| For all of us who accept that the secular state is the solution, the question is how to support and advance what we believe to be right, not what we think other people will follow us or not Throughout human history, if prophets and reformers asked whether their views will be accepted by their people, none of those reforms including Islam itself would have succeeded | He is certainly marching into an unchartered terrain, with immense pinholes and dangerous twists and turns |
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| Muslim constitute the clear majority of the population in more than 40 countries | In any case, the question should NOT be whether Arab countries of today are likely to accept this view or not |
All prophets and reformers said: I believe this to be true and I will call people to it.
7| How can Muslim political leaders, who abide by the Sharia law in their private and communal life, distance themselves completely from their religiously based practices and norms once they are selected voted to a state office? The Mormon in USA whose faith allows one man more than one wife, while the secular law of the land prohibits such a practice | What I am not clear about in his argument is the relation between Muslims as good citizens of the secular Islamic state, living according to their understanding of Islam, on the one hand, and on the other, participating in a secular state that may pass laws they find objectionable from their own religious point of view |
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| Can it work in two legal systems? The second unresolved problem in my mind is this | Turkey is a constitutionally secular state and the present Islamic party support the secular state of Turkey |
I know that double-citizenship is sometimes allowed in nation-to-nation relations.
10| The fact that he is perhaps the first among Muslims intellectuals to dare challenge accepted norms, has made his path-setting endeavor even more difficult | |
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