There Is No Such Thing As A Profane World

The matter is spirit in space-time reference. The unity called man is body when you look at it as acting in regard to what we call the external world: it is mind or soul when you look at it as acting in regard to the ultimate aim and ideal of such acting.
The ultimate Reality, according to the Qur'an is spiritual, and its life consists in its temporal activity. The spirit finds its opportunities in the natural, the material, the secular.
All that is secular is, therefore sacred in the roots of its being. The greatest service that modem thought has rendered to Islam, and as a matter of fact to all religion, consists in its criticism of what we call material or natural - a criticism which discloses that the merely material has no substance until we discover it rooted in the spiritual. There is no such thing as a profane world. All this immensity of matter constitutes a scope for the self-realization of spirit. All is holy ground. As the Prophet so beautifully puts it: "The whole of this earth is a mosque."

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam - Muhammad Iqbal