Church and state Quote by John R. Bradley

““It just means that for liberal democracy to develop in the Muslim Middle East, it will take much more than merely removing autocrats and holding elections. It will take a critical mass of Muslims themselves figuring out how to reconcile traditional Islam and sharia law with notions like universal human rights, tolerance for minorities, separation of church and state, and all the other bedrock principles of liberal democracy. Based on our own experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, the possibility of this sort of reconciliation seems remote.””

John R. Bradley

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More by John R. Bradley

“But if Nasser's gift to the Egyptians was their sense of pride, Mubarak's curse is to have created a cultural climate where the only…

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“However, since the Syrian regime is even less transparent than the NGOs, we have no way of knowing that, either.”

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“After the attack, it was again the image of the country, rather than the well-being of those who had been caught up in the…

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“Because Islam is so tightly bound up with Acehnese exceptionalism, it has since the introduction of Islamic law become the territory’s version of political…

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“After all, there is in more stable, developed countries like the United States and Britain a quantifiably more vicious culture of child abuse. A…

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“After that fateful day of July 23, 1952, the "Paris Along the Nile," as Cairo was lovingly renamed by the foreigners who flocked to…

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“Mansour earned the nickname "Al-Turbiny," from the air-conditioned express trains linking Cairo with Egypt's second city Alexandria, whose roofs were the favored location for…

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“The situation is complicated, though, in a country like Tunisia, where sudden and dramatic change in favor of Western-style democracy at this juncture does…

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“Nothing gives your average bored Sunni bigot surfing the web more instant gratification than zooming in on sigeh to condemn the Shia as debauched…

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“despite having a thriving gay prostitution scene, Damascus is unlike just about every other Middle Eastern city I have visited in not having any…

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“The Arab Spring has been a dismal failure. All indications are that what comes next will be significantly worse than what existed before, in…

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“An investigative report by the BBC in July 2007 found that thousands of young Egyptian men try to enter Europe illegally every year. Sometimes…

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More Church and state quotes

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for…

Thomas Jefferson

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“I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. ... These two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both…

George Carlin

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Blasphemy and sedition (meaning the truth about Church and State).

George Bernard Shaw

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“The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using…

Dan Barker

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Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate…

James Madison