Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine qua non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, "what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?" And sometimes we use religion just to back up these unworthy hatreds, because we're frightened too.
Karen Armstrong
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Religion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to Islam. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Religion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to Islam. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
"It’s when people begin using their religion as just a way of getting power over other people that scares me. I’m afraid that’s what’s going on in a lot of cases right now. When people deliberately tell lies, Creationism for instance, and pretend, “Oh, it’s not really religion”. I mean they know they’re lying, and yet they’re the religious people. There’s something wrong there."
Octavia Butler
How is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend for? ... It is never to be supposed that the people of America will trust their dearest rights to persons who have no religion at all, or a religion materially different from their own...Let religion be permitted to take its own course; the divine author of our religion never wished for its support by worldly authority.
James Iredell
You [Albanians] are a separate people, just like the Persians and the Arabs, who have the same religion as the Turks. Your ancestors exhisted before the Romans and the Turks. Religion has nothing to do with nationality and statehood... the question of religious beliefs must be kept well in mind, must be handled with great care, because the religious feelings of the people must not be offended. These feelings have been cultivated in the people for many centuries, and great patience is called for on this question, because the stand towards it is important for the compactness and unity of the people.
Joseph Stalin
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