Tocqueville On Islam

Posted: 4/11/2015

Trigger

Recently read this posting “Alexis de Tocqueville on Islam”, which made me aware of other, remarkable and prescient observations by Alexis de Tocqueville.

Selected Quotes

Citations below were taken from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville and are well attributed.

1. “I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”
   (Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843. I tried to Google for this letter, but came up only with footnotes in other publications mentioning this letter, but not the full text of it.)
   [These are some strong words by Tocqueville.]
2. “Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.”
   (Democracy in America, Book One, Chapter V.)
   [Is it not true that the New Testament is in this respect quite different from the Old Testament? So did the Quran also make the mistake to prescribe too much in detail?]