“The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology.”

— V.S. Naipaul, book The Enigma of Arrival

Among the Believers
The Enigma of Arrival (1987)

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Do you have more details about the quote "The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology." by V.S. Naipaul?

V.S. Naipaul34

Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry 1932–2018

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

“I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this theology.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

A statement in this passage is sometimes paraphrased: "Men are better than their theology."
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation
Context: I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without after-thought, if said in conversation, would probably be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement.

“Theology schools are the wisdom teeth of academia: useless and sometimes injurious remnants of earlier times. If you want to teach comparative religion in college, you can do it in sociology departments, and if you want to teach the history of religion or of how scripture was confected, you can do it in history departments. There is no rationale for a modern secular university to teach theology, for it is the study of a nonexistent being and its supposed wants.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Theology schools are dying https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/theology-schools-are-dying/" March 19, 2016

“I'm told theology is outside my field of expertise. But is theology a "field" at all? Is there anything in "theology" to be expert ABOUT?”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/324171554491596803 (16 April 2013) <br class="br">Twitter

“Religious harmony is a desirable thing. But it takes two to play the game. Unfortunately such a sentiment holds a low position in Islamic theology.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

“There is no problem with Islam itself or with the Muslims, but these are difficult times, and the difficulty stems from radical Islam.”

Daniel Pipes (1949) U.S. neoconservative columnist, author, counter-terrorism analyst, and scholar of Middle Eastern history

American Middle East Expert Daniel Pipes Clashes with Lebanese Journalist Khodhor 'Awarki on whether Israel Should Be a Jewish State, MEMRI, December 4, 2007 http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1626.htm,.

“…English translation of the Koran. I wonder how, with such a repetitive farrago of platitudes, expressing so self-evident a theology and an ethic so puerile, Islam can have spread as it has.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

“It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages http://books.google.ca/books?id=mGmQMdHqj9AC&pg=PA451&dq=It+is+impossible+to+exaggerate+the+evil+work+theology++Lydia+Maria+Child&hl=en&sa=X&ei=At4QUYLKOrOM0QGp34DIBg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=It%20is%20impossible%20to%20exaggerate%20the%20evil%20work%20theology%20%20Lydia%20Maria%20Child&f=false, 1855, p. 451, vol. 3 <br class="br">1850s

“Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“When I discovered that history is a fable, and a poor one at that, I started looking for a better fable, and found theology.”

Halldór Laxness book Kristnihald undir Jökli (bók)

Pastor Jón Prímus
Kristnihald undir Jökli (Under the Glacier/Christianity at Glacier) (1968)

“The time before Islam is a time of blackness: that is part of Muslim theology. History has to serve theology.”

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