LA ILAHA ILLALLAH, no god but Allah, is the most fundamental and often sung phrase of the Islamic faith. At the same time it denies the existence of all other deities and affirms the divinity of the one true God, Allah, all in one breath. It is truly the most unique and iconoclastic statement that rejects the idea that anyone is divine except Allah. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “cosmopolitan” as something that is “common to all the world,” or a person who is “at home in everything.” parts of the earth or in many spheres of interest” (1978, 301). Now, how can we, on Allah's earth, talk about “Muslim” world cosmopolitanism? This is precisely how Allah or His Prophet Muhammad (570-632), from day one, regarded Islam, whether anyone liked it or not, as the religion for all humanity. Hear his first revealed injunction: “Read in the name of your Lord, who created man from dried blood; Proclaim that your Lord is the All-Bountiful, Who taught with the Pen; He taught man what he did not know.” (Quran, 96:1-5). In this first proclamation of Islam, Allah reveals himself as the Creator of all humanity and the Giver of all knowledge. It was, in fact, this universal sense of God that gave Islam a different perspective that broke with previous notions of tribe or religion. regional deities who supposedly competed against each other in providing protection and prosperity to their respective followers. Islam freed God from the tribal and racial boundaries of past cultures. (Maududi, 1960) The greatest attraction of Islam was that people did not have to belong to a certain caste or ethnicity to be fairly chosen by Allah, the Creator. To reach the Divine Being, not tribal loyalty was necessary, but human commitment. S...... half of the document ......rode religious restrictions on interfaith marriages. Behind most Islamic arts and sciences in the Middle Ages there were also great non-Muslim minds. It was in Islamic Spain that a cosmopolitan society could produce the arbophile Mozarabs who were the medieval Christian version of the modern Anglophile Muslims, and you are looking at one. Thank you. Bibliography Cook, MA “Economic Developments,” in Joseph Schacht and C. E. Bosworth, eds., The Legacy of Islam (Oxford, 1974). Donner, Fred M. “Muhammad and the Caliphate,” in John Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Islam (New York, 1999). Mawdudi, Sayyid Abul A'ala. Towards the Understanding of Islam (Lahore, 1960) Mehmud, Safdar. A Short History of Islam (Karachi, 1970) Smith, Jane I. “Islam and Christendom,” in John Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Islam (New York, 1999)