ISLAM AS SEEN BY PROMINENT WESTERN
THINKERS

It is unfortunate that the Christian West instead of
sincerely trying to understand the phenomenal success of
Islam has considered it a rival religion. During the
centuries of the crusades, this trend gained much force
and impetus and a huge amount of literature was produced
to tarnish the image of Islam.

Truth needs no advocates to plead on its behalf. But
the prolonged malicious propaganda against Islam has
created great confusion even in the minds of some free
and objective thinkers. But Islam has begun to unfold its
genuineness to the modern scholars whose bold and
objective observations on Islam belie all the charges
levelled against it by the so-called unbiased
orientalists.

The following are some observations on Islam, the
Qur'an and Muhammad (s.a.w.) by well acknowledged
non-Muslim Western scholars and thinkers of modern times
which we hope would contribute to initiating an objective
evaluation of the Islamic faith.

ABOUT ISLAM

"I am not a Muslim in the usual sense, though I
hope I am 'Muslim' as 'one surrendered to God', but I
believe that embedded in the Qur'an and other expressions
of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth
from which I and other occidentals have still much to
learn, and Islam is certainly a strong contender for the
supplying of the basic framework of the one religion of
the future."

W. Montgomery Watt

"Islam and Christianity Today",

London, 1983, page IX.

"I have always held the religion of Muhammad in
high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is
the only religion which appears to me to possess that
assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence
which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied
him-the wonderful man - and in my opinion far from being
an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of
humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume
the dictatorship of the modem world, he would succeed in
solving its problems in a way that would bring it the
much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about
the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the
Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to
the Europe of today."

George Bernard Shaw

"The Genuine Islam",

Vol. 1, No. 81936.

"History makes it clear however, that the legend
of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and
forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered
races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that
historians have ever repeated."

De Lacy O'Leary

"Islam at the Crossroads",

London , 1923, page 8.

"But Islam has a still further service to render
to the cause of humanity. It stands after all nearer to
the real East than Europe does, and it possesses a
magnificent tradition of inter-racial understanding and
cooperation. No other society has such a record of
success in uniting in an equality of status, of
opportunity, and of endeavours so many and so various
races of mankind... Islam has still the power to
reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and
tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies
of East and West is to be replaced by cooperation, the
mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition. In its
hands lies very largely the solution of the problem with
which Europe is faced in its relation with East. If they
unite, the hope of a peaceful issue is immeasurably
enhanced. But if Europe, by rejecting the cooperation of
Islam, throws it into the arms of its rivals, the issue
can only be disastrous for both."

H.A.R. Gibb

"Whither Islam" London, 1932, p.379.

"The extinction of race consciousness as between
Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam
and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a
crying need for the propagation of this Islamic
virtue."

A. J. Toynbee

"Civilization on Trial",

New York, 1948, p. 205.

"The rise of Islam is perhaps the most amazing
event in human history. Springing from a land and a
people like previously negligible, Islam spread within a
century over half the earth, shattering great empires,
overthrowing long-established religions, remoulding the
souls of races, and building up a whole new world, the
world of Islam.

The closer we examine this development the more
extraordinary does it appear. The other great religions
won their way slowly, by painful struggle and finally
triumphed with the aid of powerful monarchs converted to
the new faith. Christianity had its Constantine, Buddhism
its Asoka, and Zoroastrianism its Cyrus, each lending to
his chosen cult the mighty force of secular authority,
not so Islam. Arising in a desert land sparsely inhabited
by a nomad race previously undistinguished in human
annals.

Islam sallied forth on its great adventure with the
slenderest human backing and against the heaviest
material odds. Yet Islam triumphed with seemingly
miraculous ease, and a couple of generations saw the
Fiery Crescent borne victorious from the Pyrenees to the
Himalayas and from the desert of Central Asia to the
deserts of Central Africa."

A. M. L. Stoddard

Quoted in "Islam-The Religion of All Prophets",

Begum Bawani Waqf, Karachi Pakistan p.56.

"Islam is a religion that is essentially
rationalistic in the widest sense of this term considered
etymologically and historically. The definition of
rationalism as a system that bases religious beliefs on
principles furnished by reason applies to it exactly. The
teachings of the Prophet, the Qur'an have invariably kept
their place as the fundamental starting point, and the
dogma of unity of God has always been proclaimed therein
with a grandeur, a majesty, and invariable purity and
with a note of sure conviction, which it is hard to find
surpassed outside the pale of Islam. This fidelity to the
fundamental dogma of the religion, the elemental
simplicity of the formula in which it is enunciated, the
proof that it gains from the fervid conviction of the
missionaries who propagate it, are so many causes to
explain the success of Muhammadan missionary efforts. A
creed so precise, so stripped of all theological
complexities and consequently so accessible to the
ordinary understanding might be expected to possess and
does indeed possess a marvellous power of winning its way
into the consciences of men."

Edward Montet

"La Propagande Chretienne et ses Adversairs
Musulmans",

Paris 1890, Quoted by T W Arnold in "The Preaching
of Islam",

London 1913, pp. 413-414.

ABOUT THE QUR'AN

"The Koran admittedly occupies an important
position among the great religious books of the world.

Though the youngest of the epochmaking works belonging to
this class of literature, it yields to hardly any in the
wonderful effect which it has produced on large masses of
men. It has created an all but new phase of human thought
and a fresh type of character . It first transformed a
number of heterogeneous desert tribes of the Arabian
Peninsula into a nation of heroes, and then proceeded to
create the vast politico-religious organizations of
Muhammadan world which are one of the great forces with
which Europe and the East have to reckon today."

G. Margoliouth

Introduction to J M. Rodwell's The Koran,

New York: Everyman's Library, 1977 p. VII.

"A work, then, which calls forth so powerful and
seemingly incompatible emotions even in the distant
reader-distant as to time, and still more so as mental
development- a work which not only conquers the
repugnance with which he may begin its perusal, but
changes this adverse feeling into astonishment and
admiration, such a work must be a wonderful production of
the human mind indeed and a problem of the highest
interest to every thoughtful observer of the destinies of
mankind."

Dr Steingass

Quoted in "Hughes' Dictionary of Islam" pp.
526-7

"Here, therefore, its merits as a literary
production should perhaps not be measured by some
preconceived maxims of subjective and aesthetic taste,
but by the effects which it produced in Muhammad's
contemporaries and fellow countrymen. If it spoke so
powerfully and convincingly to the hearts of his hearers
as to weld hitherto centrifugal and antagonistic elements
into one compact and well organized body, animated by
ideas far beyond those which had until now ruled the
Arabian mind, then its eloquence was perfect, simply
because it created a civilized nation out of savage
tribes, and shot a fresh woof into the old warp of
history."

Dr Steingass

Quoted in "Hughes' Dictionary of Islam" P.528.

"In making the present attempt to improve on the
performance of my predecessors, and to produce something
which might be accepted as echoing however faintly the
sublime rhetoric of the Arabic Koran, I have been at
pains to study the intricate and richly varied rhythms
which - apart from the message itself - constitute the
Koran's undeniable claim to rank amongst the greatest
literary masterpieces of mankind... This very
characteristic feature - 'that inimitable symphony', as
the believing Pickthall described his Holy Book, 'the
very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy' - has
been almost totally ignored by previous translators; it
is therefore not surprising that what they have wrought
sounds dull and flat indeed in comparison with the
splendidly decorated original."

Arthur J Arberry

"The Koran Interpreted",

London: Oxford University Press, 1964, p X

"A totally objective examination of it [the
Qur'an] in the light of modern know-ledge, leads us to
recognize the agreement between the two, as has been
already noted on repeated occasions. It makes us deem it
quite unthinkable for a man of Muhammad's time to have
been the author of such statements, on account of the
state of knowledge in his day. Such considerations are
part of what gives the Qur'anic Revelation its unique
place, and forces the impartial scientist to admit his
inability to provide an explanation which calls solely
upon materialistic reasoning."

Maurice Bucaille

"The Qur'an and Modem Science", 1981, p 18

"The above observation makes the hypothesis
advanced by those who see Muhammad as the author of the
Qur'an untenable. How could a man, from being illiterate,
become the most important author, in terms of literary
merits, in the whole of Arabic literature? How could he
then pronounce truths of a scientific nature that no
other human-being could possibly have developed at that
time, and all this without once making the slightest
error in his pronouncement on the subject?"

Maurice Bucaille

"The Bible, the Qur'an and Science", 1978,
p.125

Praise be to Allah, Lord of the
worlds.