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| quote: | Originally posted by rT19
Iran was an islamic country 30 years ago but the government did not think in an islamic view.
This is why Religion and Politics should be seperated.
Its all the mulah's fault. |
Islam (theoretically) draws no line between religion and politics. Shari'a encompasses an entire way of living, and it is (theoretically) impossible to separate it into secular law and religious practice. Up until the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI, the Sultan-Caliph was both a temporal-political and divine-religious ruler. The idea of "nation-state" in which politics could possibly be separate from religion is fairly new to the Middle East; since the expansion of the Islam from the 600s, the "state" was defined by the geographic territory of the believing community. As the most learned and pious members of the community, the ulema (theoretically) function as both political and religious authorities to help create a just and good society, as defined from the chaotic darkness of the non-Islamic world. This is not the case in Christian theology or society, from which the idea of the nation-state was born. Christian salvation and goodness occur on a much more individualistic level (invidivual acceptance of Christ as messiah, leadership, help in achieving salvation b/c of death on cross etc).
Not to say that it couldn't be different. It's just more complicated to separate the two when the religion is Islam, and most of the Middle East has about 350 years less practice with the concept.
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