Cultural Side Of Islam | Marmaduke Muhammad Pickthall

by Marmaduke Muhammad Pickthall

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The great British Muslim convert and orientalist gives a graphic picture of Islamic culture, causes of its rise and decline, science, art and letters, the relation of sexes and the concept of the city of Islam, etc.

Excerpt from the Book:

Culture means cultivation and, as the word is generally used nowadays when used alone, especially the cultivation of the human mind. Islamic culture differs from other cultures in that it can never be in the aim and object of the cultivated individual, since its aim, clearly stated and set before every one, is not the cultivation of the individual or group of individuals, but of the entire human race. No amount of works of art or works of literature, in any land can be regarded as the justification of Islam so long as wrong, injustice and intolerance remain. No victories of war or peace, however brilliant, can be quoted as his harvest of Islam. Islam has wider objects, grander views. It aims at nothing less than universal human brotherhood. Still, as a religion, it does encourage human effort after self- and race-improvement more than any other religion and since it became a Power in the world, it has produced cultural results which will bear comparison with the results achieved by all the other religions, civilizations and philosophies put together. A Muslim can only be astonished at the importance, almost amounting to worship, ascribed to works of art and literature – which one may call the incidental phenomena of culture – in the West; as if they were the justification, and their production the highest aim, of human life.