(n.) The doctrine of, or belief in, a plurality of gods.
Example Sentences:
(1) He rejected what he saw as pagan accretions introduced by bid’a (innovation) and shirk (idolatry or polytheism), which detracts from the absolute transcendence of God.
Theocracy
Definition:
(n.) Government of a state by the immediate direction or administration of God; hence, the exercise of political authority by priests as representing the Deity.
(n.) The state thus governed, as the Hebrew commonwealth before it became a kingdom.
Example Sentences:
(1) On the other hand, the expectation that authority will be bestowed by market forces following a miraculous ‘‘transfer of wealth’’ does suggest an alternative route to normal democratic processes: theocracy via plutocracy.
(2) "It doesn't mean we're going to establish a theocracy and force people to obey what they think is God's law."
(3) Or, if you believe the other side, Santa Monica has upheld the values of the founding fathers, rebuffed a plot to impose theocracy and scored a victory for reason.
(4) Given the unusual grandeur of the Buddhist temples and palaces in the settlement, Mes Aynak might once have been a theocracy like Tibet, with the monks exploiting the copper reserves as a source of power and profit, not unlike the Cistercian monks who dominated the pre-industrial economy in many parts of medieval France and England.
(5) In the eyes of Morsi's Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, it was a military coup; to the government's supporters it was a popular overthrow, with a little help from the military, of an administration that had broken its promises on moderation; created widespread discontent; cracked down on dissent, and was dragging Egypt towards a closed-minded theocracy.
(6) Within this apocalyptic tradition, Cohn identified the Flagellants who massacred the Jews of Frankfurt in 1349; the widespread heresy of the Free Spirit; the 16th-century Anabaptist theocracy of Münster (though some have criticised Cohn's account of this extraordinary event as lurid); the Bohemian Hussites; the instigators of the German peasants' war; and the Ranters of the English civil war.
(7) Antediluvian theocracy has had its day, and thinking Talibs know it.
(8) Watching from the front row in late August was Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , in what was seen as an endorsement from the ruling theocracy that had once tried to stamp out all music as a violation of Islamic values.
(9) The Dalai Lama himself has managed the very difficult transition of Tibetan exile politics from a theocracy towards something very much like a proper democracy.
(10) Our agenda is to preserve and protect the constitution and do everything within the law to prevent them establishing a theocracy over us," said Edwin Kagin, national legal director of American Atheists .
(11) The great thinkers of the Enlightenment proposed that if society was to get beyond theocracy, anarchy or despotism, then it had to be underwritten by such a social contract.
(12) Ahrar al-Sham Formed by hardliners with Muslim Brotherhood links, who aim to establish a Sunni theocracy in Syria, Ahrar al-Sham fought with Nusra when it was still part of al-Qaida, but rejects international jihad itself.
(13) Audiences are surprised because Switzerland is supposedly full of People Like Us: it’s an affluent western European nation, not a sand-blasted theocracy or a dirt-poor African dictatorship.
(14) In recent years a more assertive Iran, run by a Shia Muslim theocracy, has mounted multiple challenges to Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia’s role as guardian and leader of the Islamic world.
(15) Iran is a proud nation of 80 million mostly Muslim people, one of many Asian and African states struggling between theocracy and democracy, tradition and modernity.
(16) For years, detractors have accused the Dalai Lama of scheming to retake Tibet and restore the old feudal theocracy, in spite of his public statements in favour of secular, democratic government.
(17) A year after the elections Iran is still an illiberal theocracy, it is no closer to halting its uranium enrichment program, it still plays king maker in Iraq, and the fate of the Strait of Hormuz still rests on a hair trigger.
(18) The scale of his victory provides a strong platform to challenge hardliners who still hold ultimate control in a Iran’s unwieldy hybrid of theocracy and democracy.
(19) Iranian dissidents, who oppose the theocracy's drive to get the bomb, turned up to protest.
(20) Like any theocracy, this one would select a few passages from the Bible to justify its actions, and it would lean heavily towards the Old Testament, not towards the New.