Theocracies Quotes
At Indian Independence from Britain, people could choose whether they wanted to be citizens of India or the new Muslim state created because many Muslims insisted on living in a country that was majority Muslim. However, and what came as a great shock to the then new Pakistani leadership, the majority of the Muslims of India choose not to become citizens of the new Islamic state and preferred to stay in Hindu dominated India which they knew would be democratic, free, and would protect their right to practice Islam as they saw fit. Many feared that in Pakistan Islamic extremists would dictate the exact form of Islam that Muslims must follow, and that is exactly what happened in Pakistan—not only from government action proscribing religious practice but from the government tolerating and not interfering with Islamic fundamentalist extremist terrorists who often assassinated Muslims whose particular form of worship was offensive to them or people would call for reforms of the protection of human rights.
In the Middle East, counties have often made bad deals or embarked upon damaging policies in order to appear to be strong. In that part of the world there is a firm belief that showing any weakness at all will invite many different forces to go after you. Iran has this vision of Islamic world leadership and if they so not appear to be very strong and powerful to the Muslim world, their aspirations will have been for naught.
In some countries, although not theocracies, the religious establishment had an automatic right to sit in the parliament. In this particular case it was essentially only the majority church. Catholics had 1 seat and the various protestant denominations, Jews, and others had no automatic religious representation in the legislature.
