Latest Seyyed Hossein Nasr Quotes from Interviews

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• In fact many Hindu yogis and Sufis met, they became friends, they spoke about the knowledge and love of God; about all the similarities that exist. And then the simplicity of Islam, the fact these people practiced what they preached brought many, many Hindus into Islam.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  People, Simplicity, Islam

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Without Sufism, Islam would not have spread into two thirds of what we call the Islamic world.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Islamic, Two, World

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• People who were also traders were also men of Sufism, as we see around Java, people who were outwardly trading but were also men of very high spiritual character. Otherwise no trader would be able to convert a person from one religion to another. It was because they were men of spiritual character.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Character, Men

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The Islamic world doesn't stop in the Arab world or Persia. There is the whole Turkic world, the Central Asian world, South Asian world, Southeast Asian world, and African world.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Islamic, Asian, World

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• If you have a billion Muslims, 900 million of them were not brought into Islam by any kind of invasion, but most of them through the Sufis, because human beings are such that they are affected by people of spiritual character. Certainly when they display nobility and hospitality and gentility and love and are not selfish or aggressive, and they are honest.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Selfish, Character

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• How did the Turks become Muslim? They became Muslim through the Sufis. The Arabs never conquered the Turks. There were people in early Islam who were speaking like Hallaj, who spoke about the Truth, about reaching the Truth, about being one with the Truth, and not only they were not killed, but they were great heroes of their own culture, and there is a university in Turkey named after one [Sufi Saint.]

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Hero, Turkeys, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• 300 years after the rise of Islam there were Zoroastrians in Iran. The Muslim armies never forced people to accept Islam. It was only within Arabia that God ordered the idolaters to have a choice of either embracing Islam or fight against Muslims, because He wanted to remove this terrible idolatry that exited there. But outside Arabia where Islam met Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus, they were given a choice by and large. That's why many Christians and Jewish communities survived in the Muslim world, but gradually many of them embraced Islam for different reasons.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Christian, Fighting, Army

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Look at Senegal, about 90% of the Muslims in Senegal are Tijani or Qadiri Sufis. Among them, they have very great teachers who have written poems about al-Hallaj, and they have not been killed. In fact, it's Sufism that brought Islam through all of Senegal, right under our noses the last couple of centuries. And you can go down the same line through Indonesia and Malaysia.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Teacher, Couple, Islam

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• There are millions and millions of Sufis who have existed in Islamic history and have the deepest impact on every aspect of Islamic culture and civilization to philosophy to art to science to social structure to economics who have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Art, Philosophy, Islamic

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Al-Hallaj has a special destiny. He came at a time when worldliness, the luxury, were inundating the Islamic world. His function was to act as kind of an antithesis to this, and he paid for it with his life, and he was very happy to do so. He smiled as he went to the executioner. That was done because it shook the conscience of the Islamic peoples of that time. But the vast majority, the vast, vast, vast majority of Sufis, they have not met the destiny of al-Hallaj. They have spoken about reaching "the Truth" and there is nothing dangerous about it.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Islamic, Destiny, Luxury

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• There is an idea that you can take the spiritual teachings of a religion outside of a religion and practice them; these ideas are brought forward. That appears to be easy. You can say, "Oh, well. I don't have to bother about not eating pork, and not drinking wine, and all you have to do is read the beautiful poetry of Rumi and talk about wine, women and song. Or something like that." This kind of attitude. This is the antipode of the other attitude which says Islam is nothing but throwing bombs, it has nothing to do with internal or inward purification.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Song

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The Shariah has many other functions but also protects the tarqiah; it protects the spiritual path.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Path, Function

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• There is no religion in the world where there is a possibility of spiritual development outside of the context of that religion. This is only a modern invention. For example, Christian mystics were also Christians. They also went to Church and followed Christian laws. Hindu mystics were practicing Hindus; they didn't kill cows and have steak. They follow the Hindu laws and so on and so forth down the line and Sufism is no exception.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Christian, Spiritual, Law

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• In the same way that we have a body and a soul and a spirit, our soul can't walk in the street without our body - we would be dead then. Religion is the same way; it has to have a body, it has to have a form, it has to have structure. Without that, the soul cannot be prepared to follow the tariqah.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Soul, Would Be, Body

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Tariqah [The Spiritual Path] without the Sharia [Islamic Law] is like having a pistachio tree without the shell. Or a walnut, a walnut cannot grow on a tree without having a shell, and the food that you eat is inside the shell.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Islamic, Law

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The Prophet was taken by the order of God to heaven, which is a prototype of all spiritual realization in Islam. But, he had a guide; Gabriel, the angel, was his guide. He took him to heaven.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Taken, Angel

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• If you want to make a decision in life on what to do, but if you're trying systematically, through spiritual practice, through meditation, through the invocation of the name of God, to walk closer and closer in this life to Him, you need someone to guide you. And God has made it possible in Islam for this guidance to exist.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Practice, Names

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• The Quran mentions the story of Moses and Khidr [a prophet mentioned in the Quran who guided Moses on a revelatory journey], a famous story, in which Moses represents sort of the external understanding of the religion and Khidr represents the inner spiritual understanding of the religion. Moses went on a journey with Khidr and Khidr said, "I will not accept you unless you stop questioning things," which from an external point of view seems strange, but inwardly is very meaningful. This is exactly the question of spiritual guidance.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Meaningful, Spiritual, Journey

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• In Islam, we believe that it is God himself who is the ultimate guide - Al Hadi - one of the names of God is Al Hadi, the Guide. But at the same time, God has provided within the Islamic revelation the possibility of spiritual guidance through human beings, because then everyone can have direct access to God.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Believe, Islamic

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Why does one need a doctor if God has given us our body and we pray to Him for our help?

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Doctors, Doe, Needs

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• In the field of medicine, if you're sick you need a doctor. A doctor has already studied how to deal with your ailments, and human beings are imperfect. There any many ailments of the psyche and the soul that need to be treated, and the serious murshid, or spiritual master, is also really a doctor of the soul: a person who can heal the wounds of the soul in the same way as a medical doctor takes care of our physical problems.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Doctors, Medicine

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Spiritual guidance needs guidance. It's like comparing walking on the ground and mountain climbing. Once you learn how to walk, you can walk on the ground by yourself, but if you want to climb Mount Everest, you need a guide.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Climbing, Mountain

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• In Islam, there is no priesthood and each person stands before God, like in the daily prayers, without an intermediary. That's in contrast to Christianity, where during the Eucharist, a priest has to officiate and the priest functions as a link - at least in Catholic Christianity - between the laity and God.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Prayer, Catholic, Islam

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• All Muslims stand before God and they are their own priests.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Priests

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Islam, in contrast to Christianity and Buddhism, does not have monasticism; spiritual life, social life, they are all integrated and related together in one way or another. And the Prophet represents that in his life.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Buddhism, Islam

  Source: www.counterpunch.org