Quote by Al-Maarri: “The world's people are of two kinds: those with brains but no religion, and those with religion but no brains.”

Al-Maarri's cutting observation mocks both pure rationalists and unthinking believers — suggesting that neither camp has fully achieved the balance between reason and depth of spirit. It is a provocation meant to make everyone uncomfortable, not just one side.

Al-Maarri wrote during the Abbasid decline, when competing Fatimid and Buyid powers were fragmenting the Islamic world politically and theologically. His radical scepticism — including vegetarianism and rejection of organised religion — was deeply unusual for the 11th century and earned him both admiration and condemnation.

Syrian poet and philosopher born in 973 CE in Ma'arra al-Nu'man, considered one of the greatest and most controversial Arab poets, whose work challenged religious authority and conventional morality with biting scepticism. His collection Luzum ma la yalzam (The Necessity of What Is Unnecessary) is a landmark of Arabic literary pessimism.