Muslim-majority countries

“ With an estimated 3 million adherents, Islam is the third most commonly practiced religion in the country after Catholicism and Lutheranism. All branches of Islam are represented, with the vast majority of Muslims coming from other countries. At times this has led to societal discord, such as local resistance to the construction of mosques or disagreements over whether Muslims may use loudspeakers in residential neighborhoods to call the faithful to prayer. There also remain areas where the law conflicts with Islamic practices or raises religious freedom issues. ”

“ It is to be noted that Muslims are ordered to sacrifice their lives not only to save their own mosques but the religious houses of other peoples as well. The civilized world, with Christian notions of intolerance lurking in its breast, is still far from holding the noble principle thus enunciated in the Holy Qur-án. And there is yet another lesson in Islam to be learned by Christian rulers of other nations. A Muslim king is enjoined by his religion to help in the maintenance of others temples and shrines. ”

“ Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit, for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.
In fact, faith should bring us together. That's why we are forging service projects in America that bring together Christians, Muslims, and Jews. ”

“ It is interesting to note that the propagation of Islam has not been the work of men only, but that Muslim women have also taken their part in this pious task. Several of the Mongol princes owed their conversion to the influence of a Muslim wife, and the same was probably the case with many of the pagan Turks when they had carried their raids into Muhammadan countries. ”

“ It is to the proselytising efforts of these Arab and Indian merchants that the native Muhammadan population, which we find already in the earliest historical notices of Islam in these parts, owes its existence. Settling in the centres of commerce, they intermarried with the people of the land, and these heathen wives and the slaves of their households thus formed the nucleus of a Muslim community which its members made every effort in their power to increase. ”

“ Europeans assumed that European culture had always been progressive and that Muslim societies were backward, inefficient, and corrupt [1] . European colonialists in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia also wreaked havoc by plundering Islamic economies and supplanting Islamic educational systems with secular or Christianity-based systems [2] . These kind of colonial interactions had a decisive influence on the religious and political relations between Muslims and Christians, and shaped not least the mutual theological images and assessments of the other [3] . ”

“ Islam might be the religion of the majority, but the state or nation itself has no overt religious identity.
The emphasis the Qur’an places on respecting the “People of the Book” indicates that Muslims are tolerant of religious groups so long as they are monotheists, or believers in “one God”. While the Qur’an frequently calls on and encourages non-Muslims to worship God according to “Islamic principles”, the Islamic holy text can be interpreted as extending freedom of religion to “disbelievers” or those outside the Abrahamic tradition. ”

“ Islam it would seem means far less to them than nationalism. To a much less degree, of course, the same may be said of the other Moslem countries. Seeing no way in which Islam can again become politically all-powerful, the Moslems of Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Arabia, for instance, are doing all in their power to establish strong national governments, to develop their own national interests, and to take their rightful place in the League of Nations. ”

“ As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not–and never will be–at war with Islam. I've made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity. ”

“ An Arab has no excellence or superiority over a barbarian than that which is secured to him by his God-fearing and righteousness. Ye are all the progeny of Adam, and Adam himself is of the Earth.”
No caste and no priestcraft does Islam recognise. Every Muslim is his own priest and every spot of land is his mosque to pray and to worship Allah. For no other purpose than to keep alive the sense of corporate unity of the Muslims did the prophet declare the superiority of the public prayer over prayer by oneself and establish the institution of pilgrimage. ”

“ In India, there are a number of enlightened Muhammadans, ornaments to native society, useful servants of the State, men who show a laudable zeal in all social reforms, so far as is consistent with a reputation for orthodoxy. Their number is far too few, and they do not, in many cases, represent orthodox Islám, nor do I believe their counterpart would be found amongst the 'Ulamá of a Muslim State. The fact is that the wave of scepticism which has passed over Europe has not left the East untouched. ”

“ As regards the individual, it is admitted on all hands that Islam gives to its new Negro converts an energy, a dignity, a self-reliance, and a self-respect which is all too rarely found in their Pagan or their Christian fellow-countrymen.”154
The words above quoted were written before the partition of the greater part of Africa among the governments of Christian Europe—England, France and Germany—but the imposing character of Muslim civilisation has not ceased to impress the Negro mind, or to operate as one of the influences favourable to the conversion of the African fetish-worshippers. ”

“ Another topic of interest in discussions about the nature of cultural nations is the role religion plays in relation to “national belonging”. A cultural nation can be seen as having key components such as religion, language, and tradition ( [90] , p. 559) . As discussed below, Prophet Muhammad did not require Christians to convert to Islam, nor did he encourage them to assimilate into “Muslim culture”. In effect, he distanced himself from the cultural and ethnic nations and moved the ummah closer to the civic approach in terms of nation-building. ”

“ The religion of Islam has more adherents than it had; its dominion is marked by three Moslem empires: Turkey, Persia, and Morocco; it is the religion of Arabia still; its followers predominate in Egypt, in Asia Minor, in Afghanistan, in the East Indies. It numbers many millions throughout Africa, India, China, Russia, and the Philippines; but nowhere, unless it be possibly in some of the most degraded districts of pagan Africa, do Moslems stand above their fellows in enlightenment, in morality, in progress. {115} Has Islam, then, failed to meet men? ”

“ Hence the importance, in the missionary history of Islam in this continent, of the movements of reform in the Muslim religion itself and the revivals of religious life, to which attention has been drawn above.
The West Coast is another field for Muhammadan missionary [338] enterprise where Islam finds itself confronted with a vast population still unconverted, in spite of the progress it has made on the Guinea Coast, in Sierra Leone and Liberia, in which last there are more Muhammadans than heathen. ”

“ The history of Islam tells us that its expansion as a religion is in no way related to the political power of its followers. The greatest spiritual conquests of Islam were during the days of our political decrepitude. When the rude barbarians of Mongolia drowned in blood the civilisation of Baghdad in 1258, and when the Muslim power fell in Spain, and the followers of Islam were mercilessly killed and driven out of Cordova by Ferdinand in 1236, Islam had just secured a footing in Sumatra and was about to work the peaceful conversion of the Malay Archipelago. ”

“ Just as Christianity stands for the faith of the great European family of nations, Islam stands for those countries whose political institutions are still based on the Patriarchal system. But Europe—however superior her peoples may think themselves—is not in the position, and certainly cannot afford, to look down upon Islam as an inferior product of an inferior section of the great human family. ”

“ Few of us realize that Islam is one of the most potent forces in the world today, that it counts its adherents by the hundred millions, that in the waste places of the earth it converts its hundreds where Christianity wins its tens, that its followers occupy a belt of the best territory on earth, extending from Morocco and the Sudan to China and the Philippines. ”

“ By slow degrees, Islam thus began to emerge out of the ruins of its former ascendancy and take its place again as a dominant faith, after more than a century of depression. In the course of the struggle between the followers of rival creeds for the adherence of the Mongols, considerations of political expediency undoubtedly operated in favour of the Muslim party, and the intrigues of Western Christendom caused the Christians to become suspect, as agents of a foreign power ”

“ Christian, formed an integral of the Arab race and as such fell within the immediate scope of the new Dispensation. When, however, these came into collision with the Muslim columns on the frontier, they were supported by their respective sovereigns,—the western by the Kaiser, and the eastern by the Chosroes. Thus the struggle widened, and Islam was brought presently face to face in mortal conflict with the two great Powers of the East and of the West. ”

“ Islam may prosper apart from political ascendency.
The political ascendency of Islam is doomed. Every year witnesses a sensible degree of subsidence. In the close connection of the Moslem faith with the civil power, this cannot but in some measure affect the prestige of Islam itself. Nevertheless, the religion may long retain its hold upon the people, unimpaired by the decline of its sway in the State. ”

“ Even up to the present day, the Muhammadan law has failed to establish itself absolutely, even where the authority of Islam is generally predominant, and there is still a constant struggle between the adherents of the old Malayan usages and the Ḥājīs, who having made the pilgrimage to Mecca, return enthusiastic for a strict observance of Muslim Law. ”

“ India, aside from exceptions related to historical aspects on its borders, hasn’t placed itself as an enemy of Islam and Muslims. It is historically a friend of the Muslim Arabs. Thus, do not let the actions of any one of you become a cover and an access to be utilized by Zionism, America, and their allies in a way that will lead to the Arab Muslims, and all Muslims losing the sympathy and compassion of the peoples of those states towards Islam and Muslims, because their loss is a counter-loss for Arabs and Muslims, while whatever benefit that may be is hardly apparent. ”

“ Muslims can serve as an invaluable bridge between Europe and Russia, the Middle East, Asia, including China and other places with massive Muslim majorities or minorities. As most world conflicts today involve Islamist militants, global peace and a functioning "new order" critically depend on the goodwill and communication skills of Muslims.
Such a benign amalgam is the only realistic hope for reconciliation. Europe is ageing and stagnating and can be reinvigorated only by embracing youthful, dynamic, driven immigrants, most of whom are bound to be Muslim. ”

“ Before embarking on contemporary issues affecting Muslim and Christian communities, a few historical issues are in order. In the modern era (1500–1945 CE) , the major part of the “Muslim world” was ruled by “Christian civilization”. During this period, the Islamic world, as noted by Armstrong, was “convulsed by the modernization process. Instead of being one of the leaders of world civilization, Islamdom was quickly and permanently reduced to a dependent bloc by the European powers” [1] . ”

“ It must not be forgotten, on the other hand, that Islam does have something of very positive value to offer a certain class of people. Through it the African tribes that it has touched are undoubtedly elevated to some extent, and the outcastes of India who have embraced Islam have secured an equality of status with other members of the democratic Moslem faith that was utterly denied them in Hinduism. ”

“ And so I am always careful and suspicious of attempts to paint Islam with a broad brush because the overwhelming majority of the people of the Islamic faith are people of good will who are trying to raise their families and live up to their values and ideals and to try to raise their kids as best they can and that's something that I think we always have to remember as opposed to assuming a clash of civilizations that sometimes are overheated rhetoric that politically is talked about. ”

“ Everyone who comes into close political or social contact with any portion of the Mohammedan population of these countries finds himself occasionally face to face with this very question of religion. Now as most such observers make their first acquaintance with the creed of Islam in the Far East with no further enlightenment than what is afforded by one or two popular European works, they form their judgements on the basis of entirely incomplete observation, under the influence of superficial and sometimes quite accidental impressions received in a limited environment. ”