[_Yahya_]

Sarojini Naidu

"Sense of justice is one of the most wonderful ideals of Islam, because as I read in the Qur'an I find those dynamic principles of life, not mystic but practical ethics for the daily conduct of life suited to the whole world."

Sarojini Naidu, Lectures on 'The Ideals of Islam' see Speeches and Writings of Sarojini Naidu, Madras, 1918, p 167.

Annie Besant, wrote in "The Life and Teachings of Muhammad":

“It is impossible for anyone who studies the personality of the great Prophet of the Arabs, and come to know how this prophet he used to live, and how he taught the people, but to feel respect towards this honorable prophet”.

Canon Taylor

"It (Islam) replaced monkishness 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 Wolverhampton, Oct 7, 1887, Quoted by Arnond in The °reaching of Islam, pp 71-72.

A.J. Toynbee

"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.

Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer

"What does Islam stand for? I regard and all thinking men regard Islam as the one and only democratic faith that is actually functioning in the world today. Being a Hindu, firmly entrenched in the Hindu Faith, I yet make bold to say so. My own religion has not succeeded, despite its fundamental philosophy, in implementing in practice the Oneness of Humanity. No other religion, whatever its theory may be, has brought into practice the essential idea of oneness of man before God as Islam has done. It is only in Islam that there can be no such problem as those presented by the Boers in the South Africa, as those prevalent in white Australia or in the Southern states of the United states of America or even in England among the several strata of society".

Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, Eastern Times, 22nd December 1944.

J. H. Denison writes in his book, Emotions as the Basis of Civilisation, pp. 265 9:

"In the fifth and sixth centuries, the civilised world stood on the verge of chaos. The old emotional cultures that had made civilisation possible, since they had given to man a sense of unity and of reverence for their rulers, had broken down, and nothing had been found adequate to take their place. ..... It seemed then that the great civilisation which had taken four thousand years to construct was on the verge of disintegration, and that mankind was likely to return to that condition of barbarism where every tribe and sect was against the next, and law and order were unknown ....... The new sanctions created by Christianity were creating divisions and destruction instead of unity and order .... Civilisation like a gigantic tree whose foliage had over reached the world ..... stood tottering ..... rotted to the core .... Was there any emotional culture that could be brought in to gather mankind once more to unity and to save civilisation? ... It was among the Arabs that the man was born who was to unite the whole known world of the east and south".

S. P. Scott writes in, History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, p. 126:

"If the object of religion be the inculcation of morals, the diminution of evil, the promotion of human happiness, the expansion of the human intellect, if the performance of good works will avail in the great day when mankind shall be summoned to its final reckoning it is neither irreverent nor unreasonable to admit that Muhammad was indeed an Apostle of God".

SIR WILLIAM MUIR

"It is strongly corroborative of Muhammad's sincerity that the earliest converts to Islam were not only of upright character, but his own bosom friends and people of his own household who, intimately acquainted with his private life could not fail otherwise to have detected those discrepancies which even more or less exist between the profession of the hypocritical deceiver abroad and his actions at home".

SIR JOHN GLUBB

"Whatever opinion the reader may form when he reaches the end of this book, it is difficult to deny that the call of Muhammad seems to bear a striking resemblance to innumerable other accounts of similar visions, both in the Old and New Testaments, and in the experience of Christian saints, possibly also of Hindus and devotees of other religions. Such visions, moreover, have often marked the beginnings of lives of great sanctity and of heroic virtue".

"To attribute such phenomena to self delusion scarcely seems an adequate explanation, for they have been experienced by many persons divided from one another by thousands of years of time and by thousands of miles of distance, who cannot conceivably have even heard of each other. Yet the accounts which they give of their visions seem to bear an extraordinary likeness to one another. It scarcely appears reasonable to suggest that all these visionaries "imagined" such strikingly similar experiences, although they were quite ignorant of each other's existence".

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