George Bernard Shaw and The Islamic Scholar

Text and commentary of their historic conversation in 1935

Commentary and editing by Imran N. Hosein

The following is the text of a conversation between the famous European playwright and intellectual, George Bernard Shaw, and the famous Islamic scholar and missionary, Maulana Abdul Aleem Siddiqui. They met in Mombasa, in British-occupied Kenya, 65 years ago on April 17, 1935.

Shaw, the literary genius, rationalist and intellectual, was a perfect representative of the new essentially godless Euro-world order that had cloaked itself in the mantle of ‘humanism’. That world order emerged in the wake of the transformation of Europe from Christendom into a ‘one-eyed’ secular society, and the empowerment of Europe through the scientific, technological and industrial revolutions. By 1935 it had already imposed its godless rule upon the rest of mankind ‘at the point of the sword’, and had made considerable progress in its new crusade of globalization to establish one global godless world.

Maulana, on the other hand, through his spiritual magnetism, his intellectual brilliance and integrity, and his winsome personality, was an equally perfect representative of that sacred model of society that was established in the world for the last time by Prophet Muhammad (s). It was destined to survive the godless storm and to triumph over all rivals at the end of the Last Age when godless globalization would have lost all its steam.