February 14, 2005


Photo Tocqueville on... Islam
 AdTI received more than 1,500 separate queries in 2004 regarding the literary and political achievements of Messr. Tocqueville, and appears well ahead of that pace in 2005. We are grateful for this interest. Of late, many questions concern Tocqueville's thought on Islam and the Middle East — many contained in his reports and journal entries on Algeria. For an English translation of some of those writings, courtesy of Jennifer Pitts, click here. A sample:

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.... That alone... 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.