Islam Rediscovered
24. A Case of Discovery*
~ 432 ~
mankind, in the affairs of every-day life, its power
on masses, are the true criteria for judging of its
universality.....In Islam is joined a lofty idealism
with the most rationalistic practicality. It did not
ignore human nature, it never entangled itself in the
tortuous pathways which lie outside the domain of
the actual and the real. Its object, like that of other
systems, was the elevation of humanity towards the
absolute ideal of perfection, but it attained or tries
to attain this object by grasping the truth, that the
nature of man is, in this existence, imperfect.”
(p. 278).
These are some of the chief reasons, practical and
speculative, that have induced me to accept Islam in
preference to the other great religions of the world.
There are also the reasons which have always
appealed strongly in favour of Islam to some of the
greatest minds of Europe in the past as well as in
the present. It would be quite out of place here to
allude even en passant to what Voltaire, Goethe,
Gibbon in the 18th, and a host of great men in the
19th century have said about Islam. All that is
possible to do in a lecture like this is to make a
passing allusion to a few Europeans of the present
