The World of Islam

"We Muslims are one family even though we live under different governments and in various regions."

Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran's revolution

"The real force of Islam is the feeling that you belong to a brotherhood with the obligation to serve that brotherhood and thereby serve God."

Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Minister of Petroleum

"Islam judges, Islam protects, Islam urges resistance when there is injustice."

Anwar Gamall, Egyptian university student

Those are only a few of the voices of Islam, as powerful and compelling today as the muezzin's ancient call of the faithful to prayer. The voices speak Russian and Chinese, Persian and French, Berber and Malay, Turkish and Urdu—and Arabic, of course, the mother tongue of the Prophet Muhammad and language of Islam's holy book, the Koran. Islam is the world's youngest universal faith, and the second largest, with 750 million adherents, to about 985 million for Christianity. Across the eastern hemisphere, but primarily in that strategic crescent that straddles the crossroads of three continents, Muslims are rediscovering their spiritual roots and reasserting the political power of the Islamic way of life. Repelled by the bitter fruits of modernization and fired by a zealous pride in its ancient heritage, the umma (world community) of Islam is stirring with revival.

Iran is the most telling example. Late last month millions of men and women went to the polls for a referendum in which they voted overwhelmingly in favor of an Islamic republic. The affirmative vote created the nation's first "government of God," declared the Ayatullah Khomeini. The monarchy will be replaced by a democratic system with an elected legislature; religious leaders will probably have some kind of veto power over prospective laws. The success of the yearlong Iranian revolution, which ousted a dynastic autocrat who dreamed of turning his country into a Western-style industrial and secular state, was hailed as "a new dawn for the Islamic people," in the words of one Kuwait newspaper. Palestinian fedayeen poured into the streets of Beirut to celebrate the victory by firing AK-47s into the air. In the Sudan, militant Muslims opposed to their government's alignment with Egypt held an Islamic victory parade, shouting, "Down with Sadat, friend of the Shah!" Proclaimed Cairo's conservative Muslim magazine Al Da'wah (The Call): "The Muslims are coming, despite Jewish cunning, Christian hatred and the Communist storm."

Iran is not the only country where the power and zeal of a revivified Islam is being felt. Earlier this year Pakistan added measures from the Shari'a—the Islamic code of justice based primarily on the Koran—to its criminal and civil laws. In Kuwait, a revised version of the Shari'a is being adopted in the legal code of that oil-rich desert state. Responding to a groundswell of Muslim fundamentalism, Egypt's People's Assembly is also debating the imposition of the Shari'a, which could close down the bars, nightclubs and gambling casinos that glitter along Cairo's Pyramid Road.