Mark Twain Quotes

This is not terribly different however from Christians and Jews selectively quoting the Bible.

Theological & Legal Expert. The Sunnah, like the Koran, has statements of the Prophet, Mohammad. A fatwa is a religious legal ruling. This particular Fatwa shows the great difference between the Islamic State and a Republic or Democracy. In the latter forms, any religious practices must be consistent with the Constitution. Even though blasphemy might be prohibited by a religion, the United States Constitution for example protects anyone’s right to be blasphemous. In the Islamic system any constitution or law is subservient to and must be consistent with, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. In that sense, unless the Muslim populated nation is secular like Turkey, then the governments are partial or total theocracies.

His views are a mix of modernism and fundamentalism. He favors democracy and elections but also favored the Taliban destroying the great ancient Buddha statues when he was called an idol worshipper for urging the preservation of art.

This is a very important point as most Muslims believe that the actual wording of the Sharia—Islamic Law—comes from the Prophet directly and are not the words of various legal scholars which is just what they are. Needless to say, there are many differences and even contradictions depending on time and the particular scholar. Islam however has no authority that religiously is higher than any other. In that respect, it is like Judaism. There is not a recognized religious hierarchy as there is in Christian churches.

This type of religious sexism is not unique to Islam. Fundamentalist Christians place women in a secondary role as do fundamentalist orthodox Jews although both allow a man to take only one wife. The Islamic scripture tells us that the Prophet allowed multiple wives only if the man had the resources to care for the wives and all the children. 4 is the maximum.

This technique she describes is consistent with Sharia—Islamic Law. It however is used by very few women who are sophisticated and courageous enough to do so.

Sharie is the Islamic code of law based on the Koran which is so brutal that they would stone a woman to death who had illicit sex or kill someone who wanted to change his religion.

Ibn Rushd is generally considered the greatest of the Islamic philosophers. In this famous quotation he observes that the Koran is contradictory when it addresses issues of determinism and free will, a subject inquired about in most religions philosophies. While the same thing can be said of the Bible, what surprises some, is that a great Islamic scholar could say that there were contradictions in the Koran as many think of Islam as requiring literal adherence to and faith in the validity of the Koran. Contradictions are not admitted as possible. It illustrates that not all Islamic scholars are fundamentalists, but also that the leading Islamic scholars of the 12th century could hold such a view and freely publish it. Such ideas might get one killed in fundamentalist parts of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia today. Although valid for Muslims, the Hadith is less well known than the Koran which is recited by all good Muslims.

She was born a Muslim herself and her life has been threatened by other, Muslims who are fundamentalists who are living proof or her point.

What makes this quotation very notable is the fact that Dr. El-Naggar is not even a cleric but a scientist. and yet in spite of his education, much broader than most Muslim men, he still thinks of the Koran as the only source of truth available to man. Observation, deduction, induction, experimentation all have no weight. Herein lies one basic difference between Islamic Fundamentalists on the one hand and Christian, Jewish, Hindu & Buddhist and other religion’s fundamentalists. All may accept their holy book as the revealed truth, but it is only the fundamentalist Muslim who believes that it is the ONLY source of truth and wisdom. A classic difference between the radical fundamentalist and the moderates is that moderates, like almost all religious people on earth, believe that there are other sources of knowledge, truth and wisdom besides their holy book.

The Governor had introduced Sharia, Islamic Law, into his state. When a woman was sentenced to death by stoning, the Federal Government nullified the sentence on the ground that stoning was not morally right nor was a death penalty for her actions. The woman was not executed

This is a particularly interesting passage of the Koran. On the one hand it provides the religious justification for the sexist dominance of the male in a marriage. However, at the same time, it gave wives rights at a time when few cultures and religions did--such as the right to own and inherit property. Women in the Western world did not obtain some of these rights until the last hundred years. So historically, Islam was somewhat ahead of Christianity when Muhammed lived, but while most Western interpretations of gender role and rights have changed and advanced, a small minority of Islam has been reformist and modern so Islam has gone from a leader in modern gender relations to an obstacle to equality and fairness by not changing and reforming.

Patton was leading troops in north Africa in world war two. They came into much contact with the Arabs and Patton thought that his officers should know more about them. He wrote this memo.

Luther’s logic was that polygamy was sanctioned in the Old Testament and never specifically forbidden in the New Testament. This fact totally puzzled the American Mormons when the Protestants railed against the immorality of their plural marriages.

This is another of De Tocqueville’s prescient statements that in retrospect seem so amazing given the time. This quotation could serve as an op ed in a newspaper of any of the industrial democracies of the early 21st century. However, he did not have the information of the details we have today that showed Islam as the pinnacle of scientific, philosophical, literary and medical achievement at the beginning of the second millennium, while the Christian nations of Europe were mired in the Dark Ages. It was the same Koran but a very different interpretation and framework that led to the decadence while it was the Protestant Reformation that triggered a Christianity that was hospitable to modernity and enlightenment.

The Islamic leadership of that era came from the East and not Arabia. Theirs was a much more modern form of Islam where the basic values were very similar to those of other major religions. Also, toleration of minorities was an assumed requirement for all. When the axis of world Islamic leadership shifted to the Arab nations, the fundamentalist intolerance ascended and minorities were not only persecuted but were expelled from Arab countries in an effective ethnic cleansing. “Mussalman” was a then common word used in India to denote a Muslim.

This quotation demonstrates that even in the Iranian Islamic Fundamentalist Theocracy, not all the religious leaders are extremists and anti-human rights. However, Saanei is no longer in the top level of the Iranian government and more extreme fundamentalists have control of the government. But Iran is by no means monolithic.

Legal Religious Ruling. This is an example of a source of tension between some Muslims and others. Non-Muslims are required to have a Muslim Education in Muslim countries, but they insist that any required Christian or secular education in a non Muslim country is anti-Islamic.