Prominent and effective people (Religious, Politicians, Thinkers and etc) throughout history have always been stated by their fans and enemies. One of the perfect ways to know such people is to listen to their enemies or non-believers’ statements concerning them. The Prophet Muhammad also was one of those prominent people stated by lots of non-believing scholars and thinkers. It is clear that such opinions give readers a great knowledge of the Prophet Muhammad to researchers and a perfect motivation to them to study the Prophet’s history, religion, Holy Book and sayings.
The present work aims to present a great introduction to the Prophet, Islam and The Quran from viewpoint of prominent western scholars and 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 and the Qur’an 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 Savior 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 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 interracial 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 to the problem with which Europe is faced in its relation with the 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 the unity of God has always been proclaimed therein with grandeur, 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, and 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 epoch-making 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 the 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 knowledge, 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
