Marc Sageman Quotes
Far from representing a political system likely to attract increasing numbers of adherents, fundamentalist Islam has failed everywhere it has been tried.
In almost every election in those Islamic counties that have elections, the fundamentalist political parties almost always lose by large margins.
Marc Sageman, CIA Official & Psychiatrist, Quoted in Philip H. Gordon, “Can the War on Terror Be Won”, Foreign Policy November/December 2007
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The notion that Islam would be practiced by individuals was in the Ayatollah’s view insufficient. Islam must also control the government—the head.
See {586916} for a passage from the Koran supporting his point.
Islam is a religion, like many Christian sects, where conversion of non-believers is a religious duty. When many of the European day-to-day customs, conflict with Islamic custom or prescription, decadence and the desire to change it becomes a very predictable result.
The Manual was found by the Manchester (England) Metropolitan Police during a search of an Al Qaida member's home.
The reason he claimed that Governor Taseer was a blasphemer was that the governor opposed death penalty for saying or writing anything that was heresy or blasphemy as interpreted be fundamentalist Muslims. The Governor knew he was taking a risk. See {620970} .
This statement was made 20 years before the Arab Spring of 2011.
Duran has been the subject of major criticism and attack by many who regard the term as too prejudicial and inflammatory, that there is an automatic association in the term of all Islam and Fascism. While Duran’s position is that the term only applies to extremists who embrace values and actions that were consonant with Fascism, there are other Islamic critics who believe that basic Islam is Fascistic per se and the term should be applied to almost everything Islamic.
Some think that origination credit should go to Malise Ruthven who used the word in an article published in The Independent of September 8, 1990
Gabriel exaggerates in the sense that while the quotation is correct for many Muslims, it is by no means true of all. Iran for example is an Islamic theocracy, but Turkey is a 99 percent Muslim nation which is totally secular and in some ways is much more restrictive of Islamic teaching and practice than most secular democracies. The fundamentalist Muslim view of the state and religion is essentially the same as the ultra orthodox Jews and Christians. It is true that a greater proportion of Muslims believe in the merging of civil and religious law than Jews and Christians, but by no means all. The non Arab Muslims are much less likely to see the unity of state and religion.
They are so different that most people in the West think of what Khamenei describes as “religious democracy” as not even close to democracy—almost the antithesis of democracy, and Islamic fundamentalists perceive Western democracy as sinful and evil.
Marc Sageman, M.D., Ph.D., is a former CIA Operations Officer (covered as a Foreign Service officer) who was based in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989, where he worked closely with Afghanistan's mujahedin. He has advised various branches of the U.S. government in the War on Terror. He is also a forensic psychiatrist and a counter-terrorism consultant.
