(Part I of this article appeared on April 17)

In the second part of this article I will try to provide an Islamic legitimation to the kind of identity politics that I have outlined above. This means that I will have to give a positive value in Islamic terms both to the group and to the unity that transcends groups, both – in the terms of our motto – to Diversity and Inclusiveness.

The most apposite statement in the Koran giving positive value to both those terms is the following: "Oh mankind! We have created you from a male, and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another." (V49:13). When I made my address at the launch of the Sailan Muslim website I confessed that I did not quite understand, or understand fully, what that meant, except that a high value was being placed on belonging to groups (Diversity) and at the same time to reaching out to other groups in striving to achieve unity (Inclusiveness). Significantly this has become perhaps the best-known quotation from the Koran in recent decades. It seems to signify that people have been becoming acutely conscious of belonging to groups, of the need to belong to groups, and that that gives rise to a need to reach out to other groups in order to achieve some sort of unity.

As to what exactly that quotation means, it appears that contemporary anthropologists will find nothing perplexing about it. Some Muslims will hold that that quotation is a further example of the Koran anticipating the findings of the modern sciences. In a French book on anthropology Nicolas Journet writes that "culturalists" often use examples from the "more simple" civilizations to criticize the modern world, after which he proceeds, "It is a way of saying that transcending their cultures, men can learn from one another, and also a way of perpetuating the idea that ‘we’ form an entity different from ‘others’." (from La Culture edited by N.Journet – 2002).

Many non-Muslims will find it difficult to associate the idea of Inclusiveness with Islam. That idea involves a reaching out to other groups instead of being confined to one’s own group, the forging of relations of amity and co-operation with other groups, in accordance with a recognition of the under-lying oneness of all humanity. But Islam tends to be associated nowadays with fundamentalism, fanaticism, extremism, intolerance, and violence, showing a distinct tendency towards the anathematization of non-Muslims. That may be true of some Muslims, but it is far from being an accurate characterization of the great majority of mainstream orthodox Muslims. However, it is true that Muslims show a tendency to withdraw into their own groups while avoiding interaction with others as far as might be possible. But this, in reality, is true of Muslims during the decadent phases of Islamic civilization, mainly after 1200AD, not of Muslims under the Umayyad and Abbasid civilizations, the latter of which showed a thoroughly ecumenical openness to the non-Muslim world.

It might be accurate to draw the fundamental contrast between the Jews and the Muslims in terms of the ghetto. For almost two millennia the Jews were forcibly confined to their ghettos, and produced no great internationally recognized figure except for Maimonides – the great Spinoza having been excommunicated from the Jewish community. They were freed from their ghettos in the nineteenth century, and straightaway showed very impressive achievement levels. The Muslims, on the other hand, tended after 1200AD to voluntarily confine themselves to their own ghettos. Their achievement levels – let us face it – have not been impressive. We SL Muslims should bear these facts in mind, and give due importance to the ideal of Inclusiveness.

In dealing with the problem of Muslim exclusiveness the point that requires emphasis is that it does not flow from anything that is inherent in Islam. It flows only from some interpretations of Islam, not from others. The truth is that there are several interpretations of Islam, none of which can command the unanimity of all Muslims all over the globe. The different varieties of fundamentalists are all mistaken in imagining that they alone have rediscovered authentic Islam in all its pristine purity. Contrary to what many non- Muslim believe, far more widespread than the varieties of fundamentalist Islam is the liberal modernizing Islam – now coming to be called moderate Islam – which was initiated by the reform movement of Jamaldeen al-Afghani and his associates in the late nineteenth century.

According to that liberal Islam the following from the Koran would be given cardinal importance, "Verily, those who believe (the Moslems), and those who are Jews, Christians, or Sabaeans, whoever hath faith in God and the last day (future existence), and worketh that which is right and good, - for them shall be their reward with their Lord; there will come no fear on them; neither shall they be grieved." SuraV.69. The same idea is expressed in Sura V 48. I must attest at this point that I had a strictly orthodox Islamic upbringing, but I was never taught those two verses. I discovered them around the age of thirty when I read Ameer Ali’s The Spirit of Islam, the classic statement of liberal Islam. He wrote, "The same sentiment is expressed in similar words in the fifth Sura; and a hundred other passages prove that Islam does not confine ‘salvation’ to the followers of Mohammed alone." The interested Muslim reader should also read Sura 48 which Ameer Ali quotes.

However, Tabari’s commentary, written about two and a half centuries after the death of the Prophet, holds that the two verses from Sura V were abrogated by Sura III verse 85 which reads," And whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers." Evidently Ameer Ali does not accept Tabari’s comment, nor does anyone else as far as I know. At my request my friend Nawaz Raheem – well-known for his annual articles on Iqbal – checked on seven translations of the Koran into English and one into Tamil, by members of the Sunni, Shia, and Ahmediya sects, all of which include those verses from Sura V and none of which makes any reference to their having been abrogated. The Yusuf Ali translation and commentary – the most popular among SL Muslims - notes the relevant verses with appreciation. Nawaz tells me further that the Saudi Arabian Government published the Yusuf Ali translation, although he was a Shia, and some years ago distributed free copies to SL Muslims through local institutions. So it appears that those two verses showing an extraordinary ecumenical spirit behind Islam should be accepted as part of the authentic canon of Islam.