say, whene'er things fall amiss, "My coming home hath brought me this.""

"They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are a fiction from first to last. O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the (religious) traditions or interpreted them!"

"A little doubt is better than total credulity."

"Abu'l-Ala is a poet many centuries ahead of his time."

"75 years ago, people all over Europe clandestinely listened to the BBC to hear the voice of Winston Churchill. His voice was the voice of liberty, the voice of courageous resistance against Nazi totalitarianism. Churchill, by the way, had no illusions about Islam, either. He said there exists "no stronger retrograde force in the world" than Islam and called Hitler's vile anti-Semitic book Mein Kampf a "new Koran of faith and war". I know a British citizen, today, who is as staunch a freedom fighter as Winston Churchill was, who holds the same opinion on Islam and is not afraid to say so. His name is Tommy Robinson. [...] Tommy embodies the hope of many, whose voices are not heard. [...] Tommy is a hero."

"Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) and supporters of far-right extremist organisations like the English Defence League are not welcome at our community's events. Their message of hate and division must be confronted and defeated. We utterly reject their bigotry."

"I was very struck by the fact that on the march against antisemitism, which Campaign Against Antisemitism organised and was attended by a large part of the Jewish community, there were only two arrests, one of which was at the request of the organisers when Stephen Yaxley-Lennon—Tommy Robinson—turned up. Far from being welcomed, as we heard in the previous evidence, he was rejected and the organisers got him arrested."

"I made sure that extremists were never allowed into that party. [...] They then got a leader that thought Tommy Robinson was the great saviour of this country. Now, he might be a working class hero to some but I'm afraid the truth of it is he's an out of control yob. He's been in prison four times for four separate offences. When you get someone like that involved in a political party, their fortunes will literally fall off a cliff and I warned them, and I warned them, and I warned them."

"You knew perfectly well that you were not welcome in the United States. You knew that because you tried before and you had not got in, and you knew the reason for that - because, rightly or wrongly, the US authorities do not welcome people in their country who have convictions of the kind that you have. With that full knowledge, you equipped yourself with a passport. I am told that it was given you by way of a loan from your friend Andrew McMaster, to which you bore, I am told, some resemblance. And by use of that passport you did what you could to get into the United States. [...] What you did went absolutely to the heart of the immigration controls that the United States are entitled to have. Had it been known in this country that you were proposing to leave under a false passport, you would not have been accepted on to the plane and you would not have been permitted to leave this country on a false passport. It's not in any sense trivial."

"Mr Batten’s obsession with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (to use Tommy Robinson’s real name) and fixation with the issue of Islam makes Ukip unrecognisable to many of us. I believe he is entirely unsuitable to be involved in any political party. The fact is that his entourage includes violent criminals and ex-BNP members. Many Ukip members - including Ukip's NEC – urged that Robinson should not become an advisor to Batten. Sadly, these pleas fell on deaf ears. In the photo [published in The Sunday Telegraph a few dats earlier], Tommy Robinson can be seen seated beside Gerard Batten. Next to Robinson is a man called Daniel Thomas, a convicted armed kidnapper. There are other pretty unsavoury-looking characters dotted around the room."

"So Theresa May has lost her vote. Many people will be asking what does that even mean. It means we were betrayed. Today is supposed to be our Independence Day."

"Tommy Robinson is not far-right... and does not have far-right views. He is someone who can give some information and research which is useful to me. We have always been a democratic, non-racist party. That has always been in our constitution and that is exactly the way we are going to keep it."

"I want us all to give him a message… I dare you to charge me again because I just want to see the scenes outside court."

"In late October Lennon did a short livestream where he explained he was working on a long article unpacking the Ye [Kanye West] situation where he would outline his thoughts on supposed Jewish influence. He has now published it on his Urban Scoop website. Titled 'Tommy's Statement: The Jewish Question', it is much more extreme than expected. While accepting that Ye used "imprecise" language about Jews, and at pains to say he was not talking about "all Jews", Lennon's long and rambling article is full of conspiratorial antisemitism about supposed Jewish influence. It opens with a long attack against the American-based Jewish organisation the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a favourite target of antisemites."

"Do you know how many times I have gone into Bedford police station, I have gone into Kempston police station, to say here are comments to kill my family but nothing ever gets done. I have three kids, an innocent wife, my family are scared."

"All the British media do is lie. I have a lot to say but nothing to you. I want to thank the British public for all their support."

"No matter how [haram terrorists'] life has been, if they wanna get to heaven, they just have to kill non-Muslims in a holy jihad. That's all they have to do, then they get to heaven. It's like an easy "card out" for Muslims who've behaved badly their whole life. And we've seen this time and time again with the terrorists that we find. They say, "He wasn't a practicing Muslim". No, but because of the scripture in Islam, he genuinely believes he is going to eternal hell fire for the life that he's lived. He sees going and running down 20 or 40 people, and killing coppers, and killing innocent people, he sees that as a "get out" because of the scripture in Islam. That's why."

"Islam is not up for reform or negotiation – so we have no other choice than to fight it."

"The reality is this is a war. These people are waging war on us. This has gone on for 1,400 years. This is nothing new. And the whole time while this goes on, the police leaders or political leaders want to invite more! They want to invite more!"

"I had some left wing fella ask me this, he started asking me my views on most things. I'm liberal in many senses, like when it comes to (probably not when I was younger) when it comes to gay people's rights I fight for a gay man's rights – so on all of these issues, as I've grown up, I said,... when people say that I'm far right, well what makes me right wing? Am I right wing just because I don't like Islam? Does that make me right wing just because I don't like a fascist ideology? If I didn't like scientology, does that make me right wing? No, it's an ideology. So I said like, "most of my views, they're very liberal – many of them would be left-wing"."

"A moment like this makes it all worth while. Today I met real British heroes."

"I'm not going to incite hatred against anyone."

"If Islam is this "religion of peace", why is everyone so scared?"

"We need a new England where all religions and colours feel proud of our flag and recognise how important our identity and culture is."

"The media are the enemy of the people. The government, police and social services are responsible for sacrificing a generation of our daughters at the hands of the multiculturalism altar."

"Previous prime ministers, be it William Gladstone who said, 'There will never be peace on this earth as long as we have the Koran, it's an accursed and violent book.' Then we have Winston Churchill who said, 'Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog.' And then we have David Cameron, who says Islam is a religion of peace. What's changed? Because the Koran] hasn't changed."

"As a father, I have serious concerns about what life will be like for my kids, if I'm even here. Am I scared of the death threats, and people who want to kill me and the attacks against me, etc? Yeah, I am. Of course, I am. I wouldn't be human if I wasn't. But I am terrified for the entire next generation of this country, and its history, its culture, its identity – it's all under attack."

"The last thing we want is a war in this country, but it is the inevitable outcome for the way the country is going. Now, the British people are not going to sit back and take much more."

"We are offered silence, free speech is all but dead in Europe. We live in a post free speech era, the attacks on Charlie Hebdo have proven that to the whole world."

"I apologise for the fact that what I've represented and said has not resonated individually with Muslims. From day one in the English Defence League, we've wanted to embrace everyone: all colours and all creeds."

"There should be better regulation of mosques in the UK to curb the influence of preachers of hate and an end to Islamic immigration until the problem is solved"

"I have been considering this move [to leave EDL] for a long time because I recognise that, though street demonstrations have brought us to this point, they are no longer productive. I acknowledge the dangers of far-right extremism and the ongoing need to counter Islamist ideology not with violence but with better, democratic ideas."

"We need strong leadership, not cowards who are begging petrol dollars and wanting a block Islamic vote. We need a leader not an appeaser. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. Stand up for what u believe. Never be intimidated by anyone #english #nosurrender."