"In the year 612, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, a prosperous merchant from Mecca deeply troubled by the splintered, selfish nature of Arab society, emerged as the Prophet Muhammad with divine instructions on how to unite and transform his people. He called his new belief system Islam, meaning "peace through surrender to God." In its essence, Islam was a strict code of ethics requiring subservience to the community and compassion toward the poor. It quickly helped Arab tribes end their constant blood feuds and create and all-powerful super-tribe based not on family connection but on shared ideology and security. Islam made Arabia an instant superpower. Within two decades of Muhammads death in 632, the new Muslim Empire controlled Persia, Syria, Egypt, and pieces of North Africa."
Muhammad was an Arab religious, military and political leader, as well as the founder of Islam. According to Islam, he was the final prophet of God who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets in Islam. He is believed by Muslims to be the Seal of the Prophets, and along with the Quran, his teachings and normativ
"The Amir al-Muminin, Abu Hafs Umar ibn al-Khattab said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, "Actions only go by intentions. Everyone gets what they intend. Anyone, therefore, who emigrates to Allah and His Messenger, his emigration is indeed to Allah and His Messenger. But anyone who emigrates to gain something of this world or to marry a woman, his emigration is to that to which he emigrated."
"Whoever possesses the following three qualities will have the sweetness (delight) of faith:"
"An-Numan ibn Bashir said, "Umar ibn al-Khattab mentioned the things of this world that the people had acquired and he said, One day I saw the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, sifting through some bad dates he had found in order to fill his belly."
"Avoid cruelty and injustice for, on the Day of Judgment, the same will turn into several darknesses; and guard yourselves against miserliness; for this has ruined nations who lived before you."
"Abdullah ibn Masud reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "No one who has an atoms weight of pride in his heart will enter the Garden [heaven]." A man said, "And if the man likes his clothes to be good and his sandals to be good?" He said, "Allah is Beautiful and loves beauty. Pride means to renounce the truth and abase people."
"Amr ibn Shuaybs grandfather said, "The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Anyone who does not show mercy to our young people nor honour our old people is not one of us."
"Now Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture and music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It is, therefore, the power of humanizing nature, of infusing the thoughts and passions of man into everything which is the object of his contemplation."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought."
Erich Fromm"Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flower Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair — The bees are stirring — birds are on the wing — And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge