The Abrahamic God.
"The West, whether Christian or dechristianised, has never really known Islam. Ever since they watched it appear on the world stage, Christians never ceased to insult and slander it in order to find justification for waging war on it. It has been subjected to grotesque distortions the traces of which still endure in the European mind. One symptom of this ignorance is the fact that in the imagination of most Europeans, Allah refers to the divinity of the Muslims, not the God of the Christians and Jews; they are all surprised to hear, when one takes the trouble to explain things to them, that 'Allah' means 'God', and that even Arab Christians know him by no other name."
(Unveiling Islam by Roger Du Pasquier)
"The use of false evidence to attack Islam was all but universal..." (Norman Daniel: Islam and the West)
"The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Prophet Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only."
(Thomas Carlyle in 'Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History,' 1840)
"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."
(De Lacy O'Leary in 'Islam at the Crossroads,' London, 1923.)
"Head of the State as well as the Church, he (Prophet Muhammad) 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..."
(Reverend Bosworth Smith in 'Muhammad and Muhammadanism,' London, 1874.)
"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 (peace be upon him)?...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...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?""
(Alphonse de LaMartaine in 'Historie de la Turquie,' Paris, 1854.)
"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.”
(Sir George Bernard Shaw in 'The Genuine Islam,' Vol. 1, No. 8, 1936.)
"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."
(Napolean Bonaparte as Quoted in Cherfils, ‘Bonaparte et Islam,’ Paris, France, pp. 105, 125.)
"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."
(Thomas Arnold in 'The Call to Islam.')
"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...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..."
(Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall in his 1927 Lecture on 'Tolerance in Islam,' Madras, India.)
"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."
(H.G. Wells)
"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."
(Edward Montet, 'La Propagande Chretienne et ses Adversaries Musulmans,' Paris 1890. Also in T.W. Arnold in 'The Preaching of Islam,' London 1913.)
You were saying?
Peace and Love.
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http://www.cyberistan.org/ + http://www.themodernreligion.com/...
(by Dr. A. Zahoor and Dr. Z. Haq)