What they say about Muhammad? 2

[bamalli]

The word of Mohammad is a voice direct from nature's own heart - all else is wind in comparison. (Thomas Carlyle)

The sword indeed, but where will you get your sword? Every new opinion, at its starting is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone. There it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it, there is one man against all men. That he takes a sword and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. (Thomas Carlyle)

History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword is the most fantastically absurd myth that historians have ever repeated. (De Lacy O' Leary)

He was the Messenger of the One True God: And never to his life's end did he forget for a moment who he was! He was one of those happy few who have attained the supreme joy of making one great truth their very life-spring. (Stanley Lane Poole)

Mohammad was an enthusiast in the noblest sense. (Stanley Lane Poole)

The Renaissance of Europe did not take place in the 15th century. Rather, it began when Europe learned from the culture of the Arabs. The cradle of European awakening is not Italy. It is the Muslim Spain. (Robert Briffault)

The height of human achievement and glory, Mohammad. (Pringle Kennedy)
Under his influence people became united in one bond which they knew not, the bond of true monotheism. (L.E. Browne)

Mohammad brought an end to idol worship. He preached Monotheism and infinite Mercy of God, human brotherhood, care of the orphan, emancipation of slaves, forbidding of wine. No religion achieved as much success as Islam did. (Sir William Muir)

The Arabian Prophet Mohammad is the founder of a revolution unparalleled in history. He founded a political state that will ultimately embrace the entire planet. The law of that Government will rest on justice and kindness. His teachings revolve around human equality, mutual cooperation and universal brotherhood. (Raymond Lerouge)

Islam is a forceful spiritual energy. Its true meaning will manifest itself when it will be implemented on a large scale. (Tor Andre)

The Book revealed to Muhammad defines an unalterable guide to individual and collective lives of people. (Sir Richard Gregory)

Think and ponder! Which person is it who taught mankind the way to establish the greatest society; the society in which blessings descend upon every individual. (J.H. Dennison)

The message of Mohammad is flowing toward its noble destination like a pure, fresh and transparent rivulet. (Johann Goethe)

The critics are blind. They cannot see that the only 'sword' Muhammad wielded was the sword of mercy, compassion, friendship and forgiveness - the sword that conquers enemies and purifies their hearts. His sword was sharper than the sword of steel. But the biased critics of Islam are prejudicial and partisan, who are narrow minded and whose eyes are covered by a veil of ignorance. They see fire instead of light, ugliness instead of beauty and evil instead of good. They distort and present every good quality as a great vice. It reflects their own depravity. (Pandit Gyanandra Dev Sharma Shastri)

Some people say that Islam was preached by the sword, but we cannot agree with this view. What is forced on people is soon rejected. Had Islam been imposed on people through oppression, there would have been no Islam today. Why? Because the Prophet of Islam had spiritual power, he loved humanity and he was guided by the ideal of ultimate good. (A Hindu Editor of Sat Updaish, 7 July 1915)

In the beginning the Prophet's enemies made life difficult for him and his followers. So the Prophet asked his followers to leave their homes and migrate to Medina. He preferred migration to fighting his own people, but when oppression went beyond the pale of tolerance he took up his sword in self-defense. Those who believe religion can be spread by force are fools who neither know the ways of religion nor the ways of the world. They are proud of this belief because they are a long, long way away from the Truth. (Sikh Journalist, Nawan Hindustan)

It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, one of the great messengers of the Supreme. And although in what I put to how I shall say many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feel whenever I re-read them, a new admiration, a new sense of reverence for that mighty Arabian teacher. (Dr. Annie Besant)

But do you mean to tell me that the man who in the full flush of youthful vigor, a young man of four and twenty (24), married a woman much his senior, and remained faithful to her for six and twenty years (26), at fifty years of age when the passions are dying married for lust and sexual passion? Not thus are men's lives to be judged. And you look at the women whom he married, you will find that by every one of them an alliance was made for his people, or something was gained for his followers, or the woman was in sore need of protection. (Dr. Annie Besant)

No great religious leader has been so maligned as Prophet Mohammed. Attacked in the past as a heretic, an impostor, or a sensualist, it is still possible to find him referred to as 'the false prophet'. A modern German writer accuses Prophet Mohammed of sensuality, surrounding himself with young women. This man was not married until he was twenty-five years of age, then he and his wife lived in happiness and fidelity for twenty-four years, until her death when he was forty-nine. Only between the age of fifty and his death at sixty-two did Prophet Mohammed take other wives, only one of whom was a virgin, and most of them were taken for dynastic and political reasons. Certainly the Prophet's record was better than the head of the Church of England, Henry VIII. (Geoffrey Parrinder)

His readiness to undergo persecutions for his beliefs, the high moral character of the men who believed in him and looked up to him as leader, and the greatness of his ultimate achievement - all argue his fundamental integrity. To suppose Muhammad an impostor raises more problems than it solves. Moreover, none of the great figures of history is so poorly appreciated in the West as Muhammad. (Montgomery Watt)

It was the first religion that preached and practiced democracy; for in the mosque, when the call for prayer is sounded and worshippers are gathered together, the democracy of Islam is embodied five times a day when the peasant and king kneel side by side and proclaim: 'God Alone is Great' ... I have been struck over and over again by this indivisible unity of Islam that makes man instinctively a brother. (Sarogini Naidu)

No other religion in history spread so rapidly as Islam. The West has widely believed that this surge of religion was made possible by the sword. But no modern scholar accepts this idea, and the Qur'an is explicit in the support of the freedom of conscience. In all things Muhammad was profoundly practical. When his beloved son Ibrahim died, an eclipse occurred, and rumors of God's personal condolence quickly arose. Whereupon Muhammad is said to have announced, "An eclipse is a phenomenon of nature. It is foolish to attribute such things to the death or birth of a human being." At Muhammad's own death an attempt was made to deify him, but the man who was to become his administrative successor killed the hysteria with one of the noblest speeches in religious history: "If there are any among you who worshipped Muhammad, he is dead. But if it is God you worshipped, He lives forever." (James A. Michener)

If ever any man on this earth has found God; if ever any man has devoted his life for the sake of God with a pure and holy zeal then, without doubt, and most certainly that man was the Holy Prophet of Arabia. (Major A. Leonard)

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times 'by the sword' to get them to abandon their faith. (Uri Avnery, A Jew)

The teachings of Islam can fail under no circumstances. With all our systems of culture and civilization, we can not go beyond Islam and, as a matter of fact, no human mind can go beyond the Qur'an. (Johann Goethe)

People who worry that nuclear weaponry will one day fall in the hands of the Arabs, fail to realize that the Islamic bomb has been dropped already, it fell the day Muhammad was born. (Dr. Joseph Adam Pearson)

The greatest success of Mohammad's life was effected by sheer moral force without the stroke of a sword. (Edward Gibbon)

The picture of the Muslim soldier advancing with a sword in one hand and the Qur'an in the other is quite false. (A. S. Tritton, ISLAM, London, 1951)

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. (Edward Montet)

It was the genius of Muhammad, the spirit that he breathed into the Arabs through the soul of Islam that exalted them. That raised them out of the lethargy and low level of tribal stagnation up to the high watermark of national unity and empire. It was in the sublimity of Muhammad's deism, the simplicity, the sobriety and purity it inculcated the fidelity of its founder to his own tenets that acted on their moral and intellectual fiber with all the magnetism of true inspiration. (Arthur Glyn Leonard)

He was sober and abstemious in his diet and a rigorous observer of fasts. He indulged in no magnificence of apparel, the ostentation of a petty mind; neither was his simplicity in dress affected but a result of real disregard for distinction from so trivial a source. In his private dealings he was just. He treated friends and strangers, the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, with equity, and was beloved by the common people for the affability with which he received them, and listened to their complaints. (Washington Irving)

The sayings of Muhammad are a treasure of wisdom not only for Muslims but for all mankind. (Mahatma Gandhi)

The principles of universal brotherhood and doctrine of the equality of mankind which he proclaimed represents one very great contribution of Mohammad to the social uplift of humanity. All great religions have preached the same doctrine but the prophet of Islam had put this theory into actual practice and its value will be fully recognized, perhaps centuries hence, when international consciousness being awakened, racial prejudices may disappear and greater brotherhood of humanity come into existence. (Prof. K. S. Ramakrishna Rao)

An honest man, as the saying goes, is the noblest work of God, Mohammad was more than honest. He was human to the marrow of his bones. Human sympathy, human love was the music of his soul. To serve man, to elevate man, to purify man, to educate man, in a word to humanize man - this was the object of his mission, the be-all and end all of his life. In thought, in word, in action he had the good of humanity as his sole inspiration, his sole guiding principle. (Prof. K. S. Ramakrishna Rao)

The number of verses in Qur'an inviting close observation of nature are several times more than those that relate to prayer, fasting, pilgrimage etc. all put together. The Muslim under its influence began to observe nature closely and this gives birth to the scientific spirit of the observation and experiment which was unknown to the Greeks. (Prof. K. S. Ramakrishna Rao)

The Qur'an says that God has created man to worship him but the word worship has a connotation of its own. Gods worship is not confined to prayer alone, but every act that is done with the purpose of winning approval of God and is for the benefit of the humanity comes under its purview. (Prof. K. S. Ramakrishna Rao)

How often the words came in Qur'an -- Those who believe and do good works, they alone shall enter paradise. Again and again, not less than fifty times these words are repeated as if too much stress can not be laid on them. Contemplation is encouraged but mere contemplation is not the goal. Those who believe and do nothing can not exist in Islam. (Prof. K. S. Ramakrishna Rao)

My problem to write this monograph is easier because we are not generally fed now on that (distorted) kind of history and much time need not be spent on pointing out our misrepresentations of Islam. The theory of Islam and sword, for instance, is not heard now in any quarter worth the name. The principle of Islam, there is no compulsion in religion, is well known. (Prof. K. S. Ramakrishna Rao)

The sword of Islam is not the sword of steel. I know this by experience, because the sword of Islam struck deep into my own heart. It didn't bring death, but it brought a new life; it brought an awareness and it brought an awakening as to who am I and what am I and for what am I here? (Ahmed Holt, a convert)

In Islam I found suitable replies to nagging queries arising in my mind with regard to the theory of creation, status of woman, creation of universe, etc. The life history of the holy Prophet attracted me very much and made easy for me to compare with other world leaders and their philosophies. (Vengatachalam Adiyar, now Abdullah Adiyar)

I have lived under different systems of life and have had the opportunity of studying various ideologies, but have come to the conclusion that none is as perfect as Islam. None of the systems has got a complete code of a noble life, only Islam has it' and that is why good men embrace it. Islam is not theoretical; it is practical. It means complete submission to the will of God. (Herbert Hobohm, now Aman Hobohm)

It will be wrong to judge Islam in the light of the behavior of some bad Muslims who are always shown on the media. It is like judging a car as a bad one if the driver in the car is drunk and he bangs it into the wall. Islam guides all human beings in daily life - in its spiritual, mental and physical dimensions. But we must find the sources of these instructions, the Qur'an and the example of the Prophet. Then we can see the ideal of Islam. (Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam)

Islam appears to me like a perfect work of Architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other. Nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. (Leopold Weiss, now Mohammed Asad)

For some time now, striving for more and more precision and brevity, I have tried to put on paper in a systematic way, all philosophical truths, which in my view, can be ascertained beyond reasonable doubt. In the course of this effort it dawned on me that the typical attitude of an agnostic is not an intelligent one; that man simply cannot escape a decision to believe; that the createdness of what exists around us is obvious; that Islam undoubtedly finds itself in the greatest harmony with overall reality. Thus I realize, not without shock, that step by step, in spite of myself and almost unconsciously, n feeling and thinking I have grown into a Muslim. Only one last step remained to be taken: to formalize my conversion. As of today I am a Muslim. I have arrived. (M. Hoffman, PhD in law, Harvard; now Murad Hoffman)