Abdul-Rehman Asif

“The state of cultural and social chaos through which we are passing at present distinctly shows that the balancing forces which once were responsible for the greatness of the Islamic world are nearly exhausted today. We are drifting; and no one knows to what cultural end. No intellectual courage remains, no will to resist or to avert that torrent of foreign influences destructive to our religion and society. We have thrown aside the best moral teachings which the world has ever known. We belie our faith, whereas to our distant forebears it was a living urge; we are ashamed, whereas they were proud; we are mean and self-centred, whereas they generously opened themselves out to the world; we are empty, whereas they were full.”
― Muhammad Asad, Islam at the Crossroads

“Sometimes in a panel or debate appearance, I’d find a jam-packed audience to hear me, alone, facing six or eight student and faculty scholars heads of departments such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, and religion, and each of them coming at me in his specialty.

At the outset, always I’d confront such panels with something such as: 'Gentlemen, I finished the eighth grade in Mason, Michigan. My high school was the black ghetto of Roxbury, Massachusetts. My college was in the streets of Harlem, and my master’s was taken in prison. Mr. Muhammad has taught me that I never need fear any man’s intellect who tries to defend or to justify the white man’s criminal record against the non-white man—especially the white man and the black man here in North America.'

It was like being on a battlefield—with intellectual and philosophical bullets. It was an exciting battling with ideas.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“The sound hadiths, however, indicate that every time the believer’s life is prolonged is increased by that in the good he is entitled to from God. So it is inappropriate for him to wish for that to come to an end; that is, unless he fears being tried in his faith. Whenever he fears being tested in his faith, he fears losing the good that he has with God, and it being replaced with evil. God forbid! In such a case, death is better than life.”
― Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, On Remembering Death

“Salah will be the last thing to be lost in Islam; after it has gone, nothing will remain of the religion. It is the first of his deeds about which the slave will be asked on the Day of Resurrection, and it is a central pillar of Islam. If the pillar falls, the whole pavilion will fall. The pegs and the ropes will not suffice. If the Salah is lost, the Islam is lost.”
― Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ahmad ibn Hanbal’s Treatise on Prayer