Iqbal’s statement on the Conditions Prevailing in Europe issued on the 26th February, 1933.
http://www.allamaiqbal.com/webcont/196/eng-c.html
After visiting different European countries and seeing the general moral chaos of the modern world, I am convinced that the great opportunity for Islam as a faith has come. Millions upon millions of men and women in Europe are anxious to know what Islam and its cultural ideals are. The sooner the younger generation of Muslims realizes this fact the better. European Muslims have already realized it. They are holding a conference in Geneva in August next, the object of the proposed conference being purely social and cultural. I hope the Muslims of Asia and Africa will generously respond to the promoters of the conference.
I visited Cordova, Granada, Seville, Toledo and Madrid and besides seeing the historic mosque at Cordova, and the Aihambra in Granada, I visited the ruins of Madinat uz Zehra, the famous palace built on a mountain by Abdur Rehman I for his wife Zebra, where excavations are still going on. It was there that the first demonstration of a flying machine was given in the twelfth century by a Muslim inventor. I had the privilege of meeting, among others the Education Minister of the Spanish Government, an exceedingly courteous gentleman with a breadth of vision hardly to be expected in a country like Spain, and Professor Asin, the well known author of Divine Comedy and Islam.
The Spaniards living in the south of the country are proud of their Moorish origin and of the great monuments of Islam culture which are to be found there. A new consciousness is steadily growing in the country and will further expand with the development of education. The movement of reform started by Luther has not yet exhausted itself. It is still working quietly in different European countries and the hold of priestho0d especially in Spain, is gradually loosing.
