“Turks have fought the battles of Islam and had been the pride of Mussalmans; without the Turkish arms Islam could never have existed. While the rest of the Islamic world were either indifferent or too weak to resist the Western encroachment, it was Turkey, and Turkey alone which erected the barrier with its bones against such encroachment. Through the dynasty of the Ottoman Turks, Islam once more became the breakwater against Christianity, both for its own self and the other civilizations of Asia.

“….who can, even from the modern non-religious point of view, deny that the Turk had been the saviour of Islam and something larger—the Asiatic spiritual civilizations in general—from the ever aggressive materialistic ambition of Europe.”

Syed Mahmud in his book, The Khilafat and England, published in 1921

(Syed Mahmud, a prominent freedom fighter of India, studied Law at Cambridge University before going on to study at Lincoln’s Inn to become a barrister. In 1912, he obtained Ph.D. from Germany. In 1930, he was imprisoned in Allahabad along with Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru during the Civil disobedience movement.)