Speaking plainly to the West

Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Mohiuddin Ahmad

• Publisher: Nadwi Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9789394770775
• eBook ISBN: 9789366083773
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Speaking Plainly to the West: Islam’s Challenge to Modern Civilization

The encounter between Islamic civilization and Western modernity is one of the defining relationships of the modern world. From colonialism and empire to decolonization and globalization, Muslims and Westerners have struggled to understand each other across barriers of history, culture, and power. Speaking Plainly to the West by Sayyid Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi is a landmark contribution to this ongoing conversation, offering perspectives that remain strikingly relevant decades later.

The historical moment

These speeches and essays emerged during a transformative period in Muslim history. The 1960s and 1970s saw newly independent Muslim nations wrestling with questions of identity, development, and cultural direction. Muslims faced a stark choice: imitate Western models in the name of modernization, or retreat into reactive rejection of all things Western. Nadwi insisted that this was a false choice, and instead articulated a principled third path rooted in Islamic faith yet open to genuine wisdom from any source.

The venues themselves are telling. By addressing the University of London, the Engineering University of Berlin, and Leeds University, Nadwi brought his message directly into Western academic spaces at a time when few Muslim scholars spoke there as intellectual equals. He addressed Europeans not as a colonized subject seeking acceptance, but as a confident representative of a rich civilizational tradition, offering critique, warning, and guidance.

Diagnosing the crisis of modernity

At the heart of Speaking Plainly to the West lies a penetrating diagnosis of the spiritual crisis of modern civilization. Nadwi argues that Western civilization—despite its breathtaking advances in science and technology—suffers from fundamental moral and spiritual flaws. These flaws are rooted in a deliberate separation of religion from public life, the rejection of transcendent truth, and the elevation of material success as the supreme human goal.

Nadwi traces the genealogy of this crisis back to ancient Greek rationalism, the Renaissance revolt against religious authority, and the Enlightenment’s faith in unaided human reason. While acknowledging the historical abuses of medieval Christianity, he argues that Europe resolved one problem only by creating another: a civilization powerful in its tools but directionless in its purpose.

The evidence, he suggests, is painfully visible: two world wars, the nuclear arms race, environmental degradation, moral disintegration, family breakdown, psychological disorders, and pervasive anxiety. For Nadwi, these are not isolated social problems; they are symptoms of a deeper civilizational malaise—a project that seeks to build human life on purely material foundations.

Islam’s alternative vision

Against this backdrop, Nadwi presents Islam as a comprehensive alternative that can address humanity’s deepest needs. Islam offers a unified worldview in which faith and reason, spirit and matter, this world and the next are brought together in a coherent whole. It provides transcendent guidance through revelation, a detailed ethical and legal framework, and a living prophetic model in the life of Muhammad ﷺ.

Several features of this vision are central to Nadwi’s argument:

• The Qur’an, preserved in its original form, offers direct access to divine guidance.
• The Prophetic example, recorded in unparalleled detail, provides a practical model of human excellence.
• Islamic law (sharī‘ah) offers a flexible yet principled framework for personal and collective life.
• Islamic civilization historically demonstrated that faith and knowledge, spirituality and worldly achievement, can be harmonized.

For Nadwi, Islam is not simply “compatible” with modern life; it is necessary to correct the distortions of modernity. It restores a sense of purpose, moral accountability, and human dignity that purely secular frameworks cannot provide.

A mirror held up to Muslims

Crucially, Nadwi does not reserve his critique for the West. Much of Speaking Plainly to the West is devoted to a frank assessment of Muslim societies themselves. He laments how many Muslim elites, educated in Western institutions, returned home alienated from their own people, unable to speak to the faith-based concerns of their societies. They adopted Western ideologies—nationalism, socialism, secularism—while their populations remained deeply attached to Islam.

This elite–mass disconnect, Nadwi argues, has produced political instability, cultural confusion, and wasted potential in the Muslim world. His call is for intellectual independence and cultural authenticity: Muslims must master modern knowledge, but from a position of civilizational confidence, not cultural inferiority.

A message to Muslim students in the West

Several essays are addressed specifically to Muslim students and professionals living in Western societies. Nadwi regards them as strategic bridge-builders between civilizations. They can excel in modern sciences and professions while embodying Islamic ethics and spiritual discipline, showing that intellectual excellence and religious commitment are not mutually exclusive.

But he also warns of serious dangers: material temptations, social pressures, and the subtle erosion of faith. His counsel is clear: benefit from the West’s strengths without surrendering your own identity. Take what is beneficial, but do not internalize the materialistic worldview that empties life of deeper meaning.

A model of civilizational dialogue

Throughout these addresses, Nadwi models the kind of dialogue he advocates. He neither seeks Western validation through apologetics nor lashes out in hostility. Instead, he speaks as a believer rooted in his tradition, who also understands Western history and thought from the inside. He acknowledges Western achievements, but insists on naming their limits and consequences.

This posture—respectful yet uncompromising, open yet unapologetic—remains rare even today. Nadwi shows that genuine dialogue is possible only when each side speaks from conviction, not inferiority, and when truth is valued more than approval.

Why this book matters now

Decades after their original delivery, these addresses feel startlingly contemporary. The spiritual exhaustion, social fragmentation, and ethical confusion Nadwi describes have only intensified. The questions he raises—about the meaning of progress, the role of faith in public life, and the future of civilization—are more urgent now than ever.

For Western readers, Speaking Plainly to the West offers a rare opportunity to hear a major Muslim thinker speak to them directly, not filtered through hostile media or superficial summaries. For Muslims, it provides a roadmap for navigating modernity with faith and dignity. For all readers, it demonstrates that civilizations can still speak to each other seriously about ultimate questions.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 1. East And West
• Islam the only way
• Political freedom or cultural serfdom
• Dangerous self-conceit
• To the students receiving a modern education
• Responsibilities of Muslim Young men proceeding to the West
• Endnotes