Tag: Secular

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2007-11-28 "Christianity is different from Islam because it allows you to question it. It probably wasn't different in the past, but it is now. Christians - at least Christians in a liberal democracy - have accepted, after Thomas Hobbes, that they must obey the secular rule of law; that there must be a separation of church and state. In Islamic doctrine such a separation has not occurred yet. This is what makes it dangerous!"
-- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, talking with the London Spectator
2007-07 "Islam is the official religion and we are an Islamic state.
We have never been secular because being secular by Western definition means separation of the Islamic principles in the way we govern a country."
-- Najib Razak, Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, talking to state news agency Bernama
"
2007-04 “Putting these various issues together, we can envision a near-future Europe that is anything but uniformly secular. While Muslims engage in critical debate about their relationship with modernity and argue how far their faith can be reconciled with national ideologies, Christians will also be redefining their faith and its public role. Though Christian numbers will decline, Christians will continue to organize in groups and movements that are, if anything, far more committed and activist than [they have been] for many years and will constitute more identifiable interest groups.”
-- Philip Jenkins, in his book, "God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis"
2007 Magdi Allam published his book 'Viva Israel: From the ideology of death to the civilization of life, my story'.

In this book he described his transformation from hating Zionists as a youth to realizing "that hatred easily comes to include all Jews, then all Christians, then all liberal and secular Muslims, and at the end all Muslims who do not want to submit to Islamic radicals' will."
2006-09 “Many and many politicians and spiritual leaders in EU countries think in this way. I think the Pope Benedict XVI is not deeply sorry for his statement about Islam. He is sorry because his speech lures a severe reaction from the Islam peoples. Many EU politicians do not see any place for Turkey in EU because Turkey is a Muslim country. If the EU is only a Christian club, I think Turkey should not be part of it. Because Turkey is a secular country and I am personally against to be part of a Middle Ages understanding. If the EU wants to be a Middle Ages institution, so it cannot integrate the religions and ethnic groups of the European continent. There are more than 100 million Muslims in Europe. The millions of Muslims live at the heart of London, Berlin, Paris etc. Most of them are not immigrant but EU citizens, yet they cannot see the German or French Government as their own government. There are also many Euro-Muslim countries, yet none of them is EU member, including Turkey, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Azerbaijan and Northern Cyprus Republic. I agree with Mr. Stoiber, Turkey has no place in a Christianity-based Europe. If the EU will be such a narrow-minded organization, Turkey should be outside of this discriminative structure and religious fundamentalism. It is really difficult to see any difference between Mr. Stoiber and Osame Bin Ladin in seeding religious hate. Europe is at a very critical stage as it was before the Second World War. Now the Turkish and Muslim peoples of the European continent can understand better what the European Jewish people felt before and during the Second World War. Turkey has always been a great opportunity to bridge Christians and Muslims, but I understand that we have lost that chance already”.
-- Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sedat Laciner, head of the Ankara-based USAK
2006-04-18 ‘People at home have asked me whether I’m participating in the dialogue to say sorry or to get the Danes to say they’re sorry, but that’s not what this is about at all,’ she said. ‘We’ve communicated face-to-face, and I think we can overcome anything as long as we understand that, when it comes down to it, we’re all people.’
-- Ethar El-Katatney, a 19-year-old Egyptian, at conference in the United Arab Emirates, organised by the Tabah Foundation
2004 In the Netherlands, the prestigious Erasmus prize was awarded to secular Syrian thinker Sadiq Jalal al-Azm together with two Muslim modernist thinkers: the Moroccan Fatima Mernissi and the Iranian Abdolkarim Soroush.
2004 Robert D. Blackwill, then the influential Iraq director on the National Security Council, pushed hard to make Ayad Allawi, a tough, secular Shiite with close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, the interim prime minister of Iraq.

Mr. Blackwill’s efforts worked. For the next 10 months, until Mr. Allawi’s party lost in the Iraqi elections, he was the first prime minister of the newly sovereign nation — America’s man in Baghdad
2004 "Europe is a cultural and not a geographical continent. Its culture gives it a common identity. In this sense, Turkey always represented another continent throughout history, in permanent contrast with Europe". It would be wrong, Ratzinger said, to equate the two sides for mere commercial interests. "It would be a loss to subsume culture under the economy." Instead, he urged Turkey to take the leadership of the Muslim world in a dialogue with the West.

"Although a secular state, Turkey is still rooted in Islam. As such she could spearhead a cultural continent with its Arab neighbours and thus become the main actor of a culture with its own identity but with whom others can share common humanist values. This idea does not oppose close and friendly association and collaboration with Europe; instead, it could foster a common front against all forms of fundamentalism."
Card Joseph Ratzinger commenting on Ankara's application in a recent interview with French newspaper Le Figaro
2003-12-17 The French president Jacques Chirac said that a law which would ban the Islamic headscarf and other religious insignia from the classroom is necesary to safeguard the nation's secular identity, "The Islamic veil... the kippa and a cross that is of manifestly excessive dimensions - these have no place in the precincts of state schools. State schools will remain secular. For that a law is necessary."

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