The Global Legacy of Islamic Civilization

Before European imperialism arrived on the scene in the 16th century, the civilization produced by Islam was the most cosmopolitan, international, and extensive in area that had ever appeared in recorded history. For more than a thousand years, politically and culturally, Islam reigned supreme. Over all of Northern Africa, Western Asia, and large areas of Central Asia, it spread rapidly to India, even into China, and across the Pacific Ocean to Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Spain was under Islamic rule for seven centuries, and due to the rising power of the Ottoman Turks, Islamic culture strongly influenced much of Southeastern Europe as well. Converts flocked to the fold of Islam from all races—black, brown, yellow, and white.

Economically, the Islamic world prospered through its intensive, long-distance international trade and commerce. Muslim merchants and tradesmen, who were often zealous missionaries, were the most adventurous and daring travelers and explorers. Only the Polar regions, Australia, and the New World were unknown to them.

The universality of Islam and the civilization it produced is all the more remarkable because all this was achieved without the assistance of any of the modern, mechanical means of communication and transportation.

Most of the major historic religions and non-Western civilizations were and still are parochial, Judaism and Hinduism being among the most extreme, excluding outsiders on principle. Even Christianity, which is supposed to be an international proselytizing faith with organized missionary activity everywhere, is inextricably bound up with the history of Europe and shaped by its cultural atmosphere.

To prove that, historically, Western civilization and Christianity are inseparable, a prominent American missionary writes: “The Roman Catholic and Protestant missionary is not simply a Christian: he is always a Western Christian, carrying with him the fresh and modern outlook of the Western world as well as the Gospel of Christ. The missionary never fails to identify his Christian faith with Progress and social concern, which Eastern religions seldom include.” (The Lands Between: The Middle East, John S. Badeau, Friendship Press, New York, 1958, p. 105)

Thus, historic Christianity and Western cultural and political imperialism are inseparable.

The Universality of Islam in the Quran and Hadith

The universality of Islam is proclaimed at the outset by the Divine revelation of the Quran: {O mankind! We have created you male and female and have made you nations and tribes that you may know and understand one another. Lo! The noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the one who is most righteous. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware.} [Al-Hujurat 49:13]

The Quran also repeatedly refers to the different races, colors, and languages of mankind as among the signs of Divine Creation.

The Hadith are even more explicit. The Prophet (peace be upon him) preached during his historic Farewell Address in Makkah during the Hajj: “O people! Verily, your Lord is one and the forefather of all of you is one. All of you are descended from Adam, and Adam was created from earth. There is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab, nor a white skin over a black skin except in piety. Verily, the noblest among you is he who is the most pious.” (Narrated in The Opinions of Muhammad, Maulana Ubaidullah Akbar, Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1955, pp. 95–96)

In contrast to the materialistic outlook of Western culture, which is determined by the vagaries of opportunism and expediency, releasing the sordid human instincts of greed, ambition, and cruelty in full force, the supreme authority of the Quran as infallible Divine revelation bestows on its believers a universal sense of values, human dignity and self-respect, and a constructive meaning and purpose to life, transcending all limitations of time and place.

The Shari`ah is a universal law, excluding nobody—believer or non-believer—from its all-embracing scope. So long as it was adhered to, the absolute, transcendental authority based on the fear of God and reward and punishment in the Hereafter as the source of ethical behavior safeguarded the Muslim community from all the moral anarchy, social unrest and disruption, and human degradation we see everywhere around us today.

Islam and Equality: A Civilization Open to All Races

The all-inclusiveness of Islam was evident from the start. Included among the most esteemed Companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) was Zaid, whom the Prophet (peace be upon him) emancipated from slavery and then adopted as his son and finally placed in command of the Muslim army, where he was martyred fighting in Syria; Bilal, the Abyssinian, whom the Prophet (peace be upon him) appointed as the first Muezzin to summon the people to prayer; Suhail, a Roman; and Salman, the Persian—all of whom have always been respected by Muslims everywhere as much as the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) Arab followers.

Among the Mothers of the Believers, the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) wives, were Maria, the Egyptian Copt, and Safiyyah, whose father was a Jewish chieftain.

Among the masters of the Hadith, the Shariah, theologians and scholars, as well as celebrities in the arts and sciences, there appear many more non-Arabs of varied national and racial origins than Arabs, even though they wrote most of their works in Arabic. This proves that people of all nationalities and races enthusiastically participated in Islamic civilization on equal terms and that the blight of nationalism and imperialism was unknown to them.

How Islam Spread Without Forced Assimilation

Contrast the ruthless policies of the “civilized” West toward Aboriginal peoples with the humane, civilizing methods of the Muslims.

Writes an English Orientalist: “The marvellous success that has been achieved in Africa and Indonesia in propagating Islam and its way of life has been largely the work of traders and merchants who have won the hearts of the natives by learning their language, adopting their manners and customs, and settling down and marrying their women, all the while quietly spreading the knowledge of their faith, first by converting the native women they married and the persons associated with them in their business relations. Instead of holding themselves apart in proud isolation, they gradually melted into the mass of the population, employing all the superiority of their intelligence and civilization for the work of conversion.” (The Preaching of Islam, Thomas William Arnold, Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1965, p. 409)

Thus, many primitive peoples were civilized by the enlightenment of Islam without resort to genocide or forced “assimilation,” racial persecution, or any of the dehumanizing degradation and social disruption that have invariably accompanied the westernization of non-Europeans.

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Taken from “Is Western Civilization Universal?” by Maryam Jameelah