33 quotes
Human ingenuity has not evolved a better method for corporate decisions than the majority principle.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
The ideology of Islam is as practicable or as impracticable as we Muslims choose to make it.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
There can be not the least doubt that an Islamic constitution to be evolved thirteen centuries after the Right-Guided Caliphs may legitimately differ from that which was valid in and for their time.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
Our reason tells us that a community based on ideas held in common is a far more advanced manifestation of human life than a community resulting from race or language or geographical location.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
It is not quite reasonable to expect of our Government that it should lead us in the direction of Islamic integrity and solidarity—while that integrity and solidarity are absent in our own behavior.
This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987)
Within the Islamic concept of society there is no room for the concept of a "secular" state for the simple reason that Islam does not admit of any separation between "religious" and "mundane" life-concerns.
This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987)
Islam is a complete, self-contained ideology which regards all aspects of our existence—moral and physical, spiritual and intellectual, personal and communal—as parts of the indivisible whole which we call "human life."
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
A Muslim is he who carries the fear of God in his heart and tries, by following the ways of Islam, to rise in spiritual stature: and not merely he who happens to have been born in a Muslim house and bears a Muslim name.
This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987)
Jew or Arab. Both here are brimming over with an intolerant hatred that leads them nowhere. Each side says to the other: You do not belong here.
The Law-Giver meant us Muslims to provide for the necessary, additional legislation through the exercise of our Ijtihad (Independent Reasoning) in consonance with the spirit of Islam.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
Some Muslim scholars argue that the concept of Democracy is not compatible with the concept of an Islamic state. But of course it is and the Quran outlines the essence of Democracy.
It doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with my interpretations, even the classical Quran commentators disagreed on many details. Disagreement deepens our understanding of the Quran.
By imitating the manners and the mode of life of the West, the Muslims are being gradually forced to adopt the Western moral outlook: for the imitation of outward appearance leads, by degrees, to a corresponding assimilation of the world-view responsible for that appearance.
Islam at the Crossroads (1934)
The duty and the right to express one's opinion freely may be meaningless—and on occasion even injurious to the best interests of the society—if those opinions are not based on sound thought, which, in its turn, presupposes the possession of sound knowledge.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
For let there be no mistake about it: freedom is not an end in itself—it is only a means to an end. The moment you achieve freedom from something, the question arises: What is this freedom for? It is this question which the Muslim millah is now being called upon to answer.
This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987)
Although science is well qualified to make us progressively comprehend something of the world around us and of the life within us, it is neither able nor called upon to pronounce a judgment regarding the spiritual goal of human life and thus to provide us with ethical guidance.
This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987)
Literally, this word (Islam) denotes "self-surrender" and, in the deeper sense, "man's self-surrender to God". As soon as we become fully aware that God exists, and thereupon surrender ourselves to Him both in our faith and in our attitudes, we fulfil the meaning of our life.
This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987)
We are neither a racial nor a national entity in the conventional meaning of this term; we have become a nation only on the strength of an ideology, a common belief in a particular way of life: and that ideology, that way of life is expressed in one single word: Islam.
This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987)
In the last resort, the moral quality of a government—of any government—is conditioned by the moral quality of the people whom it governs: for it is the people themselves who produce the personnel of the great administrative machinery which we describe as "government".
This Law of Ours and Other Essays (1987)
Their [Conservative Muslims'] insistence that a modem Islamic state would have to be an exact replica of the "historic precedents" of our past is apt to bring the very idea of the Islamic state into discredit and ridicule.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)