Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Quotes

The king, in his wisdom, understood the spirit of the age, and shaped his plans accordingly.

The same spirit of intolerance was shown by the Jesuit fathers in the Moghul court. The Emperor Akbar took great interest in religious discussions and summoned to the court scholarly Jesuit missionaries from Goa. They were received with great courtesy, but the free discussions in the Ibadat Khana (House of Worship), where the debates on religion took place, displeased the Jesuit fathers greatly. Their intolerance of other religions and their arrogant attitude towards the exponents of other faiths were unwelcome also to the Emperor. So the missionaries had to leave the capital greatly disappointed.

What America does all over the world in the name of the war on terrorism, the way in which it plunders the resources of peoples in needy and backwards countries, its aggression in international organizations, which belong to all of the world's peoples, and the inflammatory propaganda it uses in order to undermine other countries – all of these certainly contradict the spirit of the teachings of Jesus.[...] Pope's functionaries [...]should say to the Americans: Through the crimes you commit you disgrace Jesus, because you use the names of Jesus and the church to win over many votes in the American public.

[The people also got busy collecting] "all kinds of exploded errors, and brought them to his Majesty, as if they were so many presents... Every doctrine and command of Islam as the prophetship, the harmony of Islam with reason... the details of the day of resurrection and judgement, all were doubted and ridiculed."

Professor Mubarak Ali, a respected historian living in Lahore, asserts that Akbar has been systematically eliminated from most textbooks in Pakistan in order to "divert attention away from his 'misplaced' policies". Where they exist, discussions of Akbar are short and superficial...

“On the 1st Rajab 990 [AD 1582] he (Husain Qulî Khãn) encamped by a field of maize near NagarkoT. The fortress (hissãr) of Bhîm, which is an idol temple of Mahãmãî, and in which none but her servants dwelt, was taken by the valour of the assailants at the first assault. A party of Rajpûts, who had resolved to die, fought most desperately till they were all cut down. A number of Brãhmans who for many years had served the temple, never gave one thought to flight, and were killed. Nearly 200 black cows belonging to Hindûs had, during the struggle, crowded together for shelter in the temple. Some savage Turks, while the arrows and bullets were falling like rain, killed those cows. They then took off their boots and filled them with the blood and cast it upon the roof and walls of the temple.”173

A large group of Iranians have doubts about last month's (June) disputed presidential election … something should be done about the situation., on the 2009 presidential election.

With Islamic zeal, Akbar at first persecuted the Hindus.

Akbar had prohibited enslavement and sale of women and children of peasants who had defaulted in payment of revenue. He knew, as Abul Fazl says, that many evil hearted and vicious men either because of ill-founded suspicion or sheer greed, used to proceed to villages and mahals and sack them.

It is highly doubtful if the Mughal period deserves the credit it has been given as a period of religious tolerance. Akbar is now known only for his policy of sulh-i-kul, at least among the learned Hindus. It is no more remembered that to start with he was also a pious Muslim who had viewed as jihãd his sack of Chittor. Nor is it understood by the learned Hindus that his policy of sulh-i-kul was motivated mainly by his bid to free himself from the stranglehold of the orthodox ‘Ulamã, and that any benefit which Hindus derived from it was no more than a by-product. Akbar never failed to demand daughters of the Rajput kings for his harem. Moreover, as our citations show, he was not able to control the religious zeal of his functionaries at the lower levels so far as Hindu temples were concerned. ... The reversal of Akbar’s policy thus started by his two immediate successors reached its apotheosis in the reign of Aurangzeb, the paragon of Islamic piety in the minds of India’s Muslims. What is more significant, Akbar has never been forgiven by those who have regarded themselves as custodians of Islam, right upto our own times; Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is a typical example. In any case one swallow has never made a summer.

If the Americans attack Iran, the world will change. …They will not dare to make such a mistake'

Islam, like the other two religions of the Judaic family, is exclusive-minded and intolerant by comparison with the religions and philosophies of Indian origin. Yet the influence of India on Akbar went so deep that he was characteristically Indian in (his) large-hearted catholicity.

Although the Mughal emperor Akbar attempted to prohibit the practice of enslaving conquered Hindus, his efforts were only temporarily successful.43 According to one early seventeenth-century account, 'Abd Allah Khan Firuz Jang, an Uzbek noble at the Mughal court during the 1620s and 1630s, was appointed to the position of governor of the regions of Kalpi and Kher and, in the process of subjugating the local rebels, "beheaded the leaders and enslaved their women, daughters and children, who were more than 2 lacks [200,000] in number".

We want all the Palestinians back in their homeland, and then there can be a fair referendum for people to choose the form of state they want. Whoever gets the majority can rule.

Europe resolved a great problem – the problem of the Zionist danger. The Zionists, who constituted a strong political party in Europe, caused much disorder there. Since they had a lot of property and controlled an empire of propaganda, they made the European governments helpless. What Hitler and the German Nazis did to the Jews of Europe at that time was partly due to these circumstances with the Jews. They wanted to expel the Zionists from Europe because they always were a pain in the neck for the governments there. This is how this calamity fell upon the Muslims, especially the Palestinians, and you all know this history, more or less.[...]The first goal was to save Europe from the evil of Zionism, and in this, they have been relatively successful.