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From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.

Bernard Lewis

Christianity had the great religious wars of the 17th century. Islam, fortunately for the Muslims, did not have that. Christianity worked out a system of toleration. Islam was always more tolerant of Christendom.
BERNARD LEWIS

Always Century Great Muslim People Religious Tolerant Toleration
One could with equal justification talk about a Judeo-Islamic tradition or a Christian-Islamic tradition. These three religions are interlinked in many signification ways, which marks them off from the rest of the world.
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Christian Country Equal Interlinked Significant Tradition Ways
In the Christian world, as you remember, Christianity is in the 21st century, Islam is in the 15th century. I don’t mean to say that Islam is backward; I mean to say that there are certain experiences that it hasn’t gone through.
BERNARD LEWIS

Century Christian Dignity Human Important Religious Remember War
One reason which I find particularly fascinating about Israel is this. There is no such thing as a Jewish civilization. There is a Jewish culture, a Jewish religion, but there is no such thing as a Jewish civilization.
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Civilization Community Dignity Human Important
These internal clashes in Israel nowadays are in a sense a continuation of a clash between Islam and Christendom through their former Jewish minorities and it works out in a number of different ways. It’s fascinating to watch.
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Continuation Different Islam Nowadays Work Out
The idea which we so often hear expressed in the Western world, that’s how they are, that’s how they will always be and they can’t do anything else.
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Anything Else Expressed Idea Western World
Very often we mean the same thing. But what we do mean, what in the Western world we call human rights, in the Islamic world, they don’t talk about rights. Now they do, but in the past they didn’t. It wasn’t part of their terminology. But really it’s the same thing.
BERNARD LEWIS

Country Human Rights Mean Past Right Same Things
The Jews were a component basically of two civilizations. In the Western world, we talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition and you talk about the Judeo-Islamic tradition because there were large and important Jewish communities living in the lands of Islam.
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Christian Community Country People Religion Tradition Western World
I mean now you have Muslims in the Muslim world who can compare their situations with people elsewhere and they find that very humiliating.
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Community Comparing Humiliating People Religious Situation
During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved.
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Government Memories Separated State Writing
In the past, foreign intervention was obviously a major problem. Foreign domination, or if not domination, interference. But that has ended. There is no foreign domination; there is minimal foreign interference. The Cold War has ended. The Soviet Union no longer exists.
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Dignity Domination Human Important Past People War
I think that the growing government control of the press is very clear. Turkey is still not a dictatorship, there is still some freedom of the press, but I think it’s moving in the wrong direction.
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Control Dictatorship Government Moving Thinking
The word Islam thus denotes more than fourteen centuries of history, a billion and a third people, and a religious and cultural tradition of enormous diversity.
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Billion Centuries Diversity Enormous People Religious
Muslims are very keenly aware of the history of their community, of the history of that relationship between their community and the rest of the world. And they have had this all through the centuries and are very much heightened by modern communications.
BERNARD LEWIS

Communication Community Dignity History Human Important Mean People Relationship
When we talk about the Judeo-Christian or the Judeo-Muslim tradition, it’s important to remember that we are speaking of a Jewish component of civilization, but not in itself a civilization.
BERNARD LEWIS

Christian Human Important Religious Together Tradition
Muslims have their own tradition on limited government. Now in Islam, there is a very strong political tradition. Because the different circumstances, Islam is political from the very beginning.
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Community Government Political Religious Tradition

From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.

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From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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