Line of Succession Quotes
Khomeini was a politician as well as a cleric. He was not always consistent depending on his audience. This book was the publication of 17 different speeches with different audiences. Here he opposes all monarchy, but there is little doubt that his main target was the monarchy of Saudi Arabia. In {620335} he suggests that monarchy would be acceptable if the monarch followed Islamic law. Here he leaves no room for monarchies of which there were and are a number in the Muslim world. And at the height of Islam there was a Caliph who not only had absolute rule of ALL Muslim countries, but he was the absolute ruler of the religion. The Caliph and later the Islamic Sultan held more absolute power than any king or Pope ever had. Most of the Islamic fundamentalists claim that they want a return to having a Caliph with absolute power. And even in Iraq today, the “Supreme Leader” exercises more autonomous power, than any monarch or dictator does in his own country.
Gennadios II, 1400-1473, had been taken as a prisoner when the Ottomans captured Constantinople 3 days earlier. Despite the fact that there was doctrine that said that Islam should be the only religion, Mehmed—only 21 at the time—realized that he had to rule the city including the many Greek Orthodox and had Gennadios freed and personally invested him as the Petrarch of the Eastern Christian Church. Mehmed was particularly shrewd in his choice. Gennadios had been a strong opponent of the Union movement of Eastern and Western Christian Churches would end their schism and reunite. See {635099} for another notable who was vehemently opposed to Union. There were some Unionists among the defeated Christians who were still alive. The last thing strategically that the Ottoman’s wanted was for Union to have traction and the Eastern Christians of Constantinople looking to the Western Christians led by the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and the Christian European Kings for an alliance to eject the Ottomans from and retake Constantinople. The graphic depicts Mehmed investing Gennadios—a practice that was followed with each new Patriarch and the Sultan then in office. See {635084} for another quotation describing Ottoman pragmatic religious tolerance. One of Mehmed’s historical heroes was Alexander the Great who was able to rule most of the known world in large part because of his education by Aristotle advising him to be very tolerant of conquered people’s cultures, religious and otherwise. Mehmed, after his death, came under criticism from ultra orthodox Muslims including his own son and successor, for his religious tolerance and emulating a non-believer—Alexander the Great.
She responded to the Lord Chief Justice and to Lord Cecil and asked them to so inform the Commons and the House of Lords. Cecil needed three drafts to convey the response but tone it down a little, thus performing the duties of a modern press secretary.
His reference was to the continuation of royal rule after French had taken control.
Mehmet’s father Murat had just died. There was a custom in Islam that the new Sultan have all his brothers executed so that there would be absolute certainty who was the legitimate Sultan and that dissenting forces should not rally around another son of the old Sultan to have a regime change and/or a civil war. Stability and certainty in the line of succession was critical to the Muslims in that the Sultan was not only the civil ruler, but the highest religious authority as well. He had the power of the Christian Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor together. The struggle between the Sunnis and the Shiites which has overwhelmed Islamic unity was originally all about who the successor to Muhammad would be.
