Stanley Hauerwas Quotes
To try to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy is absolutely crazy. Islam has no understanding of the separation between church and state because they don't understand Islam to be a church.
Hauerwas, Stanley. War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity. Baker Academic, 2011.
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.
This is one of the key documents showing the “wall of separation of church and state” was in use in early America. Almost 200 years later the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court seemed ignorant of this communications. See William Rehnquist: {373663}
The notion that Islam would be practiced by individuals was in the Ayatollah’s view insufficient. Islam must also control the government—the head.
The Senate was presented with James Madison’s Language for the First Amendment. These three alternatives were proposed and rejected. The rejected versions turn out to have been very important. Some have argued that the First Amendment does not prohibit Congress making laws regarding religion as long as it doesn’t favor one religion over another—for example pay for clerics of all religions. However, that was the third proposal and it was rejected in favor of the high wall of separation proposed by Madison.
Ironically, without the word “wicked” most people would regard the first sentence as a good description of elements of a modern democracy. It illustrates that for the Islamic fundamentalist democracy substitutes the rule of man for the rule of God, freedom of speech allows heresy and blasphemy to to uttered and communicated, and religion which is supposed to inform and direct politics. So what is good for the lover of democracy is the very thing that is bad for Islam. This is not a uniquely Islamic viewpoint. It has been and is held by fundamentalist Christians and Jews as well who would return to Biblical law punishing blasphemy and heresy with death and have religion drive all politics.
Here Khomeini takes the classic Islamic view of the Koran that leaders should be obeyed unless they do not follow Islam. To the leaders of Islamic nations, this means that even if the state is not a theocracy, the Muslim clergy has the final say as to whether a ruler may justly remain in power since they are the ones who determine if a ruler is properly following Islam.
Stanley Martin Hauerwas (born 1940) is an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual. Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke University, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law. In the fall of 2014, he also assumed a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Before moving to Duke and the University of Aberdeen, Hauerwas taught at the University of Notre Dame. Hauerwas is considered by many to be one of the world's most influential living theologians and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. He was also the first American theologian to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in over forty years. His work is frequently read and debated by scholars in fields outside of religion or ethics, such as political philosophy, sociology, history, and literary theory. Hauerwas has achieved notability outside of academia as a public intellectual, even appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
