Religion and State
Further information: Political aspects of Islam and Islam and secularismIslamic law does not distinguish between "matters of church" and "matters of state"; the ulama function as both jurists and theologians.
As the Muslim world came into contact with secular ideals of the Western world, Muslim societies responded in different ways. Azerbaijan was the first secular republic in the Muslim world, between 1918 and 1920, when it was incorporated into the Soviet Union. Turkey has been governed as a secular state since the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. By contrast, the 1979 Iranian Revolution replaced a mostly secular regime with an Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini.
Many Muslim countries have implemented some form of Sharia law or otherwise have Islam as the official state religion. Consequently, in those countries, areas of society ranging from politics to law to schooling, among others, have been affected. However, other states in the Muslim world remain officially secular.
Read more about this topic: Muslim World
Famous quotes containing the words religion and, religion and/or state:
“... the average Catholic perceives no connection between religion and morality, unless it is a question of someone else’s morality.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The essence of the modern state is that the universal be bound up with the complete freedom of its particular members and with private well-being, that thus the interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state.... It is only when both these moments subsist in their strength that the state can be regarded as articulated and genuinely organized.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)