14 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
It is only within the framework of an independent ideological state built on the principles of Islam and endowed with all the machinery of government, legislation, and law-enforcement that the ideals of Islam can be brought to practical fruition.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
A state, in order to be truly Islamic, must arrange the affairs of the community in such a way that every individual, man and woman, shall enjoy that minimum of material well-being without which there can be no human dignity, no real freedom and, in the last resort, no spiritual progress.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
There is not only one form of the Islamic state, but many; and it is for the Muslims of every period to discover the form most suitable to their needs—on the condition, of course, that the form and the institutions they choose are in full agreement with the explicit, unequivocal shariah laws relating to communal life.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
A state inhabited predominantly or even entirely by Muslims is not necessarily synonymous with an "Islamic state": it can become truly Islamic only by virtue of a conscious application of the sociopolitical tenets of Islam to the life of the nation, and by an incorporation of those tenets in the basic constitution of the country.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
True progress is not possible without a variety of opinions, for it is only through the friction of variously constituted intellects and through the stimulating effect they have on one another that social problems are gradually clarified and thus brought within the range of solution.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)
Instead of being given a true, simple—and therefore easily understandable—picture of Islamic Law, the Muslims are presented with a gigantic, many-sided edifice of fiqhi deductions and interpretations (a secondhand Islam, as it were) arrived at by individual scholars and schools of thought a thousand years ago.
The Principles of State and Government in Islam (1961)