Ruhollah Khomeini Quotes

If you want Islam to be an agent of salvation, you must rule….. Islam has come to govern and run life in a proper fashion …. Islam without government and a Moslem nation without Islam are meaningless.

From its inception, Islam was not merely a religion, but also a political community, the nation of Islam (ummat al-Islam). Muhammad was not merely a prophet communicating the word of God, but a political leader. Hence, any victory by the army of a Muslim state over non-Muslims is perceived as a victory for Islam itself.

It is our duty now to implement and put into practice the plan of government established by Islam… We will create a strong new current of thought and a powerful popular movement that will result in the establishment of an Islamic government.

There is Islam in politics in the Moslem world.

Give them Islam, proclaim to the world the program of Islamic government; maybe the kings and presidents of the Muslim countries will understand the truth of what we say and accept it. We would not want to take anything away from them; we will leave anyone in his place who faithfully follows Islam.

Islam is not a religion. It's a political system. It has a different set of rules.

In the Islamic government all people have complete freedom to have any kind of opinion.

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. Instead, Islam establishes fundamental principles that orient a government's general character.

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.

There is this political ideology in the Muslim world that says that nations should be ruled by religious law…. Mali and Senegal are the exceptions.

Islam proclaims monarchy and hereditary succession wrong and invalid. When Islam first appeared in Iran, the Byzantine Empire, Egypt, and the Yemen, the entire institution of monarchy was abolished.

We demand .. the government of the rightly guided caliphate, which is established on the basis of the sovereignty of sharia and not on the whims of the majority.

I always found it ironic when a Saudi official bashes Islamists, given that Saudi Arabia is the mother of all political Islam - and even describes itself as an Islamic state in its 'Higher Law.'

In my book, the Arab Awakening, I talk about the fact that we have to move from this. All the contemporary ideologies of political Islam have been based on the nation state. The nation state is very problematic but I'm not sure if we have an alternative political model.

Certainly there are various trans-Islamic political movements, which try to appeal to Muslims in all societies.

Besides, many Islamic movements will change as soon as they gain political responsibility. I'm not at all pessimistic in this regard. Just think of Turkey, where the Islamists are now behaving like a sort of Christian Democratic party in Europe.

In Iran's future Islamic system everyone can express their opinion, and the Islamic government will respond to logic with logic.

The fundamental difference between Islamic government, on the one hand, and constitutional monarchy and republics, on the other, is this: whereas the representatives of the people or the monarch in such regimes engage in legislation, in Islam the legislative power and competence to establish laws belong exclusively to God Almighty.

The defining mission of the Muslim Brotherhood is the implementation of sharia.

What we argue in the piece is that the headscarf has become a political symbol for an ideology of Islam that is exported to the world by the theocracies of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just like the Catholic Church in the 17th century did religious propaganda to challenge the Protestant Reformation, these ideologies are trying to define the way Muslims express Islam in the world.

The Islamic ideology is a political ideology based on a religion.

Islam is politics or it is nothing.

There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it.

I've always maintained there is no incompatibility between Islam and democracy. The Europeans in general confuse Islam and Islamism. Islamism is a political movement that instrumentalises the religion to get to power, which has nothing to do with religion. Islam here in Tunisia is a religion of openness, of tolerance.

It is often said that definitions of Islamic government are imprecise. To me, however, they seemed to have a clarity that was completely familiar and also, it must be said, far from reassuring.