Ummah's heroes.

Byline: Roedad Khan - Islamabad

APROPOS the article 'Dissecting Ertugrul mania' (June 6). The writer has raised many points with which one may agree or disagree.

Soon after the founding of the faith, Muslims succeeded in building a new form of society, the Madina caliphate, which in time carried with it its own distinctive institutions, art and literature, science and scholarship, political and social forms, all of which bore an unmistakable Islamic impress.

In the course of centuries, this new society spread over widely diverse climes, throughout most of the Old World. It came closer than any had ever come to uniting all of mankind under its ideals.

In every age, Muslims have reasserted their faith in the light of new circumstances that have arisen out of the failures and also of the successes of the past. The venture has never been abandoned and these hopes and efforts are still alive.

The Islamic faith spread gradually throughout most of the more densely inhabited parts of the eastern hemisphere, and with the spread of faith very often went Muslim rule. In pursuit of the new Islamic society, a solid foothold had been gained in one of the major Hellenic areas of Anatolia in the 13th century. The first Ghazi state was founded in the 13th century in Northwestern Anatolia in the town of Sogut by the Orguz Turkish leader Osman.

This tiniest Ghazi state in Bithynia, the hilly country southeast of the Thracian Straits, found itself facing the Byzantine empire. Blessed with good leadership, the Ottomans...