A contemporary commentator once observed that just as perversion has set in Western society, it has also taken root in Muslim society. Then how do you regard Western civilization as being wrong and Islamic civilization as being right? This objection, if we examine it, will be found to be ill judged, because our comparison of Western and Islamic civilization makes a judgment on the basis of standards versus behavior. 

The deterioration of Muslim society is the result of deviation from Islam, while the deterioration of Western society is the result of putting into practice the very principles in which it believes.

The evils of Muslim societies stem from the gap between principle and practice, whereas the evils of Western society are the result of a clash between principles and realities. The Western civilization of modern times has formed principles independent of religious principles, to govern social life, and has maintained that modern principles were superior to older principles.

Through colonization and the industrial revolution, etc. the Western nations achieved political and material domination over large areas of the world, which placed them in a position to reject the old principles of life and construct a human society based on modern principles.

This experiment in ethics has now been going on with the dominance of Western nations for more than a century, but practical experiments have failed to verify the new principles. All that has been accomplished is to effectively demonstrate that the new principles favored by the West are completely incompatible with what nature intends for humankind. The clash between ideals and reality has, in fact, given rise to ever-increasing manifestations of depravity in Western life.

While the solution to moral backsliding in Muslim societies lies in a return to the Islamic principles adhered to in the past, this cannot be said about the West. If Western society retreats to its past, this return will be a return to exactly the same principles on which it still adheres to the letter.

Those who gave credence to the concept of permissiveness, or those who insisted on the entrance of women in every department of man, or those who advocated that marriage is an unnecessary bond, if they were to return to their past where will they return?

This going back will be to the same principles, which they still observe and the disastrous consequences, which they are now facing. The solution to the perversion of Muslims lies in their going back to the path of Islamic principles, which they have left behind; while the rectification of Western society lies in renouncing its self-made principles. Here we present some examples to illustrate this point. 

Reverse course

Time magazine, which has a readership of over 23 million, spread over 95 countries, published a revealing report on the condition of women in America. The following is the gist of the report: 

Over the past 25 years, there has been an influx of women into the American job market. Some 65 percent of women of childbearing age now form part of the American workforce and 90 percent of them have had, or will have children during their careers. This has created a tremendous problem for women -- the onerous task of holding down a job and having children at the same time.

One such American woman is Lillian Garland, who worked as a receptionist at the California Federal Savings and Loan Association in west Los Angeles until she became pregnant and left work to have her baby in 1982. Her baby girl was delivered by Caesarian section and her doctor prescribed a three-month period of leave. When she returned to Cal Fed, Garland found that her position had been filled. She had lost an 850 dollar job just at a time when with the birth of her child, her expenses had increased.

Garland filed a suit in the federal court against the company for having discriminated against her in terminating her employment. The lawyers of both parties entered into interminable arguments, and after prolonged litigation -- five years to be exact -- Thurgood Marshall, former Justice of the American Supreme Court, gave his ruling in January, 1987, that the State requires an employer to provide special job protection for workers temporarily disabled by pregnancy.

This ruling triggered a tremendous controversy. On one hand, women are happy that they have secured the protection of the law for bearing and rearing children. On the other hand, serious American thinkers maintain that this ruling will harm the cause of women.

The debate over pregnancy leave has thus created a deep rift among feminists. One side argues that although pregnancy leave benefits individual women, it poses a general danger to female workers because it singles them out for special protection. Historically, they point out, such privileged treatment has eventually led to discrimination against women. Marsha Levick of the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund says: "That almost always backfires."

Don Butler, President of the Los Angeles-based Merchants and Manufacturers Association, said that the decision "spells disaster." To this, he added: "Larger companies can makeshift to fill a hole, but small ones cannot do that very easily. If I employ ten females, and two or more get pregnant at one time, I might as well file for bankruptcy." Discrimination against women might increase. Many companies "just won't hire women in their childbearing years," says the Chamber's Attorney Lamp.

A well-known feminist, Betty Freidan, said in support of the ruling regarding Garland's case: "Equality does not mean that women have to fit the male model." There is something very incongruous about this argument. When women are so different in their biological structure that they cannot "fit the male model," where is the necessity to bring women into every sphere of life to do the same work as men, and then attempt, by passing laws, to enforce an artificial equality of the sexes. 

As economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett puts it: "This decision means that there is recognition at the highest legal levels that, in order to get equal status for women in the workplace, you have to create family supporters." This is an indirect acknowledgement of the rationality and appropriateness of the old traditional system.

The concept evolved by modern civilization that woman does not need man as her supporter implies that she should earn and be her own supporter. When this principle was put into practice, it soon became evident that a woman could not do without a supporter. The only difference was in the name. Formerly it was “husband” now it is "the company."

In traditional society, when religion was still a positive force, men used to do whatever was required outside the home, while women took care of all indoor work. This was a division of labor, which was both practical and natural. However, modern civilization has held that this "division" is nothing but sexual discrimination. It is this view, which launched the women's liberation movement, and encouraged women to come out of their homes in order to take up employment in offices and factories.

At an early stage it became apparent that under this new arrangement, the path to progress for women was strewn with obstacles. To remove the disadvantages implied for the woman, a law was passed granting special paid leave to pregnant women and nursing mothers.

This was the kind of law which legislators, who were far removed from the situation, could pass with no discomfort to themselves but whose implementation could not be afforded by those who have to come to grips with the everyday running of a factory or management of an office. This is a situation, which has sparked off an unending controversy.

So far, the government is supporting women in this conflict in order to maintain the superiority of its cultural principle. However, taking sides against reality is hardly practicable. If the government required the managements of all offices and factories to give four months’ paid leave to women, how many establishments would be able to afford what would seem to them an unwarranted extravagance? Finding the cost of such a cultural luxury prohibitive, many employers would simply not hire women during their childbearing years, and older women would themselves opt to stay at home.

It seems very probable that such negative factors will reinforce the discriminatory attitudes, which the women's liberation movement came into being to end.

Since the advent of Islam, as the final and all-compassing Message to mankind up to the moment, its adversaries left no opportunity to thwart it and curb its followers. Right from day one, they did their level best to kill it in the bud using different ways.

Due to the fact that this new religion holds all people equal in terms of rights, duties, human value, etc, regardless of their ethnic, social or economic backgrounds, the rich and leading figures in Makkah, fearing lest they would lose their prestige and wealth, stood adamantly in the face of the then nascent Message. They tried to put different kinds of obstacles to hinder the spread of Islam, in feverish attempts to maintain their positions and prevent any sort of threat to their interests.

In their war against Islam, they tried many kinds of weapons: bodily torture, economic sanctions, false propaganda, and financial seduction, none of which was of any fruit.

With the Help of Allah, the Most Exalted, then the will, patience and perseverance of Prophet Muhammad  and his faithful companions, may Allah be pleased with them, Islam could successfully pass all those hard tests. It survived all the hardships and expanded its span to include not only the Arabian Peninsula, rather spacious lands outside it.

By the tenth century, Islam became the main religion, or at least, the religion of the majority of nations in an area covering more than half of the civilized world stretching over three continents from the Pyrenees and Siberia in West and North Europe to the farthest end of Asia, up to China and New Guinea in the East; from Morocco in North Africa to the southern tip of Africa, covering two-thirds of the African continent.

It is one of the most striking facts of human history that the spread of Islam over such a vast area took place within three centuries. Most striking of all, within half a century after the Hijrah (Prophet Muhammad's  Migration from Makkah to Al-Madeenah), Islam had already conquered the whole of North Africa from Egypt to Morocco, all the Middle Eastern lands from Yemen to Caucasia and from Egypt to the lands beyond Transoxiana (portion of Central Asia corresponding approximately with modern-day Uzbekistan and southwest Kazakhstan).

What makes Islam spread?

There are many reasons why nations have been, from past to the present, so ready to embrace Islam, what is pointed out by Muhammad Asad, a Jewish convert to Islam, probably being the foremost:

“Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other, nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. Everything in the teaching and postulate of Islam is in its proper place.” [Islam at the Crossroads, p.5]

Most of Western writers, especially those under the influence of the Church, have never failed to accuse Islam of spreading by the sword. The causes of this prejudice lie mainly in the fact that the spread of Islam has often occurred at the expense of Christianity. While Islam has, for centuries, obtained numerous conversions from Christianity without much effort or organized missionary activities, Christianity has almost never been able to achieve conversions from Islam in spite of sophisticated means and well-organized missionary activities, and it has always been at a disadvantage in its competition with Islam for fourteen centuries.

This has caused its missionaries and most of the orientalists to develop a complex within themselves by depicting Islam and introducing it as a regressive, vulgar religion of savage people.

If history is to be read with an objective eye, such allegations will easily be debunked.

In addition to many other reasons which are responsible for the spread of Islam, it is the exemplary life-style and unceasing efforts of individual Muslims to transmit the message of Islam throughout the world which lie at the root of the conquest of the hearts by Islam. Islamic universalism is closely associated with the principle of 'enjoining the good' for Islam is to be spread by Muslims by means of this principle. This principle seeks to convey the message of Islam to all human beings in the world and to establish a model Islamic community on a world-wide basis.

Among every four humans in the world, one of them is Muslim. Muslims have increased by over 235% in the last fifty years up to nearly 1.6 billion. By comparison, Christians have increased by only 47 %... Islam is the second largest religious group in France, Great Britain and USA.

The following statistics show the growth of Islam in the world from (1989-1998):

North America: (25%)

Africa: (2.15%)

Asia: (12.57%)

Europe: (142.35%)

Latin America: (4.73%)

Australia: (257.01%)

Western fierce media campaign against Islam and Muslims escalated after the 11th of September attacks. Biased media, especially in the USA, rushed into a feverish contest to depict Islam as a religion based on savagery, intolerance and blood-thirst.

Not only in the media were Muslims harassed in the United States of America, Britain, Australia, and other European countries; rather, they were physically attacked at their homes, in the streets, in public places, and in their Mosques, Islamic centers, etc. The same attitude was, unfortunately, maintained toward the Noble Prophet of Islam  and the Noble Quran.

Islamophobia reached its peak when a Danish newspaper published heinous caricatures picturing the Prophet  as a terrorist. The noble Quran was also desecrated in the US and some other countries, which indicates the deep hatred towards Islam and Muslims.

There have been many rigid regulations and extremist procedures enacted against Muslims in the US and some European countries, on the pretext of their "war on terror". Many Muslim students were banned from completing their studies, many families expatriated, Islamic activities limited or stopped, Muslim men and women subjected to sophisticated checking and screening procedures in airports, women with hijab and men with beards mocked or harassed, etc. In brief, a Muslim has become for them a word synonymous to “suspect”.

Nonetheless, even after the events of September, a wave of new Muslims embraced Islam all over the world. In the USA alone, more than 30000 persons embraced Islam.


By the year 2020, Islam is projected to be the largest religion in the world.

To sum up, in spite of all the feverish attempts on the part of the adversaries of Islam, old and new, Islam is still sweeping the globe easily and peacefully, thus conquering and illuminating the minds and hearts, no matter how hard and intricate their conspiracies are. Allah, the Most Glorious, Says in the Quran (what means): “It is He (Allah) Who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to manifest it over all religion, although they who associate others with Allah dislike it.” [Quran 9: 33]