“Faith is one thing, adherence is another. Each gives rise to a different state: firmness stems from faith; bigotry arises from blind adherence; obedience comes from understanding and conviction; adherence originates in confirmation. The one who is indifferent and barren in reasoning remains deprived in conception. Fallacies arise in the imagination when it strays from the balance of reasoned conviction. To paint falsehoods as beautiful is to injure clear minds and lead them astray.”¹⁾

“To compare Islam with Christianity is a flawed analogy; that analogy is invalid. Because Europe, when it was fanatically attached to its religion, was not civilized. It only became civilized after abandoning bigotry. Moreover, religion had caused three hundred years of internal wars among them. Under the hands of despotic tyrants, it became a means of oppressing the common people, the poor, and intellectuals. Therefore, as a result, a temporary estrangement from religion emerged among the masses.”²⁾

“Just as the bigotry of the Christian elite and the lack of firmness among the Muslim elite demonstrate a significant difference, so too does the contrast between the philosophers who emerged from Christianity—many of whom adopted indifferent or opposing stances toward their religion—and the majority of Muslim philosophers, who based their wisdom on the foundations of Islam. This, again, points to an important distinction.”³⁾

“Some who carry extreme tariqah (spiritual path) bigotry prioritize the etiquettes and litanies of the tariqah over the Sunnah of the Prophet. By doing so, they oppose the Sunnah, abandoning it while continuing with their litanies. In that way, they develop an attitude of indifference toward the practices of the Shari’ah, and thus fall into a serious pitfall.”⁴⁾

“… when people have abandoned bigotry or its fallacies and entered on the way followed by people in unison, they have had to change their own way. However, if they had supported the truth instead of bigotry, followed evidence instead of fallacies, lived with love of their own way according to the rules of Shari‘a and for the good pleasure of God instead of denouncing others as deviants, and had based their actions on consultation, they would not have felt the need to change their own way. But just as doubt and suspicion had no effect on people’s minds during the Age of Happiness and the subsequent periods of the righteous generations due to the dominance of the truth and the application of evidence, reason, and consultation, so too, through the efforts of scientific thought and investigation will the truth prevail over force, evidence over fallacies, reason over disposition, guidance over lust and caprice, steadfastness in the truth over bigotry or fanaticism, public spirit over spite, intellectual tendencies over the inclinations of the carnal soul, thought over emotions. This will happen to some extent in the present and fully in the future. The situation was completely thus in the first three centuries of Islam and to a certain extent during the succeeding two centuries. From the sixth century onwards, everything began gradually to deteriorate.”⁵⁾

“The ray of the conscience is the religious knowledge; the light of the intellect is the modern sciences. Truth is manifested by the harmony of both. With these two wings, the student’s ambition soars. If they are separated, the first leads to bigotry, and the second to deceit and doubt.”⁶⁾

“‘Taassub’ (bigotry) is an Arabic word meaning to evaluate matters solely through one’s own understanding and taste without considering the broader context, to insist stubbornly even on points that defy reason and contradict the spirit of religion, and to act with a ‘my way or no way’ mentality. The Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, described this attitude using the word ‘asabiyya,’ which linguistically implies ‘tribalism’ or ‘hotheadedness.’ This is because bigotry is a behavior founded entirely upon emotion and nerves—a reaction born from physical and animal impulses. Grammatically, the word comes from the tafa’ul pattern, which implies affectation or forced behavior. In this sense, ‘taassub’ signifies stubbornness in an extreme and unjust way, insistence, ignoring others, clinging only to one’s own opinion, disregarding what is seen or heard, and tying everything to one’s ego. Clearly, bigotry is behavior detached from logic and reasoning, devoid of genuine emotional insight. For this reason, a bigoted person cannot act with reasoned thought, nor can they access the inner feelings that arise from the conscience mechanism. In Turkish, the terms ‘yobazlık’ (fanaticism), ‘bağnazlık’ (narrow-mindedness), and ‘fanatizm’ (fanaticism) are also used—with subtle nuances—to denote ‘taassub.’”⁷⁾

“In order for a believer to live a life of firm religious commitment without falling into bigotry, they must first deeply understand and internalize the foundational principles of the Qur'an and Sunnah. Then, they must test their acquired knowledge against these two sacred sources. Whatever they derive from the Qur'an and Sunnah should be compared to the sincere reasoning and interpretations of the righteous predecessors. In other words, they should take into account the collective scholarly insights of the leading scholars throughout Islamic history, which can be regarded as a form of spiritual consensus.”⁸⁾

“Radical-minded individuals who act with a sense of bigotry have little to offer in terms of winning hearts or promoting peace among humanity. Their rigidity prevents them from inspiring respect for their values in others. They cannot endear the Pride of Humanity, peace and blessings be upon him, to people’s hearts. For, ultimately, they are slaves to their own egos.”⁹⁾

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