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What Non-Muslims Say
About
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Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) |
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It is very unfortunate to see the latest assaults on
the personality of the most respected man of the mankind.These assaults
are a proof that how our beloved Prophet has been understood by those so
called intellectuals who are claiming that they are free to express any
anything about anybody through various mediums without actually
acquiring the knowledge of what they are expressing.Their expression
might be totally different,If they might have ever attempted to know
about Greatest Personality-THE PROPHET MOHAMMED (PBUH).
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Here are some quotes about
Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) as described
by some Non-Muslim Intellectuals of
their time. |
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Thomas Carlyle in
'Heroes and Hero Worship and the
Heroic in History' 1840 |
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"The lies (Western
slander) which well-meaning zeal has
heaped round this man (Muhammad) are
disgraceful to ourselves only."
"A silent great soul, one of that
who cannot but be earnest. He was to
kindle the world, the world’s Maker
had ordered so." |
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A. S. Tritton in 'Islam,' 1951 |
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The picture
of the Muslim
soldier
advancing with a
sword in one
hand and the
Qur'an in the
other is quite
false. |
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De Lacy O'Leary in 'Islam at the
Crossroads,' London, 1923. |
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History makes it
clear, however, that the legend of
fanatical Muslims sweeping through
the world and forcing Islam at the
point of sword upon conquered races
is one of the most fantastically
absurd myths that historians have
ever repeated.
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Gibbon in 'The
Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire' 1823 |
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The good sense of Muhammad despised the pomp of royalty. The Apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family; he kindled the fire; swept the floor; milked the ewes; and mended with his own hands his shoes and garments. Disdaining the penance and merit of a hermit, he observed without effort of vanity the abstemious diet of an Arab.
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Edward Gibbon and
Simon Oakley in ‘History of the
Saracen Empire,’ London, 1870 |
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"The greatest success
of Mohammad’s life was effected by
sheer moral force."
“It is not the propagation but the
permanency of his religion that
deserves our wonder, the same pure
and perfect impression which he
engraved at Mecca and Medina is
preserved after the revolutions of
twelve centuries by the Indian, the
African and the Turkish proselytes
of the Koran....The Mahometans have
uniformly withstood the temptation
of reducing the object of their
faith and devotion to a level with
the senses and imagination of man.
‘I believe in One God and Mahomet
the Apostle of God’ is the simple
and invariable profession of Islam.
The intellectual image of the Deity
has never been degraded by any
visible idol; the honors of the
prophet have never transgressed the
measure of human virtue, and his
living precepts have restrained the
gratitude of his disciples within
the bounds of reason and religion.”
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Reverend Bosworth
Smith in 'Muhammad and Muhammadanism,'
London, 1874. |
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"Head of the State as
well as the Church, he was Caesar
and Pope in one; but he was Pope
without the Pope's pretensions, and
Caesar without the legions of
Caesar, without a standing army,
without a bodyguard, without a
police force, without a fixed
revenue. If ever a man ruled by a
right divine, it was Muhammad, for
he had all the powers without their
supports. He cared not for the
dressings of power. The simplicity
of his private life was in keeping
with his public life."
"In Mohammadanism every thing is
different here. Instead of the
shadowy and the mysterious, we have
history....We know of the external
history of Muhammad....while for his
internal history after his mission
had been proclaimed, we have a book
absolutely unique in its origin, in
its preservation....on the
Substantial authority of which no
one has ever been able to cast a
serious doubt."
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Edward Montet, 'La
Propagande Chretienne et ses
Adversaries Musulmans,' Paris 1890.
(Also in T.W. Arnold in 'The
Preaching of Islam,' London 1913.) |
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"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."
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Alphonse de
LaMartaine in 'Historie de la
Turquie,' Paris, 1854. |
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"Never has a man set
for himself, voluntarily or
involuntarily, a more sublime aim,
since this aim was superhuman; to
subvert superstitions which had been
imposed between man and his Creator,
to render God unto man and man unto
God; to restore the rational and
sacred idea of divinity amidst the
chaos of the material and disfigured
gods of idolatry, then existing.
Never has a man undertaken a work so
far beyond human power with so
feeble means, for he (Muhammad) had
in the conception as well as in the
execution of such a great design, no
other instrument than himself and no
other aid except a handful of men
living in a corner of the desert.
Finally, never has a man
accomplished such a huge and lasting
revolution in the world, because in
less than two centuries after its
appearance, Islam, in faith and in
arms, reigned over the whole of
Arabia, and conquered, in God's
name, Persia Khorasan, Transoxania,
Western India, Syria, Egypt,
Abyssinia, all the known continent
of Northern Africa, numerous islands
of the Mediterranean Sea, Spain, and
part of Gaul.
"If greatness of purpose, smallness
of means, and astonishing results
are the three criteria of a human
genius, who could dare compare any
great man in history with Muhammad?
The most famous men created arms,
laws, and empires only. They
founded, if anything at all, no more
than material powers which often
crumbled away before their eyes.
This man moved not only armies,
legislations, empires, peoples,
dynasties, but millions of men in
one-third of the then inhabited
world; and more than that, he moved
the altars, the gods, the religions,
the ideas, the beliefs and the
souls.
"On the basis of a Book, every
letter which has become law, he
created a spiritual nationality
which blend together peoples of
every tongue and race. He has left
the indelible characteristic of this
Muslim nationality the hatred of
false gods and the passion for the
One and Immaterial God. This
avenging patriotism against the
profanation of Heaven formed the
virtue of the followers of Muhammad;
the conquest of one-third the earth
to the dogma was his miracle; or
rather it was not the miracle of man
but that of reason.
"The idea of the unity of God,
proclaimed amidst the exhaustion of
the fabulous theogonies, was in
itself such a miracle that upon it's
utterance from his lips it destroyed
all the ancient temples of idols and
set on fire one-third of the world.
His life, his meditations, his
heroic revelings against the
superstitions of his country, and
his boldness in defying the furies
of idolatry, his firmness in
enduring them for fifteen years in
Mecca, his acceptance of the role of
public scorn and almost of being a
victim of his fellow countrymen...
This dogma was twofold the unity of
God and the immateriality of God:
the former telling what God is, the
latter telling what God is not; the
one overthrowing false gods with the
sword, the other starting an idea
with words.
"Philosopher, Orator, Apostle,
Legislator, Conqueror of Ideas,
Restorer of Rational beliefs.... The
founder of twenty terrestrial
empires and of one spiritual empire
that is Muhammad. As regards all
standards by which human greatness
may be measured, we may well ask, is
there any man greater than he?"
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Mahatma Gandhi,
statement published in 'Young
India,'1924. |
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I wanted to know the
best of the life of one who holds
today an undisputed sway over the
hearts of millions of mankind.... I
became more than ever convinced that
it was not the sword that won a
place for Islam in those days in the
scheme of life. It was the rigid
simplicity, the utter
self-effacement of the Prophet the
scrupulous regard for pledges, his
intense devotion to his friends and
followers, his intrepidity, his
fearlessness, his absolute trust in
God and in his own mission. These
and not the sword carried everything
before them and surmounted every
obstacle. When I closed the second
volume (of the Prophet's biography),
I was sorry there was not more for
me to read of that great life.
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Sir George Bernard
Shaw in 'The Genuine Islam,' Vol. 1,
No. 8, 1936. |
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"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 for
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.”
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Michael Hart in
'The 100, A Ranking of the Most
Influential Persons In History,' New
York, 1978. |
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My choice of Muhammad
to lead the list of the world’s most
influential persons may surprise
some readers and may be questioned
by others, but he was the only man
in history who was supremely
successful on both the secular and
religious level. ...It is probable
that the relative influence of
Muhammad on Islam has been larger
than the combined influence of Jesus
Christ and St. Paul on Christianity.
...It is this unparalleled
combination of secular and religious
influence which I feel entitles
Muhammad to be considered the most
influential single figure in human
history.
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Dr. William Draper
in 'History of Intellectual
Development of Europe' |
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Four years after the
death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was
born in Mecca, in Arabia, the man
who, of all men, has exercised the
greatest influence upon the human
race... To be the religious head of
many empires, to guide the daily
life of one-third of the human race,
may perhaps justify the title of a
Messenger of God.
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Arthur Glyn
Leonard in 'Islam, Her Moral and
Spiritual Values' |
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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.
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Philip K. Hitti in
'History of the Arabs' |
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Within a brief span
of mortal life, Muhammad called
forth of unpromising material, a
nation, never welded before; in a
country that was hitherto but a
geographical __expression he
established a religion which in vast
areas suppressed Christianity and
Judaism, and laid the basis of an
empire that was soon to embrace
within its far flung boundaries the
fairest provinces the then civilized
world.
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Rodwell in the
Preface to his translation of the
Holy Qur'an |
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Mohammad's career is
a wonderful instance of the force
and life that resides in him who
possesses an intense faith in God
and in the unseen world. He will
always be regarded as one of those
who have had that influence over the
faith, morals and whole earthly life
of their fellow men, which none but
a really great man ever did, or can
exercise; and whose efforts to
propagate a great verity will
prosper.
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W. Montgomery Watt
in 'Muhammad at Mecca,' Oxford,
1953. |
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His readiness to
undergo persecution for his beliefs,
the high moral character of the men
who believed in him and looked up to
him as a leader, and the greatness
of his ultimate achievement - all
argue his fundamental integrity. To
suppose Muhammad an impostor raises
more problems that it solves.
Moreover, none of the great figures
of history is so poorly appreciated
in the West as Muhammad.... Thus,
not merely must we credit Muhammad
with essential honesty and integrity
of purpose, if we are to understand
him at all; if we are to correct the
errors we have inherited from the
past, we must not forget the
conclusive proof is a much stricter
requirement than a show of
plausibility, and in a matter such
as this only to be attained with
difficulty.
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D. G. Hogarth in
'Arabia' |
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Serious or trivial,
his daily behavior has instituted a
canon which millions observe this
day with conscious memory. No one
regarded by any section of the human
race as Perfect Man has ever been
imitated so minutely. The conduct of
the founder of Christianity has not
governed the ordinary life of his
followers. Moreover, no founder of a
religion has left on so solitary an
eminence as the Muslim apostle.
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Washington Irving
'Mahomet and His Successors' |
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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.
His military triumphs awakened no
pride nor vain glory, as they would
have done had they been effected for
selfish purposes. In the time of his
greatest power he maintained the
same simplicity of manners and
appearance as in the days of his
adversity. So far from affecting a
regal state, he was displeased if,
on entering a room, any unusual
testimonials of respect were shown
to him. If he aimed at a universal
dominion, it was the dominion of
faith; as to the temporal rule which
grew up in his hands, as he used it
without ostentation, so he took no
step to perpetuate it in his family.
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James Michener in
‘Islam: The Misunderstood Religion,’
Reader’s Digest, May 1955, pp.
68-70. |
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"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."
“Like almost every major prophet
before him, Muhammad fought shy of
serving as the transmitter of God’s
word sensing his own inadequacy. But
the Angel commanded ‘Read’. So far
as we know, Muhammad was unable to
read or write, but he began to
dictate those inspired words which
would soon revolutionize a large
segment of the earth: "There is one
God"."
“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 worshiped Muhammad, he
is dead. But if it is God you
Worshiped, He lives for ever'.”
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Lawrence E. Browne
in ‘The Prospects of Islam,’ 1944 |
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Incidentally these
well-established facts dispose of
the idea so widely fostered in
Christian writings that the Muslims,
wherever they went, forced people to
accept Islam at the point of the
sword.
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K. S. Ramakrishna
Rao in 'Mohammed: The Prophet of
Islam,' 1989 |
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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 that “there is no
compulsion in religion” is well
known
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