Fethullah Gulen Quotes
Islam's basic principles of belief, worship, morality, and behavior are not affected by changing times. Islam does not propose a certain unchangeable form of government or attempt to shape it. Islam has never offered nor established a theocracy in its name.
Gülen, Fethullah. "A Comparative Approach to Islam and Democracy." SAIS Review, vol. 21, no. 2, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, pp. 133-138.
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
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.
The road name is not only descriptive of the fact that Muslims make pilgrimages to Mecca for religious purposes. But by Saudi law, no one but a Muslim may use this road. Everyone in Saudi Arabia must have an identity card and that card is color coded by religion. For American’s the notion that there might be a public road on which only members of one religion may travel is as foreign a concept as there is.
The doctor argues that the problem of public health in the Islamic world is in large part due to the fact that health care is not organized any more under the control and governance of an Islamic institution—one which is guided by the Koran and Islamic tradition. Other physicians and public health experts believe one central obstacle to public health in Muslim nations is the strong influence that the Mullahs have over the behavior of the population and the medical and health practices that are acceptable and desirable to them are those of the Arabian Desert of the 7th Century or in some more modern interpretations, the medicine of the Islamic world of the 12th century when Islamic Medicine was the best in the World.
Perhaps this quotation gives the best insight to the major difference between an Islamic perspective of law and the Western. The latter places the rights of the individual on a par with or even superior to that of the society as a whole. The former is more concerned with the effect and result on society as a whole than concern with the individual rights of single individuals.
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.
