The Islam that was revealed to Muhammad (PBUH) is the continuation and culmination of all the preceding revealed religious and hence it is for all times and all peoples. This status of Islam is sustained by glaring facts. Firstly there is no other revealed book extant in the some form and content as it was revealed. Secondly no other revealed religion has any convincing claim to provide guidance in all walks of human life for all times. But Islam addresses humanity at large and offers basic guidance regarding all human problems. More over, it has withstood the test of fourteen hundred years and has all the potentialities of establishing and ideal society as it did under the leadership of the last prophet Muhammad (PBUH).
It was a miracle that Prophet Muhammad could win even his toughest enemies to the fold of Islam without adequate material resources. Worshippers of idols, blind followers of the ways of forefathers, promoters of tribal feuds, abusers, of human dignity and blood, become the most disciplined nation under the guidance of Islam and its prophet. Islam opened before them vistas of spiritual heights and human dignity by declaring righteousness as the sole criterion of merit and honou.. Islam shaped their social, cultural, moral and commercial life with basis laws and principles, which are most in conformity with human nature, does not change. It is so unfortunate that the Christian west instead of sincerely trying to understand the phenomenon success of Islam during its earlier time, considered it as a rival religion. During the centuries of the Crusades this trend gained much more force and impetus and huge literature was produced to tarnish the image of Islam. But Islam has begun to unfold its genuineness to the modern scholars whose bold and objective observations on Islam belief all the charges leveled against it by the so-called unbiased oriantalist.
Here we furnish some observation on Islam by great and acknowledged non-Muslim scholars of modern time. Truth needs no advocates to plead on its behalf. But the prolonged malicious propaganda against Islam has created great confusions even in the minds of free and objective thinkers.
It (Islam) replaced monkish ness by manliness. It gives hope to the slave, brotherhood to mankind, and recognition of the fundamental facts of human nature.
Canon Taylor, Paper read before the Church congress at Walverhampton, Oct.7. (1887).Quoted by Arnold in the preaching of Islam, pp. 71-72Sense of justice is one of the most wonderful ideals of Islam, because as I read in the Quran I find those dynamic principles of life, not mystic but practical ethics for the daily conduct of life suited to the whole world.Sarojni Naidu, Lectures on “The Ideals of Islam” see speeches and writings of Sarojni Naidu. Madarsa, 1918, p. 167.
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 p. 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 and cooperation. No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavors 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 hand lies very largely the solution of the problem with which Europe is faced in its relationship with the East. If they untie 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. 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 it 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 the acceptable to the Europe of today.G.B. Shaw, the Genuine Islam,Vol. 1, no. 81936.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 trail, New York, 1948, p. 205.
The rice 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 religious, remolding the soul of races, and building up a whole new world- world of Islam.
The closer we examine this development the more extraordinary does it appear. The other great religious won there 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 this chosen cut the mightily 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 rationalist in the widest sense of this term considered etymologically and historical, the definition of rationalism as a system that based religious beliefs on principles furnished by the reason applied to it exactly. It can not be denied that many doctrines and system of theology and also many superstitions, from the worship of saints to the use of rosaries and amulets, have become grafted on the main trunk of Muslim creed. But in spite of the rich developments in every sense of the term of the teachings of the prophet, the Quran has invariable kept its place as the fundamentals 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 convictions, which it is hard to find surpassed outside the pale of Islam. This fidelity to the fundamental dogma of the religion, the element 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 theology 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. Edward Montet.“La propaganda Chretienneet SES Adversaries Musalmans” Paris 1890.
Quoted by TW. Arnold in the preaching of Islam, London 1913, pp 413-414.I am not a Muslim in the usual sense though I hope I am a “Muslim” as “One surrendered to God”; but I believe that embedded in the Quran and other expression of the Islamic vision are vast stores of divine truth from which I and other accidentals have still much to learn; and Islam is certainly a strong contender for the supplying of the basis framework of the one religion of the future’.W. Montgomery Watt, Islam and Christianity today. London 1983, p. IX.
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