Martin Rees Quotes
I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by.
Rees, Martin. From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons. Profile Books, 2011.
Half the population of Amsterdam was at the time non Western in origin including many Muslims. Cohen was one of the few major Dutch leaders who worked to make multiculturalism work. However, there were so many religious Muslim extremists already active in the Netherlands, that it was very difficult. The Dutch had elected a Muslim as a member of Parliament and whole many Muslims were very proud of this, the religious extremists were furious. She was a woman, and she did not believe or advocate that Holland adopt Sharia (Islamic) law. She was an Islamic reformer who was opposed to Sharia even in Muslim states. The most successful Islamic nation, Turkey, does not allow Sharia law, and Indonesia, the largest of the Muslim nations also does not follow it.
Muslims had engaged in violent demonstrations to insist on more Sharia law and the curtailment of behavior that the Muslim Mullahs determined to be contrary to Sharia and Islam. In Nigeria Muslim violence and intimidation had at the time already caused one of the Nigerian states to adopt Sharia instead of civil law. Many Muslims continued the violence in order to spread the adoption of Islamic law. In most counties, there were threats of law enforcement crackdowns to curtail the Muslim violence and attacks on Christians and other religions. In Nigeria however, the Christians under Akinola’s leadership made this not so subtle veiled threat to retaliate. It seems to have worked in the short run although the religious tensions remained very high and no one knew whether or not religious violence or even war would break out.
New Lanark was a Utopian commune organized by Owen.
The following year India was partitioned and millions of Hindus were slaughtered by Muslims and vice-a-versa.
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM, FRS, FREng, FMedSci, FRAS is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.
