This paper was read in the seminar held in the Oxford University on 22 July, 1983, to discuss “Islam and the West”. The seminar, presided over by Dr. D.G. Browning, of St. Cross College, Oxford, was attended by a considerable number of professors, scholars and student of Islamic studies, besides several scholars from Pakistan and certain Arab countries, who had been invited to express their views on the subject. As the seminar was convened to consider the establishment of an Islamic centre at Oxford, this paper seeks to bring out the need and importance of such an institution in that educational centre of U.K.

Dr. Browning asked the Maulana, before the paper was read, to speak in Arabic for the benefit of Arab scholars and diplomats occupying the front seats. Addressing the gathering in Arabic, the Maulana said, “It is a pleasure for me to address this august gathering in Arabic which is the literary as well as international language of Islam. It is the language through which the intellectual heritage of the classical world reached this country via Spain. It consisted of philosophy, logic, Mathematics and Medicine. The greatest gift of the Arab world and Spain to the West was Inductive Logic which replaced Deductive Logic and altogether changed its way of thought. It won over the West to the methods of inquiry and experimentation and gave birth to science and technology preparing its way to progress.

“There was a time when the colonial rulers and scholars of the West who came to our eastern and Muslim countries used to address us in English. Today I am obliged to speak here in Arabic. This is the way the world changes. Such are the haps that We change about among mankind

Islam And The West