THE UNIVERSALITY OF ISLAM

The Universality of Islam ~ 179 ~ 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