|
Napolean 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."
--------------------------------------------------------
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."
------------------------------------------------------
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."
------------------------------------------------------
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."
--------------------------------------------------
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.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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."
---------------------------------------------------------
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."
--------------------------------------------------------------
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.”
----------------------------------------------------------
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..."
----------------------------------------------------------------
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."
|
