THE CREATION OF THE NEW WORLD
The religion brought by Prophet Muhammad was accepted throughout the length and breadth of Arabia. Later, it began spreading with astonishing rapidity, until, within the span of a century; it had conquered Asia and Africa, finally reaching Europe. Leaving aside the continent of America, all the countries and all the seas and oceans of the world came, directly or indirectly, under the influence of the followers of this religion.
This process continued for a thousand years. From the Sukutu Caliphate of Nigeria to the Muslim Sultanates of Indonesia, and from the Ottoman empire of Turkey to the Mughal Empire of India, there existed one vast expanse of the globe where national and geographical boundaries, such as we have in modern times, were simply not known. Muslims, without any difficulty, could travel through this whole region for education, commerce and other purposes.
It was in this period, in the fourteenth century, that Ibn Batuta, the well-known traveller of the Middle Ages, covered about 75 thousand miles in the course of his journeying. He was able to go from one country to another without any feeling of being a stranger, and nowhere did he face the problem of unemployment. He came to India in the reign of Muhammad ibn Tughlaq (1325-51) where he was received with honours and gifts, and later appointed Grand Qadi (Judge) of Delhi.
It was as a result of this universal revolution that all human beings could now be said to belong to one vast human brotherhood, a concept which rapidly came to dominate thinking all over the world. It first dominated the society of Medina, then it formed its center in Damascus, from which point it reached Baghdad. From Spain it reached Sicily, and then went on to other European countries.
Although the greater part of Europe did not accept the Islamic concept of monotheism in respect of religion, it did, however, apply it to the universe—a revolution in thought, which it fully exploited. The scientific and democratic revolution of Europe might be termed the “secular edition” of the monotheistic revolution of Islam. As this phrase implies, the West has separated the religious and secular aspects of the Islamic revolution.
The situation being such, it would be no exaggeration to say that if Islam were to be deleted from human history, all social and human progress should have to be deleted along with it. The world would then fall back into the Dark Ages where it lay for so long in intellectual shackles before the Islamic revolution came to bring it enlightenment.
