Alphonse de La Martaine in ‘Historie de la Turquie,’ Paris, 1854
“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?” Philosopher, Orator, Apostle, Legislator, Conqueror of Ideas, Restorer of Rational beliefs…The Founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?”
Thomas Carlyle in ‘Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History,’ 1840
“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.”
A.S. Tritton in ‘Islam.’ 1951
“The picture of the Muslim soldier advancing with a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other is quite false.”
De Lacy O’Leary in ‘Islam at the Crossroads,’ London, 1923
“History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the word and forcing Islam at the point of sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated.”
Gibbon in ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ 1823
“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.”
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 with the next hundred years, it could be Islam.”
Edward Gibbon and Simon Oakley in ‘History of the Saracen Empire,’ London, 1870
“The greatest success of Muhammad’s life was affected by sheer moral force.”
Reverend Bosworth Smith in ‘Muhammad and Muhammadanism,’ London, 1874
“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.”
Lawrence E.Browne in ‘The Prospects of Islam,’ 1944
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.
James Michener in ‘Islam: The Misunderstood Religion,’ Reader’s Digest, May 1955, pp. 68-70
“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 Quran is explicit in the support of the freedom of conscience.”
Mahatma Gandhi, statement published in ‘Young India,’ 1924
“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.’
D.G. Hogarth in ‘Arabia’
“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.”
Montgomery Watt in ‘Muhammad at Mecca,’ Oxford, 1953
“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…”
Philip K. Hitti in ‘History of the Arabs’
“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 of the civilized world.”
Rodwell in the Preface to his translation of the Holy Quran
“Muhammad’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.”
K.S. Ramakrishna Rao in ‘Mohammed: The Prophet of Islam.’ 1989
The personality of Muhammad, it is most difficult to get into the whole truth of it. Only a glimpse of it I can catch. What a dramatic succession of picturesque scenes, Muhammad, the King, the Warrior, the Preacher, the Statesman, the Businessman, the Orator, the Reformer, the Refuge of Orphans, the Protector of Slaves, the Emancipator of Women, the Judge, the Saint, the Father and Husband. 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.
