Hamza Yusuf

“Where you don't have people who have strong intellectual capacity, you get demagoguery.”

“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.”

“My great, great grandfather, Michael O'Hanson, fled the impending potato famine of Ireland and arrived in America in the early 1840s with his bride, Bridget. They headed for Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and a mecca for Irish-Catholic immigrants then.”

“I think all this Facebook stuff should just stop!”

“The thing I love most about going to a book store is the self-help section is the biggest section because Americans know we're screwed up. We know it. But we want to get better.”

“Corruption is rife in the Muslim world, and when it is coupled with the marginalization of religion, it manifests itself as frustration and becomes a fertile recruiting ground for extremism.”

“The greatest preventative to terrorism is Muslim religious literacy.”

“Katrina did much more damage than anything the terrorists could ever put together.”

“Our duty is to be patient.”

“Stop taking pictures and start experiencing life.”

“You don't fight ideas with bombs.”

“When a man wrote a political screed against the IRS and flew into its building, he was deemed mentally ill, even though it was clearly a political act. There's a double standard, which is: If his name is Muhammad, it's automatically terrorism.”

“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.”

“Americans are generally decent and fair people with a commitment to sense, but some of us, swept up by our passions, wade too far into a sea of sensibility.”

“You can condemn and criticize religion... all those things are fine, but you can't mock and disrespect people.”

“Our world is increasingly interdependent and pluralistic, and in order to ensure a civil future, we must get to know one another.”

“The acquisition of knowledge - knowledge of both the world and of their own religion - will inoculate young people against extremist ideologies.”

“There are many ways to be hungry. One can hunger for love, or fame or social justice, but hunger for food seems to curb all other cravings.”

“As a Westerner, the child of civil rights and anti-war activists, I embraced Islam not in abandonment of my core values, drawn almost entirely from the progressive tradition, but as an affirmation of them.”

“The human family is a great one, and the Muslim branch is certainly worth knowing.”