Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes
Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers.
Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power. Basic Books, 2012.
This is another of De Tocqueville’s prescient statements that in retrospect seem so amazing given the time. This quotation could serve as an op ed in a newspaper of any of the industrial democracies of the early 21st century. However, he did not have the information of the details we have today that showed Islam as the pinnacle of scientific, philosophical, literary and medical achievement at the beginning of the second millennium, while the Christian nations of Europe were mired in the Dark Ages. It was the same Koran but a very different interpretation and framework that led to the decadence while it was the Protestant Reformation that triggered a Christianity that was hospitable to modernity and enlightenment.
This phrase has been used by fundamentalists to justify forced conversion and the imposition of religious law—Sharia—on believers and unbelievers alike. The logic is that if God says believing orthodox Mosems are the best, that is what he wants for all. And therefore by forcing others to be orthodox and of the faith, one is doing God’s bidding. See Husain Haqqani, “Islam’s Medeval Outposts,” Foreign Policy November/December, 2002.
This is not terribly different however from Christians and Jews selectively quoting the Bible.
Legal Religious Ruling. This is an example of a source of tension between some Muslims and others. Non-Muslims are required to have a Muslim Education in Muslim countries, but they insist that any required Christian or secular education in a non Muslim country is anti-Islamic.
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1981. As a scholar, Brzezinski belonged to the realist school of international relations, standing in the geopolitical tradition of Halford Mackinder and Nicholas J. Spykman. Brzezinski was the primary organizer of The Trilateral Commission.
