"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."

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."

H.G. Wells

"The Islamic
teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and
behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human
teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings
brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective
oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies
preceding it....Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity."

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."

Edward Montet, 'La Propagande Chretienne et ses Adversaries Musulmans,' Paris
1890. (Also in T.W. Arnold in 'The Preaching of Islam,' London 1913.)

"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."

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..."

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.”

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."

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."

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."

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."

Michael
the Elder (Great) as Quoted in 'Michael the Elder, Chronique de Michael
Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’ Antioche,' J.B. Chabot, Editor, Vol.
II, Paris, 1901.

"This is
why the God of vengeance, who alone is all-powerful, and changes the empire
of mortals as He will, giving it to whomsoever He will, and uplifting the
humble beholding the wickedness of the Romans who throughout their dominions,
cruelly plundered our churches and our monasteries and condemned us without
pity, brought from the region of the south the sons of Ishmael, to deliver
us through them from the hands of the Romans. And if in truth we have suffered
some loss, because the Catholic churches, that had been taken away from us
and given to the Chalcedonians, remained in their possession; for when the
cities submitted to the Arabs, they assigned to each denomination the churches
which they found it to be in possession of (and at that time the great churches
of Emessa and that of Harran had been taken away from us); nevertheless it
was no slight advantage for us to be delivered from the cruelty of the Romans,
their wickedness, their wrath and cruel zeal against us, and to find ourselves
at people. (Michael the Elder, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch wrote this text
in the latter part of the twelfth century, after five centuries of Muslim
rule in that region. Click here for a relevant document sent to the monks
of St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai, 628 C.E.)

James Addison in 'The Christian Approach to the Moslem,' p. 35.

"Despite
the growth of antagonism, Moslem (Muslim) rulers seldom made their Christian
subjects suffer for the Crusades. When the Saracens finally resumed the full
control of Palestine the Christians were given their former status as dhimmis.
The Coptic Church, too had little cause for complaint under Saladin's (Salahuddin)
strong government, and during the time of the earlier Mameluke sultans who
succeeded him the Copts experienced more enlightened justice than they had
hitherto known. The only effect of the Crusaders upon Egyptian Christians
was to keep them for a while from pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for as long as
the Frank were in charge heretics were forbidden access to the shrines. Not
until the Moslem victories could they enjoy their rights as Christians."

Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall in his 1927 Lecture on 'Tolerance in Islam,'
Madras, India.

"In the
eyes of history, religious toleration is the highest evidence of culture
in a people....It was not until the Western nations broke away from their
religious law that they became more tolerant, and it was only when the Muslims
fell away from their religious law that they declined in tolerance and other
evidences of the highest culture. Before the coming of Islam it (tolerance)
had never been preached as an essential part of religion...

"If Europe
had known as much of Islam, as Muslims knew of Christendom, in those days,
those mad, adventurous, occasionally chivalrous and heroic, but utterly fanatical
outbreak known as the Crusades could not have taken place, for they were
based on a complete misapprehension...

"Innumerable monasteries, with a wealth of treasure of which the worth
has been calculated at not less than a hundred millions sterling, enjoyed the
benefit of the Holy Prophet's (Muhammad’s) Charter to the monks of Sinai
and were religiously respected by the Muslims. The various sects of Christians
were represented in the Council of the Empire by their patriarchs, on the provincial
and district council by their bishops, in the village council by their priests,
whose word was always taken without question on things which were the sole
concern of their community...

"The tolerance
within the body of Islam was, and is, something without parallel in history;
class and race and color ceasing altogether to be barriers."

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.”

On the Holocaust of Baghdad (1258 C.E.) Perpetrated by Hulagu:

“The city
was systematically looted, destroyed and burnt. Eight hundred thousand persons
are said to have been killed. The Khalif Mustasim was sewn up in a sack and
trampled to death under the feet of Mongol horses.

“For five
hundred years, Baghdad had been a city of palaces, mosques, libraries and
colleges. Its universities and hospitals were the most up-to-date in the
world. Nothing now remained but heaps of rubble and a stench of decaying
human flesh.”