dwindles into insignificance. It not only cemented together the warring tribes of one country but also established a brotherhood of all nations of the world, even uniting those which had nothing in common except their common humanity. It obliterated differences of colour, race, language, geographical boundaries and even of culture. It united man with man as such, and the hearts of those in the far east began to beat in unison with those in the farthest west. Indeed, it proved to be not only the greatest but the only force unifying man, because, whereas other religions had succeeded merely in unifying the different elements of a single race, Islām actually achieved the unification of many races and harmonized the jarring and discordant elements of humanity. How great a force it was in bringing back his lost civilization to man, is attested by a European writer:9

“In the fifth and sixth centuries, the civilized world stood on the verge of chaos. The old emotional cultures that had made civilization possible, since they had given to men a sense of unity and of reverence for their rulers, had broken down, and nothing had been found adequate to take their place…

“It seemed then that the great civilization which it had taken four thousand years to construct was on the verge of distintegration, and that mankind was likely to return to that condition of barbarism where every tribe and sect was against the next and law and order were unknown… The old tribal sanctions had lost their power… The new sanctions created by Christianity were working division and destruction instead of unity and order… Civilization like a gigantic tree whose foliage had over-reached the world … stood tottering … rotted to the core … Was there any emotional culture that could be brought in to gather mankind once more into unity and to save civilization?”

And speaking of Arabia, the learned author adds that “it was among these people that the man was born who was to unite the whole known world of the east and south”.10

Islām as the greatest spiritual force of the world

Thus Islām laid the basis of unification of humanity of which no