I. The Marvel of the Spread of Islam
Nobody who observed the spread of Islam in the non-Muslim World, especially in the West, and still more especially in America, the United Kingdom and Western Europe during the last thirty years, can fail to wonder at the marvel, or to discern the hand of the Almighty (may He be Glorified and Exalted) at work, The configuration of so many diverse forces, arising in such disparate corners of the earth, determined by such varied chains of historical conditions, all focusing upon the aforesaid Western countries is too much for any kind of planning except the divine. The causes of Muslim immigration up to that time are themselves the result of a tremendously complex development within the Muslim World. But, had these causes been restricted to the Muslim World, the Muslims seeking to immigrate world never have arrived in the West. They were inextricably interwoven with the relations those Muslims had with the West (colonialism, studentship and training, tourism, visits to relatives, fortune-seeking) , as well as dependent upon the West’s rise as industrial and political world leader, relating itself to the Muslim world in a variety of ways.
On the other hand, the causes of the conversion of native Westerners to Islam have to do with the whole intellectual and spiritual development of the West, a development which in the last three or four decades seems to have prepared large segments of the population to be receptive to the Islamic message. The erosion of religious feeling, whether Christian or Jewish, the rise of the sciences of nature and technology under the aegis of a philosophy defiant of God and of everything supernatural; and the nihilism to which industry, urbanism and the whole structure of modern life had led all these seem like the unfolding of real salvation plans for a Heilsgeschichte aimed at the West. Another “fullness of time” seems to be in full bloom before our eyes, awaiting only the disposition of Islam to bring it to fulfillment. That is exactly the sort of grand design which only the divine Designer can bring about.
Two main forces are jointly responsible for this marvelous spread of Islam in the West: the spiritual bankruptcy of the west and Muslim hijrah or emigration.