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Napoleon
Bonaparte as Quoted in Cherfils, ‘Bonaparte et Islam,’ Paris, France,
pp. 105, 125.
"Moses has revealed the existence of God to his
nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent...
"Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after
Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of
Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus. The Ariyans and some other sects had
disturbed the tranquility of the east by agitating the question
of the nature of the Father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. Muhammad
declared that there was none but one God who had no father, no son
and that the trinity imported the idea of idolatry...
"I hope the time is not far off when I shall
be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries
and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of Qur'an
which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness."
Sir
George Bernard Shaw in 'The Genuine Islam,' Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936.
"If any religion had the chance of ruling over
England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam."
"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 Savior of Humanity."
"I believe that if a man like him were to assume
the dictatorship of the modern 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."
Bertrand
Russel in ‘History of Western Philosophy,’ London, 1948, p. 419.
"Our use of phrase 'The Dark ages' to cover the
period from 699 to 1,000 marks our undue concentration on Western
Europe...
"From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization
of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was
not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary...
"To us it seems that West-European civilization
is civilization, but this is a narrow view."
H.G.
Wells
"The Islamic teachings have left great traditions
for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people
with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest
order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought
into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective
oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other
societies preceding it....Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy,
and fraternity."
Dr.
William Draper in 'History of Intellectual Development of Europe'
"During the period of the Caliphs the learned
men of the Christians and the Jews were not only held in great esteem
but were appointed to posts of great responsibility, and were promoted
to the high ranking job in the government....He (Caliph Haroon Rasheed)
never considered to which country a learned person belonged nor
his faith and belief, but only his excellence in the field of learning."
Edward
Montet, 'La Propagande Chretienne et ses Adversaries Musulmans,' Paris
1890. (Also in T.W. Arnold in 'The Preaching of Islam,' London 1913.)
"Islam is a religion that is essentially rationalistic
in the widest sense of this term considered etymologically and historically....the
teachings of the Prophet, the Qur'an has invariably kept its place
as the fundamental starting point, and the dogma of unity of God
has always been proclaimed therein with a grandeur a majesty, an
invariable purity and with a note of sure conviction, which it is
hard to find surpassed outside the pale of Islam....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 marvelous power of winning its way into
the consciences of men."
Thomas
Carlyle in ‘Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History,’ Lecture
2, Friday, 8th May 1840.
"As there is no danger of our becoming, any of
us, Mahometans (i.e. Muslim), I mean to say all the good of him
I justly can...
"When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the
proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas
from Mahomet's (Muhammad's) ear, and pass for an angel dictating
to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!...
"A greater number of God's creatures believe
in Mahomet's word at this hour than in any other word whatever.
Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain,
this which so many creatures of the almighty have lived by and died
by?...
"A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless
of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; Something
better in him than hunger of any sort, -- or these wild arab men,
fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close
contact with him always, would not revered him so! They were wild
men bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce
sincerity; without right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded
them. They called him prophet you say? Why he stood there face to
face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystry; visibly clouting
his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering
in the midst of them: they must have seen what kind of man he was,
let him be called what you like! No emperor with his tiaras was
obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three-and-twenty
years of rough actual trial. I find something of a veritable Hero
necessary for that, of itself...
"These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one
century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world
of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi
to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of
Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they
too would flame..."
Simon
Ockley in 'History of the Saracens'.
“A rugged, strife-torn and mountaineering people...were
suddenly turned into an indomitable Arab force, which achieved a
series of splendid victories unparalleled in the history of nations,
for in the short space of ninety years that mighty range of Saracenic
conquest embraced a wider extent of territory than Rome had mastered
in the course of eight hundred.”
Phillip
Hitti in 'Short History of the Arabs.'
"During all the first part of the Middle Ages,
no other people made as important a contribution to human progress
as did the Arabs, if we take this term to mean all those whose mother-tongue
was Arabic, and not merely those living in the Arabian peninsula.
For centuries, Arabic was the language of learning, culture and
intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with
the exception of the Far East. From the IXth to the XIIth century
there were more philosophical, medical, historical, religiuos, astronomical
and geographical works written in Arabic than in any other human
tongue."
Carra
de Vaux in 'The Philosophers of Islam,' Paris, 1921.
"Finally how can one forget that at the same
time the Mogul Empire of India (1526-1857 C.E.) was giving
the world the Taj Mahal (completed in 1648 C.E.) the architectural
beauty of which has never been surpassed, and the ‘Akbar Nameh’
of Abul Fazl: "That extraordinary work full of life ideas and
learning where every aspect of life is examined listed and classified,
and where progress continually dazzles the eye, is a document of
which Oriental civilization may justly be proud. The men whose genius
finds its expression in this book were far in advance of their age
in the practical art of government, and they were perhaps in advance
of it in their speculations about religious philosophy. Those poets
those philosophers knew how to deal with the world or matter. They
observe, classify, calculate and experiment. All the ideas that
occur to them are tested against facts. They express them with eloquence
but they also support them with statistics."...the principles
of tolerance, justice and humanity which prevailed during the long
reign of Akbar."
Marcel
Clerget in 'La Turquie, Passe et Present,' Paris, 1938.
"Many proofs of high cultural level of the Ottoman
Empire during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent are to
be found in the development of science and law; in the flowering
of literary works in Arabic, Persian and Turkish; in the contemporary
monuments in Istanbul, Bursa, and Edirne; in the boom in luxury
industries; in the sumptuous life of the court and high dignitaries,
and last but not least in its religious tolerance. All the
various influences - notably Turkish, Byzantine and Italian mingle
together and help to make this the most brilliant epoch of the Ottomans."
Thomas
Arnold in 'The Call to Islam.'
"We have never heard about any attempt to compel
Non-Muslim parties to adopt Islam or about any organized persecution
aiming at exterminating Christianity. If the Caliphs had chosen
one of these plans, they would have wiped out Christianity as easily
as what happened to Islam during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella
in Spain; by the same method which Louis XIV followed to make Protestantism
a creed whose followers were to be sentenced to death; or with the
same ease of keeping the Jews away from Britain for a period of
three hundred fifty years."
Michael
the Elder (Great) as Quoted in 'Michael the Elder, Chronique de Michael
Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’ Antioche,' J.B. Chabot, Editor, Vol.
II, Paris, 1901.
"This is why the God of vengeance, who alone
is all-powerful, and changes the empire of mortals as He will, giving
it to whomsoever He will, and uplifting the humble beholding the
wickedness of the Romans who throughout their dominions, cruelly
plundered our churches and our monasteries and condemned us without
pity, brought from the region of the south the sons of Ishmael,
to deliver us through them from the hands of the Romans. And if
in truth we have suffered some loss, because the Catholic churches,
that had been taken away from us and given to the Chalcedonians,
remained in their possession; for when the cities submitted to the
Arabs, they assigned to each denomination the churches which they
found it to be in possession of (and at that time the great churches
of Emessa and that of Harran had been taken away from us); nevertheless
it was no slight advantage for us to be delivered from the cruelty
of the Romans, their wickedness, their wrath and cruel zeal against
us, and to find ourselves at people. (Michael the Elder, Jacobite
Patriarch of Antioch wrote this text in the latter part of the twelfth
century, after five centuries of Muslim rule in that region. Click
here for a relevant document sent to the monks of St. Catherine
Monastery in Mt. Sinai, 628 C.E.)
James
Addison in 'The Christian Approach to the Moslem,' p. 35.
"Despite the growth of antagonism, Moslem (Muslim)
rulers seldom made their Christian subjects suffer for the Crusades.
When the Saracens finally resumed the full control of Palestine
the Christians were given their former status as dhimmis.
The Coptic Church, too had little cause for complaint under Saladin's
(Salahuddin) strong government, and during the time of the earlier
Mameluke sultans who succeeded him the Copts experienced more enlightened
justice than they had hitherto known. The only effect of
the Crusaders upon Egyptian Christians was to keep them for a while
from pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for as long as the Frank were in charge
heretics were forbidden access to the shrines. Not until the Moslem
victories could they enjoy their rights as Christians."
Muhammad
Marmaduke Pickthall in his 1927 Lecture on 'Tolerance in Islam,' Madras,
India.
"In the eyes of history, religious toleration
is the highest evidence of culture in a people....It was not until
the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they
became more tolerant, and it was only when the Muslims fell away
from their religious law that they declined in tolerance and other
evidences of the highest culture. Before the coming of Islam it
(tolerance) had never been preached as an essential part of religion...
"If Europe had known as much of Islam, as Muslims
knew of Christendom, in those days, those mad, adventurous, occasionally
chivalrous and heroic, but utterly fanatical outbreak known as the
Crusades could not have taken place, for they were based on a complete
misapprehension...
"Innumerable monasteries, with a wealth of treasure
of which the worth has been calculated at not less than a hundred
millions sterling, enjoyed the benefit of the Holy
Prophet's (Muhammad’s) Charter to the monks of Sinai and
were religiously respected by the Muslims. The various sects of
Christians were represented in the Council of the Empire by their
patriarchs, on the provincial and district council by their bishops,
in the village council by their priests, whose word was always taken
without question on things which were the sole concern of their
community...
"The tolerance
within the body of Islam was, and is, something without parallel
in history; class and race and color ceasing altogether to be barriers."
Sir
John Bagot Glubb
“Khalif (Caliph) Al-Ma'mun's period of rule (813 -
833 C.E.) may be considered the 'golden age' of science and
learning. He had always been devoted to books and to learned pursuits.
His brilliant mind was interested in every form of intellectual
activity. Not only poetry but also philosophy, theology, astronomy,
medicine and law all occupied his time.”
“By Mamun's time medical schools were extremely active
in Baghdad. The first free public hospital was opened in
Baghdad during the Caliphate of Haroon-ar-Rashid. As the system
developed, physicians and surgeons were appointed who gave lectures
to medical students and issued diplomas to those who were considered
qualified to practice. The first hospital in Egypt was opened in
872 AD and thereafter public hospitals sprang up all over the empire
from Spain and the Maghrib to Persia.”
On the
Holocaust of Baghdad (1258 C.E.) Perpetrated
by Hulagu:
“The city was systematically looted, destroyed and
burnt. Eight hundred thousand persons are said to have been killed.
The Khalif Mustasim was sewn up in a sack and trampled to death
under the feet of Mongol horses.
“For five hundred years, Baghdad had been a city of
palaces, mosques, libraries and colleges. Its universities and hospitals
were the most up-to-date in the world. Nothing now remained but
heaps of rubble and a stench of decaying human flesh.”
Copyright © 1992, 1997 Dr.
A. Zahoor
All Rights Reserved
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