Mustafa Akyol Quotes

Islamism is not Islam. Islamism is the politicisation of Islam, the desire to impose a version of this ancient faith over society.

Islamism is an ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society.

You would be wrong to assume democracy would be the only alternative if the old regimes [in the Middle East] fell. There is a much better-organized alternative already waiting, and that is ... fundamentalism.

My view on Islam is that it is not so much a religion as a totalitarian political ideology with religious elements.

I don't believe there is such a thing as a moderate Islamist party. The challenge with Islamists is that they seek to impose what they call Sharia on everybody, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salifist parties are a real force in the Egyptian society.

Political Islam is exclusive in its claims.

The bulk of Sharia is nothing more than the legal opinions of classical jurists. That is why whenever the Sharia is imposed—out of context from the time when it was formulated and out of step with ours—Muslim societies acquire a medieval feel. We see that in Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Sudan, and Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Islam has been transformed from a religion to an ideology.

Just as not all socialists were proto-Stalinists, not all Islamists want to implement a theocratic regime.

Saudi Arabia is the mother and father of political Islam.

The truth is that Islam is not like any other faith. It is the religious equivalent of fascism.

Similarly, it is argued that the culture of Islam is incompatible with democracy. Basically, this conventional perspective of the Middle East thus contends that democracy in that region is neither possible nor even desirable.

Their plan is to return the entire world - not just the Middle East - to the days of the caliphate and either convert all of us so-called infidels into born-again Islamic believers or kill us.

I became, suddenly, not just a Muslim in faith. I became a Muslim in politics. Somebody whose politics were pre-defined by one interpretation of Islam.

You are right, but the weakness does not come from the millions of Muslims in the world. They do not mind being radical, they have no fear to speak out and to protest and to jihad.

The Taliban, broadly speaking, are Afghans - farmers, subsistence farmers. As I say, most of those people can't find the United States on the map. Al Qaeda, traditionally, are much more educated, middle-class people, often from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, North Africa.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a fundamentalist group.

The Taliban rose to power in 1996, vowing stability and an end to the violence raging across the country between warring mujahedeen factions, and to implement rule by Sharia law, or strict Islamic rule.

… the Middle East has experienced a general ‘Islamization’ and radicalization of society ensuing from the rigid religious and often intolerant character of the civil society organizations now performing functions previously in the hands of state authorities.

Islamists want power!

The growth of Islamic Fundamentalism is an earthquake.

Islamic fundamentalists … had no interest in democracy except as a one-way ticket to power.

Western governments have completely separated Islam from politics. They have cut off its head and given the rest to us.

There is Islam in politics in the Moslem world.