| Relevant quotes |
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Rob Siltanen, quoted by goodreads.com
No one has the right to legislate the truth. It can only be discovered by free inquiry, and that includes investigations that may make people uncomfortable. Steven Pinker, in a letter of 09.12.2009 (quoted e.g. here) to then Rector Laurits B. Holm-Nielsen at Aarhus University, commenting on the proceedings against Professor Helmuth Nyborg taking place in Denmark at that time
A people that forgets its ancestors will care little for its descendants. G. K. Chesterton, quoted by Ricardo Duchesne in his book review Civilization: The Six Ways the West Beat the Rest, March 2012
Multiculturalism is an effort to destroy the uniqueness of Western nations. My book hopes to encourage Westerners to recover and affirm their exceptional historical identity. Ricardo Duchesne, concluding his Reply to Mark Elvin (a reply to Elvin's review of Duchesne's book The Uniqueness of Western Civilization)
In order to really be able to belong somewhere, others have to agree that you belong there. Noor Jdid, interviewed by Asma Chaudhry, Northernchowk, 26.07.2013
God gives a reward for gentleness which He will never give for harshness. The Prophet Muhammad, quoted by Charles Le Gai Eaton in The Concept of Justice in Islam
Devotion to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer. Mohamad al-Arefe, on MEMRI-TV, quoted in The Spectator, 27.06.2013
The less they know, the less they know it. Edward Feser, commenting on the intellectual state of adherents of secularism, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (Kindle Location 208)
They played the Bohemian Rap City. Steven Pinker, quoting oronyms discovered by teachers reading their student's term papers and homework assignments, The Language Instinct, page 161
Human evolution did not halt in the distant past but has continued to the present day. The ancestral human population of 50,000 years ago differed greatly from the anatomically modern humans of 100,000 years ago, and people today have had just as long to evolve away from the ancestral population. The human genome bears many marks of recent evolution, prompted by adaptations to events such as cultural changes or new diseases. More visible evidence of recent evolution is the existence of human races. After the dispersal of the ancestral population from Africa 50,000 years ago, human evolution continued independently in each continent. The populations of the world’s major geographical regions bred for many thousand years in substantial isolation from each other and started to develop distinctive features, a genetic differentiation which is the basis for today’s races. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, page 9
If a detectable degree of local genetic differentiation has developed in Iceland in a mere 1,000 years, much greater differences are likely to have arisen among populations in the rest of the world, much of which has been settled for 40 times longer and where there have been many social and geographic impediments to the free flow of genes. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, page 97
It is often assumed that evolution works too slowly for any significant change in human nature to have occurred within the last 10,000 or even 50,000 years. But this assumption is incorrect. The development of new brain gene alleles 37,000 and 6,000 years ago, and of lactose tolerance 5,000 years ago, have already been mentioned; several other instances of recent human evolution are cited in chapter 12. There is no reason to suppose that human nature ceased to evolve at some finishing post in the distant past or to assume, as do some evolutionary psychologists, that people are struggling to function in modern societies with Stone Age minds. Genomes adapt to current circumstances or perish; the human genome is unlikely to be an exception. Human societies have progressed through several major transitions in the last 15,000 years, and it may well be that these transformations were accompanied by evolutionary as well as cultural changes. It was only after people had become less violent that they were able to abandon the nomadic life of hunting and gathering that they had followed for the last 5 million years, and began to settle down. The first settled societies appeared in the Near East some 15,000 years ago. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, page 178
Our bones are more gracile than those of our Upper Paleolithic ancestors, our personalities less aggressive, our societies more trusting and cohesive. An element of human choice, a preference for negotiation over annihilation, has perhaps been injected into the genome. And that might explain why there is an inescapable sense of progress about human evolution over the last 50,000 years: human choice has imposed a direction on the blind forces that hitherto have shaped evolution’s random walk. In parallel with human social evolution, the human physical form continued to evolve. Because the human population was dispersed across different continents, between which distance and hostility allowed little gene flow, the people on each continent followed independent evolutionary paths. It was these independent trajectories that led over the generations to the emergence of a variety of human races. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, page 180
Genetics are likely to provide ever greater detail about how individuals vary, how men and women have different interests and abilities, and how races differ. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, page 266
The belief that human evolution is essentially complete rests on the conjecture that it moves too slowly for significant changes to have occurred recently, for instance within the last 50,000 years. But the human genome, just like those of all other species, can adapt quite quickly to changes in the environment. Without this capacity, humans would long ago have lapsed into extinction. At least four types of recent evolutionary change have already become evident and many more will doubtless come to light. The recent genetic changes already discovered include defenses against disease; increases in fertility; responses to cultural changes that affect the human environment; and changes in cognitive behavior. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, page 268
The other cognitive change is one that can be inferred from the striking recent rise to prominence of versions of two brain genes. As described in chapter 5, the genes first came to light because mutated versions cause microcephaly, a condition in which people are born with an unusually small head and brain. The new version of the microcephalin gene appeared around 37,000 years ago, rapidly became more common under intense selective pressure, and is now carried by most people in Europe and East Asia. The other gene, a new version of ASPM, emerged 6,000 years ago and is now carried by 44% of Caucasians. Both genes are thought to be involved in determining the number of neurons formed in the cerebral cortex in the early embryo. The rapid spread of these two alleles indicates that the human brain has been subject to intense evolutionary pressures in the recent past and may still be evolving. These instances of recent evolutionary change are probably just the first of many that remain to be discovered. Since all occurred after the dispersal from Africa, the alleles that cause them are present to a different extent in different populations. Human diversity therefore cannot be a purely cultural phenomenon, as many social scientists sometimes seem to believe. It has a genetic component too. The component remains to be defined and quantified, but it could prove to be substantial. Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, page 271
No. That is a myth that some here want to create: that it's supposedly illegal or unacceptable in Norway to have different opinions on immigration. Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, to Spiegel Online, 10.10.2011
Humanists believe that humanity improves along with the growth of knowledge, but the belief that the increase of knowledge goes with advances in civilization is an act of faith. They see the realization of human potential as the goal of history, when rational inquiry shows history to have no goal. They exalt nature, while insisting that humankind—an accident of nature—can overcome the natural limits that shape the lives of other animals. Plainly absurd, this nonsense gives meaning to the lives of people who believe they have left all myths behind. John N. Gray, The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths, quoted in book review by Robert W. Merry, The Fallacy of Human Freedom, The National Interest, July-August, 2013
Today, the dead end of western culture is no longer theoretical; it is contained as anxiety and absurdity in the everyday way of life. Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith: An Introduction to Orthodox Theology (page 164)
Like clothes, gender fits the preformed human body and mind, even though on occasion it is a bit of a squeeze. Frank Salter, The War against Human Nature II - Gender Studies, Quadrant Magazine, July-August 2012
The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it. Attritubet by some to George Orwell (disputed)
The European Union rejects theories which attempt to determine the existence of separate human races.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, four-term U.S. Senator, ambassador, administration official, and academic
Whether or not there are [intelligence] differences between ethnic groups, is a well-researched field. However, I will not here reference the results of others, let alone speak my mind. Otherwise, I fear I would be pelted with eggs during lectures. Unfortunately, it is not possible to discuss this issue in a rational way. Professor Detlef H. Rost, Der Spiegel, 06.05.2013 (my translation)
When I was a Revolutionary Marxist, we were all in favour of as much immigration as possible. It wasn’t because we liked immigrants, but because we didn’t like Britain. Peter Hitchens, 31.03.2013, The Daily Mail
Michel Foucault’s approach reduces culture to a power-game, and scholarship to a kind of refereeing in the endless ‘struggle’ between oppressed and oppressing groups. The shift of emphasis from the content of an utterance to the power that speaks through it leads to a new kind of scholarship, which by-passes entirely questions of truth and rationality, and can even reject those questions as themselves ideological. The pragmatism of the late American philosopher Richard Rorty is of similar effect. It expressly set itself against the idea of objective truth, giving a variety of arguments for thinking that truth is a negotiable thing, that what matters in the end is which side you are on. If a doctrine is useful in the struggle that liberates your group, then you are entitled to dismiss the alternatives. Roger Scruton, The great swindle, Aeon Magazine, 17.12.2012
Do not believe the confessions of tortured texts. Abdal Hakim Murad, Contentions 11/92
This healthy instinct to poke fun at an unbalanced piety is the same instinct that makes us laugh at a one-armed man rowing a boat. He is not failing to make an effort, but he lacks balance. The unbalanced pietist, however, may not see the joke; and herein is a deadly threat. Abdal Hakim Murad, Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions, (#86), page 151
Suicide bombing is an extreme way of shooting oneself in the foot. Abdal Hakim Murad, Contentions 4/49
Meanwhile, individuals such as Stephen Jay Gould, who commit outright academic fraud in support of their ideological positions, do enormous damage to the credibility of their own camp. Ron Unz, Race, IQ, and Wealth - What the facts tell us about a taboo subjec, The American Conservative, 18 July 2012
When the black Messiah (Nelson Mandela) dies, we'll teach the whites. We'll commit genocide against them: I hate whites. South African police officer Juda Dagane, quoted by IOLnews
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
There is more than one way to burn a book.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. John Adams (US diplomat & politician, 1735 - 1826), 'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770
Human nature is violent and predatory and can be held in check only by three forces, the Grace of God, the fear of the gallows and the pressure of a social tradition, subtly and unconsciously operating as a brake on human instinct. T.E. Utley (1921 - 1988)
[It's] another step in a long-term goal of [his]: the peaceful, nonviolent disappearance of the white race. Tom Hayden, congratulating his son on marrying a black woman, 27.08.2007
We need more speech, more liberty, not less. If this law passes, I shall break it as a point of principle. A hyperlink is not an act of approval, but an act of sourcing: It says to the reader I trust you to go to the source and make an informed judgment. In denying that freedom to the citizen, the state couldn't be more explicit in its contempt for you. Mark Steyn commenting on a proposed law in Canada, The Criminalization of the Link, 10.05.2011
There is no such thing, at this stage of the world’s history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. [...] The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. John Swinton, chief editorial writer at The New York Times from 1860 to 1870 and an editorial writer for The New York Sun from 1875 to 1897
We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't know what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back. Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg and the EU's longest-serving head of government, quoted in The Economist, 23.09.2004
He is right to argue that immigration on the scale that Europe has experienced consitutues a risky experiment. He is right that we frequently talk about it in stupid and dishonest ways. The Guardian, commenting on Christopher Caldwell's book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe
Try to repopulate Thailand with Scots and Slovaks and see whether what results is still Thailand. Takuan Seiyo, Gates of Vienna, 12.12.2010
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
A West which has not yet understood that whites, in a world become too small for its inhabitants, are now a minority and that the proliferation of other races dooms our race, my race, irretrievably to extinction in the century to come, if we hold fast to our present moral principles. Jean Raspail, 1982, The Camp of the Saints
Those who subscribe to the opinion that there are no human races are obviously ignorant of modern biology. Ernst Mayr (2002)
It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct - what's relevant is that his observations are illegal. Openbaar Ministerie, The Netherland, January 2010
In its death throes, Eutopia has decided to smash the lights of liberty. Mark Steyn, commenting on the Wilders trial, The International Free Press Society, 19.01.2010
This is the trend worldwide. The white race will in the long term become extinct. . . . Apparently we are happy with this development. Jozef Ritzen, Dutch Minister of Education, Culture, and Science, quoted in Takimag
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. Susan Sontag, Partisan Review, Winter 1967, p. 57.
There is no single human being who has ever done more to destroy the white race than Adolf Hitler. Fjordman, the Brussels Journal, 27.04.2009
Germany’s downward spiral in population is no longer reversible. The birthrate has dropped so low that immigration numbers cannot compensate. The fall in the population can no longer be stopped. Vice-president Walter Rademacher, the Federal Statistics Office
This is not a legitimate area of research. R. Brian Ferguson, Rutgers University, voicing his opinion about research efforts to use "genetics to study behavioral differences among people". Los Angeles Times, 18.04.2009
Therefore insensitivity for the existing societal power relationships is crucial for the interpretation of the limits of free expression. EU's Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) - part of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, in Freedom of Expression and Hate Speech: some points for consideration, December 2008, quoted in Standpoint Magazine
The most important blank spot exists now [sic] in deconstructing the majority so thoroughly that it can never be called the majority again. Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Culcom, 27.08.2008
Why am I posting so much about science? First, I do think it is fair to say that the Right has a “Science Problem.” But secondly, my own conservatism is grounded and framed in the scientific understanding of human nature, at least to the extent we understand it. Any conservatism which is empirical and takes the idea of a human nature seriously must ultimately assimilate the most recent findings of the evolutionary & behavioral sciences. Razib Khan, Secular Right, 01.12.2008
We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.…I’m saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us.…The problem on the planet is white people. Dr. Kamau Kambon, former North Carolina State visiting professor of African Studies, speaking at Howard University, quoted at Gates of Vienna
This amounts to saying that meeting with potentially violent groups, as long as they are non-white, is OK, but meeting with non-violent groups who work peacefully within the democratic system is not OK if they stand up for their rights and happen to be white. I do not accept this double standard and refuse to submit to it. Fjordman, Gates of Vienna, 30.10.2008
Indeed, no true leftist – whether Marxist, cultural Marxist, Christian social penitent, New York liberal or Amsterdam libertine -- will ever let reality interfere with a good theory. [...] Maybe Benjamin Franklin was right when he said that we must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately. Takuan Seiyo, The Brussels Journal, 28.10.2008
What the bill will not do: ... First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia.... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.... The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs. United States Senator Ted Kennedy, during debate on the Senate floor, speaking of the effects of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 1965. pp. 1-3).
[Certain people think] that Europeans must prove that we are 100% "ideologically pure" before we should be granted the right to fight for our continued existence. Imagine if a house is on fire. The fire brigade has just arrived to put out the fire, but the neighbor won't allow them to use the local water because he fears it may be impure. He will only accept that they use holy water - distilled holy water - and only if it has been blessed by a lesbian priest who supports voting rights for illegal immigrants. Since the firefighters don't have this available, the house burns down, but the neighbor takes comfort in knowing that at least the remaining ash is ideologically pure. Fjordman, Atlas Shrugs, 23.09.2008
If there’s one thing the evolutionary process cannot produce, it is equality. Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele in Race - the reality of human differences
General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long standing they become fixed rules of life, and assume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. Consequently those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain a hatred and a horror of statistics. They cannot endure the idea of submitting their sacred impressions to cold-blooded verification. But it is the triumph of scientific men to rise superior to such superstitions, to devise tests by which the value of beliefs may be ascertained, and to feel sufficiently masters of themselves to discard contemptuously whatever may be found untrue. Sir Francis Galton, Ann Eugenics 1925;1:i (BMJ).
At the present moment, it is impossible to demonstrate that there exist between 'races' differences of intelligence and temperament other than those produced by cultural environment. If, tomorrow, more accurate tests or more thorough studies should prove that 'races' as such do, in fact, have different innate faculties or aptitudes, Unesco's moral position on the race question would not be changed. ... Concern for human dignity demands that all citizens be equal before the law ... no matter what their physical or intellectual differences may be... The conscience of all mankind demand that this be true for all the peoples of the earth. It matters little, therefore, whether the diversity of men's gift be the result of biological or cultural factors. The Race Question (page 3), UNESCO, 18.07.1950
[Brazil] suffers less than other nations from the effects of those prejudices which are at the root of so many vexatious and cruel measures in countries of similar ethnic composition. ... We must learn [through research] exactly why and how social, psychological and economic factors have contributed in varying degrees to make possible the harmony which exists in Brazil The Race Question (page 4), UNESCO, 18.07.1950
Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity. The motto of the publication Race Traitor.
But it is absolutely verboten for either [political] party, or any white candidate, to appeal to whites as a racial identity group. Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America and across the entire Western world. Black children today are hammered with the idea of racial identity and pride, yet racial pride in whites constitutes a grave evil. Say "I'm white and I'm proud" and you are a Nazi. Shelby Steele, The Wall Street Journal, 13.11.2003.
I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it. If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad. Tact and diplomacy are fine in international relations, in politics, perhaps even in business; in science only one thing matters, and that is the facts. Hans J. Eysenck, in his autobiography Rebel with a Cause
America has been an exception to the general rule that multiracial, multiethnic societies are doomed to eventual dissolution. Professor Carol M. Swain, in Contemporary voices of white nationalism in America (page viii)
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. Noam Chomsky, quoted by Democracy reform
There are plenty of social scientists who never produce research results at odds with their own worldview. Alan Wolfe, Boston College, quoted by International Herald Tribune
The future ain't what it used to be.
If you don't go to other people's funerals, they won't go to yours.
80 per cent of world history is about superfluous young men making trouble. Gunnar Heinsohn, professor of sociology at the University of Bremen.
In reality, the basis of democracy has been completely turned on its head [in Sweden]. It is said: "democracy is a certain way of thinking, a specific set of opinions, and if you do not share them, then you aren’t democratic, and then we condemn you and you ought to be eliminated. The People? That is not democratic. We the Elite, we are democracy." It is grotesque and it certainly has nothing to do with democracy, more like a kind of moral dictatorship. Fjordman, New York Times and Sweden: The Dark Side of Paradise, Global Politician 06.04.2007
Soon we will take power in this country. Those who criticize us now, will regret it. They will have to serve us. Prepare, for the hour is near. Belgium-based imam
One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory. Former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne
Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889 - 1975)
I believe in being free, acquiring knowledge, and telling the truth. American journalist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
With law shall the land be built, not with un-law destroyed. Håvamål (the Norse god Odin)
We are not opposed to immigration that is moderate and managed. At present it is neither. There are people who know everything, but that's all they know. Niccolò Macchiavelli
We have it all, but that's all we have. Artist and singer Ole Paus commenting on the situation of Western societies
The highest kind of jihãd is to speak up for truth in the face of a government [sultãn] that deviates from the right path. The Prophet Muhammad
With law shall the land be built, not with un-law destroyed. Håvamål (the Norse god Odin)
And, finally, by claiming (again, without any warrant in Qur'ãn or Sunnah) that the shari'ah imposes on us the duty to discriminate [non-Muslims], they make it impossible for [the non-Muslims] to bear with equanimity the thought that the country in which they live might become an Islamic state. Muhammad Asad
We are not opposed to immigration that is moderate and managed. At present it is neither. Migration Watch UK
These are a few straws in the wind, birds on the lake. The great issue of our time is whether Islam - the fastest-growing religion in Europe and North America - is compatible with the multicultural, super-diverse, boundlessly tolerant society of Western liberals. If I were a feminist or a gay or an 'artist', I wouldn't be reassured by these early birds winging their way from Norwegian courts and Midwestern playhouses. Mark Steyn, North American Editor of The (London) Spectator.
There's no plot. Islam really does want to conquer the world. That's because Muslims, unlike many Christians, actually believe they are right, and that their religion is the path to salvation for all. Anthony Browne.
You go back home. This is our country. Muslims asking Hege Storhaug to leave the vicinity of a mosque in Amsterdam shortly after the killing of Theo van Gogh.
We Norwegian Muslims love this country, and we wish the best for Norway, it is our own country. We will become integrated, but never assimilated. Mohammad Usman Rana (19 years old). Interviewed by Aftenposten, 2004.11.27
If I, who was born and raised in Norway, wish to marry a cousin from Pakistan, I would consider it a breach of my human rights if anyone prevented me from doing so . Jehangir Bahadur, vice president, World Islamic Mission.
At present it is not marxism-leninism-maoism that constitutes the major threat towards representative government. The threat at this time is coming from politicizing imams who have learned more from European fascism than they themselves realize. The challenge is found in all totalitarian ideologies – and in complacency and blasé attitudes in relation to the fragile form of governance that the liberal democracy is. Particularly this last point may presently constitute the main threat in Norway. Professor Bernt Hagtvet.
There is no reason to fear the political potential of Islam in Norway today. The process of privatization is too active and the secularization too substantial for that to be an issue . Religious Historian Per Marius Meidell. Aftenposten, 2004.09.29.
Published just after the First World War, Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West presents a 'comparative morphology' of cultures. 'The West', Spengler argued, has come to its end, as every culture must. We have now entered the period of mere 'civilization', when administration and technology take over from the flowering of the spirit in its summer forms. That is Spengler's account of the Enlightenment, phrased once again in terms of Herder's distinction between Kultur and Zivilisation. Our culture rose to its self-conscious height in the time of Goethe, who captured its spirit in Faust. Thereafter, Spengler believed, it rapidly died, to be replaced by the cold routines of a civilization destined, at last, to crumble to nothingness, as its structure rots away. Roger Scruton in An intelligent person's guide to modern culture
It is essential for mankind to have a new leadership [...] It is necessary for the new leadership to preserve and develop the material fruits of the creative genius of Europe, and also to provide mankind with such high ideals and values as have so far remained undiscovered by mankind, and which will also acquaint humanity with a way of life which is harmonious with human nature, which is positive and constructive, and which is practicable. [...] Islam is the only system which possesses these values and this way of life. Sayyid Qutb in Milestones
One of the main reasons for the confusion regarding the idea of the Islamic state is the indiscriminate application - both by the upholders and the critics of this idea - of Western political terms and definitions to the entirely different concept of Islamic polity. Not infrequently we find in the writings of modern Muslims the assertion that "Islamic is democratic" or even that it aims at the establishment of a "socialist" society; whereas many Western writers refer to an alleged "totalitarianism" in Islam which must necessarily result in dictatorship. Such superficial attempts at political definitions are not only mutually contradictory, and therefore of no practical value for the purposes of a serious discussion, but also carry with them the danger of looking at the problems of Muslim society from the angle of Western historical experiences alone and, thus, of envisaging developments which may be justifiable or objectionable - depending on the viewpoint of the observer - but may be wholly out of place within the world-view of Islam. Muhammad Asad, The Principles of State and Government in Islam, page 18
Viewed from this historical perspective, 'democracy' as conceived in the modern West is infinitely nearer to the Islamic than to the ancient Greek concept of liberty; for Islam maintains that all human beings are socially equal and must, therefore, be given the same opportunities for development and self-expression. On the other hand, Islam makes it incumbent upon Muslims to subordinate their decisions to the guidance of the Divine Law revealed in the Qur'ãn and exemplified by the Prophet: an obligation which imposes definite limits on the community's right to legislate and denies to the 'will of the people' that attribute of sovereignty which forms so integral a part of the Western concept of democracy. Muhammad Asad, The Principles of State and Government in Islam, page 19.
ARTICLE 24: All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'ah. The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, 5 August 1990
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