INTRODUCTORY QUOTES

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation.

—George Washington, 1790 “In Islam, where this fusion [between state and church] took place, the whole culture was dominated, shaped and colored by it. Islam has only one form of polity, of necessity despotic, the consummation of power, secular, priestly and theocratic, which was transferred from the Caliphate to all dynasties. Thus all its parts were mere replicas of the world empire on a small scale, hence Arabized and despotic.... [ T]he wretched Koran stood, and still stands, in the way of any political and legal growth. Law remained half priestly.

—Jacob Burckhardt, 1865-1885 “In recent times the Muhammadan world has been excited by a powerful idea. This is the idea of Panislamism. The spiritual fusion of politically disarrayed Islam into a great unity. The external form of this unity is the institution of the indivisible Caliphate, which is the oldest political structure of Islam.... With regard to Islam, the unification of Muhammadan powers, and the awakening of the awareness of their unity and solidarity under a common authority is seen as the sole remedy against the dangers lurking in the womb of the future. And this unification is only conceived under the flag of the united Caliphate of Islam.. [T]he idea of Panislamism is a militant idea in their [Muslim] eyes, as it was a militant idea at the time of the birth of young Islam. This idea now reigns over Muhammadan public opinion, in some places with such power that the representatives of European governments now complain of it.”³

—Ignaz Goldziher, 1882 “Islam saw Allah, but not man; saw the claims of deity, not the rights of humanity; saw authority, failed to see freedom— therefore hardened into despotism.”⁴

—James Freeman Clarke, 1883 “The severe oppression experienced by Judaism has been spared to Islam; indeed the latter long figured as the oppressor of both Jews and Christians.”⁵

—C. Snouck Hurgronje, 1906 “While tea was being served I noticed a tiny negress, not more than six or seven years old, who stood motionless in the embrasure of an archway. Like most of the Moroccan slaves, even in the greatest households, she was shabbily, almost raggedly dressed. A dirty gandourah [a long loose gown with or without sleeves that is worn chiefly in northern Africa] of striped muslin covered her faded caftan [a usually cotton or silk ankle-length garment with long sleeves that is common throughout the Levant], and a cheap kerchief was wound above her grave and precocious little face.

—Edith Wharton, 1920

“Now a man preaching what he thinks is a platitude is far more intolerant than a man preaching what he admits is a paradox. It was exactly because it seemed self-evident, to Moslems as to Bolshevists, that their simple creed was suited to everybody, that they wished in that particular sweeping fashion to impose it on everybody.. Those who complain of our creeds as elaborate often forget that the elaborate Western creeds have produced the elaborate Western constitutions; and that they are elaborate because they are emancipated.” ⁷

—G. K. Chesterton, 1921

“In the case of the Mohammedan world, religion has seemingly affected every detail of life with its prescriptions and requirements.. [N]o other religion, as it conquered new territory, has so completely and quickly wiped out even the culture of the conquered people and imposed upon their total life new ways and customs, often a new language, as has the Mohammedan religion.. Islam can truly be described as totalitarian.

—Charles R. Watson, 1937 “[T]he extension of Muslim rule is objectively justified as the duty to spread the superior truth which, as a way of life, can be fully realized only under a Muslim administration; subjectively by the feeling that leadership and its honor belong to the ‘best community' [Koran 3:110: ‘You are the best nation ever brought forth to men...you believe in Allah'], which is Islam.”⁹

—Gustave von Grunebaum, 1955 “The Caliphate conserved its character as a religious institution, not in the sense of an organism of spiritual power or function, but quite precisely, in the sense that in the Islamic conception, the Caliphate, as the titulary repository of supreme sovereignty in both the religious and civil aspects closely bound up with each other, is an institution that constitutes an element of the faith. It is a fundamental element of Islam, the pillar on which rests the whole edifice and which conditions the organization and life of the Community. The Islamic faith includes belief in the necessity of the Caliphate as the titular organism of the civil and religious attributes of sovereignty.”¹⁰

—Emile Tyan, 1956 “[Islam] not unlike medieval Christianity—does not recognize the existence of independent, secular realms of life. Even if this universalism had been frequently forced to compromise with divergent realities in most Muslim lands, its claims remained nonetheless intact. Separation of religion and politics, in other words, was, at best a temporary phenomenon of Islam in decline. In an era of Islamic awakening, it could not survive for long, either in independent Muslim lands or in Islamic areas ruled by non-Muslims.”—

—Harry J. Benda, 1958 “[Since the fourteenth century] Islam came under a shadow. Its spirit was throttled by fanaticism, its theology was gagged by bigotry, its vitality was sapped by totalitarianism....

—A. A. A. Fyzee, 1963 “[T]he concept of an Islamic state attracts a following determined to realize it now or as soon as practicable. They bend their energies to the achievement of this goal. That they pursue concrete political aims is clear from their use of the word ‘ideology’ which has no rightful place in a religious context as religion is understood in the West. But it may be justified if Islam is understood in its traditional sense—as a faith and a way of life for man in society and state.. The fate of the Sharia will decide not only what Islam is to be today and tomorrow, but also what part it is to play in the confrontation between Europe and the East, between Islamic and Western civilization?”¹³

—Erwin I. J. Rosenthal, 1965 “By force of arms at first, the Muslims had acquired a good part of the civilized world and had created quite strong states, yet without realizing their ideal (the first totalitarian aspect of this religion): to conquer the entire world in order to subject it to a single authority. Moreover (and this gives it a second totalitarian aspect), it constitutes a great theoretical ensemble: the Muslim Law (Sharia), whose study is the science of fiqh [jurisprudence], all of which has the goal of regulating even down to the smallest details the whole life of the believer and the Muslim community.”¹⁴

—G.-H. Bousquet, 1966 “[I]f law is the core of Islam—if the common good of Muslims is a Book which warns, encourages, commands and forbids—there are surely limits to the possibility of a new interpretation. Sooner or later it will come up against the problem of the Qur’an: is a Muslim thinker, however enlightened, justified in saying that the Qur’an does not mean what devout Muslims have always thought it to mean? Once he has abandoned the traditional understanding of what is meant by faith, prophecy and Sharia, preserved and transmitted by responsible Muslims in each generation, on what grounds does he put forward his new interpretation, except that of unaided human reason, and ultimately of his own reason?...But once a Mufti of Woolwich has done his best with the Qur’an, what will be left of Islam?” ¹⁵

—Albert Hourani, 1967 “In the terrible history of the world’s religious persecutions, those suffered by the young Islam in fact seem singularly mild, and with all its willingness to amplify, Islamic tradition only records a few isolated cases of believers who died after maltreatment by pagans.

—Francesco Gabrieli, 1968 “The position of Islam is very clear on one point, namely that the true Muslim cannot take a disinterested position vis-à-vis the state. As a result, his position with regard to ruler and rule cannot be an indecisive one which is content with half solutions. Either the ruler is Muslim and the rule Islamic, then he will be content with the state and support it, or the ruler non-Muslim and the rule non-Islamic, then he rejects it, opposes it, and works to abolish it, gently or forcibly, openly or secretly.”¹⁷

—Husayn al-Quwatli, 1975 “Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which Allah made as the best community [Koran 3:110] and which gave humanity a universal and well- balanced civilization, in which harmony is established between hereunder and the hereafter, knowledge is combined with faith, and to fulfill the expectations from this community to guide all humanity which is confused because of different and conflicting beliefs and ideologies and to provide solutions for all chronic problems of this materialistic civilization..

Article 22: (a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Sharia. (al) Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Sharia.... Article 24: All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Sharia.. Article 25: The Islamic Sharia is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration.”¹⁸

—Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, August 5, 1990

“There are undoubtedly some Islamic states which treat non­Muslim citizens in ways which can only be described as oppressive.. It is of the utmost importance that Muslim jurists should consider whether such treatment of non-Muslims is in accordance with the Sharia or contrary to it. More generally, does the Sharia allow Muslims to live peaceably with non-Muslims in ‘one world' or must they regard it as dar al-harb [the infidels' abode of war]? To have an answer to these questions may be a matter of urgency in a few years' time.”¹⁹

—William Montgomery Watt, 1993 “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture.”²⁰

—Samuel Huntington, 1996

“There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that's it.”²¹

— Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 2007 “Most people, myself included, don't want to criticize any religion, let alone the religion they were born into. Religion must be, first and foremost, a personal relationship with God. Yet if people acting in the name of religion expand its sphere of control until their country becomes a one-party totalitarian state, then these coreligionists have overstepped their bounds. If this state preserves an elaborate legal system that can put someone to death for disagreeing with sharia, then it is trampling on the human rights of its citizens. If this state has a military mandate called jihad that violates the sovereignty of non-Muslim countries, then Islam is no longer a private matter, immune from criticism. Islam placed itself in the realm of criticism the day it demanded to become a political system with imperialist aspirations. If an ideology, religious or secular, has assumed for itself such totalitarian rights over others, then others have the right to challenge, discredit, and defeat it. Islam is challenging the world but has made it a crime for others to challenge it.... Having seen for ourselves what Islam has done to the lives and the political systems of Muslim countries, we who live in free democracies have a duty to criticize and scrutinize Islam. If our criticism inspires Muslims to reform, then it will have achieved an honorable goal. As it is practiced today, Islam is the problem, not the solution.”²²

—Nonie Darwish, 2012 “[I]ndeed Islam is religion and state.”²³

— Khairat al-Shater, 2012