"The political significance of Indonesian Islam, including Javanese Islam, stems in no small measure from the fact that in Islam the borderline between religion and politics is, at best very thin. Islam is a way of life as much as a religion…. Islam does not recognize the existence of independent, secular realms of life…. Separation of religion and politics, in other words, was, at best a temporary phenomenon of Islam in decline. In an era of Islamic awakening, it could not survive for long, either in independent Muslim lands or in Islamic areas ruled by non-Muslims…."

"Like other Muslims, Indonesian Islamic leaders—reformists, hardly less than orthodox—were thus by Western standards not only lacking in political experience, but were, by the nature of their orientation and training, ill-equipped to formulate political goals as such. The santri {Javanese practitioners of a more orthodox Islam} civilization, in other words, is not a political ideal so much as the idealization of a religious community—the ummah—which would subsume within its all-embracing confines all walks of life, subordinating the state to the dictates of the Islamic ethic…. If given political expression in Darul Islam—the so-called “Islamic State”—the political program of Islam is limited to postulating a state which, irrespective of its constitutional form, economic organization, and social composition, is to be ruled by Muslims in accordance with Islamic Law."

"One of the things that I always valued so much about Indonesia, when I was growing up, was people were devout Muslims but they also tolerated to others, other cultures."

"We regard the Afghan jihăd as the mother of jihăd. Many jihăd movements in the ummah have sprung from it."

"[I]n religious matters, the present-day Hindus are the descendants of the Indus valley people."

"The ethos of the ancient Indian Civilization is shaped during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Periods."

"We have found at Mohenjodaro evidence of practically every one that is capable of formative expression, viz of the cults of Shiva and the Mother goddess, of the Nagas and tree deities , of animal tree and stone worship, of phallism and of the practice of Yoga. We have seen, moreover, that although there are no visible traces Of Saktism at Mohenjodaro, there are strong reasons for believing that it existed on the Indian soil from a very early period.."

"Taken as a whole, their [the Indus Valley people’s] religion is so characteristically Indian as hardly to be distinguished from still living Hinduism."

"It is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley Civilization."

"[More recently, Kenoyer found between those two civilizations] “… no significant break or hiatus.”"

"It is strange but true that the type and style of bangles that women wear in Rajasthan today, or the vermilion that they apply on the parting of the hair on the head, the practice of Yoga, the binary system of weights and measures, the basic architecture of the houses etc can all be traced back to the Indus Civilisation. The cultural and religious traditions of the Harappans provide the substratum for the latter-day Indian Civilisation.”"

"This leads us to the question of the Indus religion. Many scholars ,both foreign and Indian, are very reluctant to find any trace of modern Hindu rituals and beliefs in the finds which have been interpreted as evidence of Indus religion. Two facts, however, cannot be wished away – regrettably from the point of view of this group of people. One is the indubitable presence of Siva in the form of linga-like stones found both at Mohenjodaro and Harappa, a distinctively phallic stone column at Dholavira, a seated ithyphallic stone figure from the same site, the famous ‘Siva-Pasupati’ figure on a seal, and the terracotta representation of a Siva-linga set in ‘Yoni-patta’ at Kalibangan. The second such evidence is the widespread presence of sacrificial pits at Lothal, Kalibangan , Banawali , Rakhigarhi and possibly a few other sites. These pits possibly have variations of their own. Their shapes and contents may also vary from site to site. However, their generic similarity with the ‘havan kundas’ which many devout people still dig up every day, light fire in, and pour offerings on, them is undeniable."

"We do not suggest that Hinduism, as we find it today, was there in the Indus civilization. All that we would say is that some later features of Hinduism have been echoed by ‘Indus’ finds, and thus this civilization is likely to have contributed to the stream of ‘sanatana dharma’ or traditional religion of the modern Hindus."

"I lived in Malaysia for three years in the kind of uncertainty westerners face only in times of war. The five daily calls to prayer are the only predictable events in the capital city, Kuala Lumpur. The power cuts are frequent, the traffic jams continuous. Islam is the official religion, but materialism is the ruling creed. ... Islam is practised with ritual precision and with perfect reverence for its Arabian dimension. All Malays, including the royal family, look up to Arabs, the white men of the East."

"Missionaries (from India or Pakistan) had brought the idol-smashing message to Malaysia. They had worked out, from various books they had consulted, how many thousands of years in paradise a Muslim earned for every idol he smashed; and they had calculated that a grand total of thirty smashed idols won a Muslim the jackpot, an eternity in paradise. The Malay rage was really about the Chinese shrines—some no more than concrete boxes—that were everywhere in the towns (there were two just outside the Holiday Inn). But the Chinese were powerful, and had their secret societies. The Tamil Hindus were a small, pacific community. So Hindu images were smashed. On many nights—during a three-week period in 1978—Tamil temples were desecrated."