Hamza Yusuf
17 quotes
Biography
Hamza Yusuf is an American Islamic scholar. A pioneer of Islamic neo-traditionalism, he has promoted Islamic sciences and classical teaching methodologies throughout the world.
"The weak are dominated by their ego, the wise dominate their ego, and the intelligent are in a constant struggle against their ego."
"Hypocrisy is wretched because the hypocrite says with his tongue what is not in his heart. He wrongs his tongue and oppresses his heart. But if the heart is sound, the condition of the tongue follows suit. We are commanded to be upright in speech, which is a gauge of the heart's state."
"We live in the age of Noah (a.s.) in the sense that a flood of distraction accosts us. It is a slow and subtle drowning. For those who notice it, they engage in the remembrance of God. The rites of worship and devotion to God's remembrance (dhikr) are planks of the ark. When Noah (a.s.) started to build his ark, his people mocked him and considered him a fool. But he kept building. He knew what was coming. And we know too."
"When the Prophet says "brother", we should interpret this as universal brotherhood, which includes Muslims and non-Muslims."
"One of the things that I see in the United States happening, that is troubling to me, is a lot of young Muslims are abandoning those thawabit, those things that really... Once you begin to abandon them, your religion unravels. Like pulling the thread on a woven garment."
"For believers, both privilege and privation are a trial, and both demand responses: one demands service, and the other demands patience. The greatest privilege is to live well in flourishing lands; the greatest privation is to live in the midst of war, especially civil war."
"The Islamic tradition does show some areas of apparent incompatibility with the goals of women in the West, and Muslims have a long way to go in their attitudes towards women. But blaming the religion is again to express an ignorance both of the religion and of the historical struggle for equality of women in Muslim societies."
"Much to the chagrin of the staunchly secular among us, religion shows no sign of going away. Predictions of the demise of religion, faith, tradition - and even God - have consistently been proven wrong."
"The acquisition of knowledge - knowledge of both the world and of their own religion - will inoculate young people against extremist ideologies."
"A lot of our leadership has become acutely aware of speaking more fairly, of speaking more balanced, of recognizing that hate speech in any form, even if it comes out of emotional anger, is dangerous."
"September 11 was a wake-up call to me. I don't want to contribute to the hate in any shape or form. I now regret in the past being silent about what I have heard in the Islamic discourse and being part of that with my own anger."
"Isn’t it interesting, that a black man, who is a Muslim, and has the name ‘Muhammad’, is the most beloved athlete in the world?"
"Food is not to enjoy. That's not the reason why you're eating it. That's why the Glutton eats. But someone who's serious about maintaining their health - they eat for health. We're literally digging our graves with our teeth."
"True freedom is doing what Allah wants which is the defintion of freedom in Islam. The 'Abdullah is the only real hur because he is a servant and a slave to Allah and not to creation.The one who is a slave to himself is not free and will never be free until he is freed of himself.And this is why in arabic language the word for freed slave is also the word for master: "Maula"; like we call Allah "Maulana". So the freed slave is the one who is the master of himself."
"People say to you, 'you've changed', or something like that. Well, I hope, for the sake of God, that I have changed, because I don't want to be the same person all my life. I want to be growing, I want to be expanding. I want to be changing. Because animate things change, inanimate things don't change. Dead things don't change. And the heart should be alive, it should be changing, it should be moving, it should be growing and its knowledge should be expanding."
"The onus is on us as a community to really put forward a different face for our religion, for our community, and for our Lord, and for our Prophet, peace be upon him, because it's really unacceptable that a religion with all of this beauty should be painted with such ugly strokes. So we're really here trying to paint a beautiful picture of our faith in action."
"Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of building a mosque near Ground Zero, this controversy now affords us an immense opportunity to examine who we are as a people. It provides us with the opportunity to get back to our foundational ideals, which have always stood as a beacon for the rest of the world."