23 Quotes by Robert R. Reilly

Islam does not have a figure of authority corresponding to the pope who could definitively delegitimize Islamism, and it is uncertain, if there were such a figure, that he would do so, since Islamism has a claim to legitimacy despite its adulteration by Western ideology

The transmogrification of Islam into Islamism is bad news not only for the West but also for the majority of Muslims who have no desire to live in totalitarian theocracies. “For the West it is but a physical threat in the form of terrorism,” said Pakistani journalist Ayaz Amir. “For the world of Islam . . . to be trapped in bin Ladenism is to travel back in time to the dark ages of Muslim obscurantism. It means to be stuck in the mire which has held the Islamic world back.

An overemphasis on God as One can easily morph into God as the only One, which then ineluctably incorporates everything into the only One, with nothing outside of it. We are left with either monism or pantheism.

While the fierce debates between those believing in free will (the Qadarites) and the predestinarians (the Jabrias) were generally resolved in favor of the former,” Pervez Hoodbhoy avers, “the gradual hegemony of fatalistic Ash’arite doctrines mortally weakened . . . Islamic society and led to a withering away of its scientific spirit. Ash’arite dogma insisted on the denial of any connection between cause and effect—and therefore repudiated rational thought.

With scathing sarcasm, Abdelwahab Meddeb, the Tunisian reformist, said of Islamist terrorists, “No criminal is more despicable than one who not only fails to feel any guilt after [committing] his crime, but also harbors the illusion that this [crime] will bring him . . . divine reward. This conversion of bad into good not only spares him guilt, but also turns an unhappy person into a happy soul.

The entire edifice of individual rights derived from the natural state of the individual or through a secular ethical or political theory is alien to the structure of Islamic reasoning.

In Taliban-controlled portions of Pakistan, “Polio vaccinations have been declared haram by the ulema, and the government campaign has subsequently stalled.” Like car insurance, vaccinations are a form of presumption. Only with the expulsion of the Taliban from the Swat Valley in the late summer of 2009 was the Pakistani government able to resume vaccinations.

It understood the crisis as a rebuke from Allahbecause Muslims had not followed His way. Just as success is a validation of faith, failure is a personal rebuke. Did not Allah promise, “You shall be uppermost if you are believers” (3:139)? The corollary to this must be that, if you are not uppermost, you must not be believers.

In a line worthy of Robespierre, Sayyid Qutb said that a “just dictatorship” would “grant political liberties to the virtuous alone.”26 Hassan al-Banna, whose bedside reading was al-Ghazali, also regarded the Soviet Union under Stalin as a model of a successful one party system.