Recently a person on Gupshup posted something from an author
about Islam in India;
*Alain Danielou in Histoire de la Inde: …monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoilations, *
This seemed a justification for some misunderstood understanding of Muslim history. I wanted to quote some far more respected scholars and people on their opinion of Islam to clear the air:
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.”
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.”
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.”