Refuting Chua Soi Lek's Blasphemy

In response to MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek's remarks "What's so great' about knowing Muslim values?", we would like to list here several greatest quotes from the world's greatest people in many fields.

As the President of the Malaysian Chinese Association, one of the three major political parties in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition of the Federal Malaysian Government, its a shameful such ignorance of what can be considered as belittling the faith of the majority of citizens here in this country.

Napolean Bonaparte as Quoted in Christian Cherfils, 'Bonaparte et Islam,' Pedone Ed., Paris, France, 1914, pp. 105, 125.
Original References: "Correspondance de Napoléon Ier Tome V pièce n° 4287 du 17/07/1799; profession de foi, voir aussi pièce n° 3148. Also, Journal inédit de Ste Hélène, de 1815 à 1818" du Gal Baron Gourgaud -2 tomes- Ed. Flammarion.

"Moses has revealed the existence of God to his nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent...

"Arabia was idolatrous when, six centuries after Jesus, Muhammad introduced the worship of the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, of Moses, and Jesus.... 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."

[Note: Some Muslim historians have suggested that Asad bin Al Furat, the commander of Muslim forces in Sicily [see 827 CE in Muslim History], is the progenitor of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). Asad's descendants were known as 'Banu Furat'; for other such names see 1031 CE. One of Napoleon's brother-in-law was Joachim Murat.]

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."

"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."

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."

H.G. Wells

"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."

Edward Montet, 'La Propagande Chretienne et ses Adversaries Musulmans,' Paris 1890. (Also in T.W. Arnold in 'The Preaching of Islam,' London 1913.)

"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."

Thomas Carlyle in ‘Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History,’ Lecture 2, Friday, 8th May 1840.

"As there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans (i.e. Muslim), I mean to say all the good of him I justly can...
"When Pococke inquired of Grotius, where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's (Muhammad's) ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof!...

"A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; Something better in him than hunger of any sort, -- or these wild arab men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would not revered him so!... They called him prophet you say? Why he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystry; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: they must have seen what kind of man he was, let him be called what you like! No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial. I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself...

"These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, - is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Granada! I said, the Great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame..."

Simon Ockley in 'History of the Saracens'.

“A rugged, strife-torn and mountaineering people...were suddenly turned into an indomitable Arab force, which achieved a series of splendid victories unparalleled in the history of nations, for in the short space of ninety years that mighty range of Saracenic conquest embraced a wider extent of territory than Rome had mastered in the course of eight hundred.”

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."

Carra de Vaux in 'The Philosophers of Islam,' Paris, 1921.

"Finally how can one forget that at the same time the Mogul Empire of India (1526-1857 C.E.) was giving the world the Taj Mahal (completed in 1648 C.E.) the architectural beauty of which has never been surpassed, and the ‘Akbar Nameh’ of Abul Fazl: "That extraordinary work full of life ideas and learning where every aspect of life is examined listed and classified, and where progress continually dazzles the eye, is a document of which Oriental civilization may justly be proud.... Those poets those philosophers knew how to deal with the world or matter. They observe, classify, calculate and experiment. All the ideas that occur to them are tested against facts. They express them with eloquence but they also support them with statistics."...the principles of tolerance, justice and humanity which prevailed during the long reign of Akbar."

Marcel Clerget in 'La Turquie, Passe et Present,' Paris, 1938.

"Many proofs of high cultural level of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent are to be found in the development of science and law; in the flowering of literary works in Arabic, Persian and Turkish; in the contemporary monuments in Istanbul, Bursa, and Edirne; in the boom in luxury industries; in the sumptuous life of the court and high dignitaries, and last but not least in its religious tolerance. All the various influences - notably Turkish, Byzantine and Italian mingle together and help to make this the most brilliant epoch of the Ottomans."

Thomas Arnold in 'The Call to Islam.'

"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."

In his speech in Cairo, U.S. President Barack Obama made the following statement:

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.

There are many more. But I hope the above quotes suffice to open his mind and shut his bloody mouth from babbling things he do not know.

Even before this, Chua has made several remarks which is considered blasphemy. Chua once accused DAP – which is MCA’s main rival for the Chinese vote – of being willing to sacrifice the community for the sake of power by agreeing with PAS to implement hudud.

But in his haste to score political points, Chua denigrated Islam by suggesting that hudud was something that Chinese should reject at all costs.

“It is an eye opener to all citizens in this country that PAS would never never give up on its Islamic agenda. So it is wrong to say why not we try to vote for them. It is wrong because it concerns the welfare of the rakyat,” Chua was quoted as saying.

The main point is why does Chua Soi Lek want to talk about hudud when he hasn’t taken the trouble to understand what it is about?

We wish to strongly warn him not to politicize hudud because it is part of Islamic law. He don’t have to agree or to accept but don’t turn it into something evil just to scare the Chinese voters away from DAP.