Islam As It Is
The Universality of Islam
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discover a sea-route from Europe to India.
Christopher Columbus first conceived of the idea
that there was a New World waiting to be
discovered after studying the results of the research
carried out by Abu Obaydah Muslim al-Balansy, a
renowned topographer of his day. It was when
Columbus set out to discover that world that he
made his discovery of America.
Islamic vision extends not just to the world we
know, but to the entire cosmos: Muslims can say
with justice that theirs is a truly universal religion.
This universality of Islam is no empty theory, for
the entire history of Islam supports it as a guiding
principle which has been consistently put into
practice.
Nowhere have the universal principles on which
Islam is founded been better expressed than in the
encounter between Rabiy ibn Amir, a Muslim
envoy, and the Iranian chieftain, Rustam. During
the caliphate of Umar Faruq the Arabs had entered
Iran and had proceeded to beat the Iranians in one
battle after another, so that a stage had come when
Rustam, as commander-in-chief of the Iranian
