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[quote]something interesting i came across at the annual covention of muslim council of britain over the wkend:(arches from the cordoba foundation)

This Islamic acceptance of the other
is not a reluctant concession to the
reality of a plural and
interdependent world. To the
contrary, Islam recognizes and
accepts the other out of principle.
This paper concludes with the
assertion that the Islamic sources
leave no room for religious
indifference, agnosticism, or moral
relativism in its extreme forms, but
that Islam has that dose of relativism
that is necessary for the normal
functioning of multi-religious
societies. Therefore, claims that Islam
is an exclusivist religion are entirely
unfounded, since we have seen that
Islam allows a Muslim quite
legitimately to have non-Muslim
parents, wives, business partners,
neighbours, teachers, rulers, and so
on; and that it requires him to
behave justly towards all of them,
and recommends benefaction. What
perplexes many people and leads
them to pass harsh judgment on
Islam is the Qur'anic self-assurance of
possessing the truth, which usually
leads to the conclusion that nothing
but political absolutism could come
of this theological absolutism. As we
have seen, this is not the case. The
fact that European pluralism is
largely based on epistemological as
well as moral relativism and
agnosticism, and that the Islamic form is not, has confused many
people.

We have also noted in this paper
that in some cases the norms of
Islamic law need not be taken as
given once and for all. According to
many Islamic jurists, Islamic law too is
evolving in many of its aspects,
though not all. The influence of
social and political circumstances on
legal thought in that process is not
negligible. Keeping in mind that
Muslim and the Christian worlds
have spent most of the past
centuries at war, the norms on non-
Muslims that the classical Islamic
jurists defined during that period
should sometimes be compared
with the emergency laws
occasionally introduced by
democratic societies in the case of
war. In a world of entirely different
internal and international
circumstances, we witness the
turning away from wartime law
towards peacetime Islamic law.
An example of this transformation is
the view of a growing number of
modern Islamic jurists and thinkers
that non-Muslims in an Islamic
political system, if they take on the
same obligations in their country's
defense as Muslims do, are not
required to pay the special tax-jizyathat
has raised so much controversy,
and that they do not necessarily
have to be ahl al-dhimma, protected
people, but can be full-fledged
citizens of such a state. To show that
this is not view of marginal thinkers and jurists, let us note that this it is
shared by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Tawfiq
Shawi, Muhammad Salim 'Awwa,
Fahmi Huwaydi, and others. The first
two, at least, are widely read and
popular adherents to the largest
revivalist movement in today's
Muslim world, the Muslim
Brotherhood. Al-Qaradawi a few
decades ago wrote that the dhimma
is a permanent agreement between
Muslims and non-Muslims, in which
God, His Messenger and the Muslims
guarantee the security of the other
side. Today, he says, this is citizenship.
The principles and norms sited
above form only part of the &quot;liberal
ethos of Islam,&quot; as professor Muna
Abu al-Fadl puts it. It is true that we
do not believe that Islamic sources
leave space for religious indifference,
agnosticism, and moral relativism in
its extreme forms. Nonetheless, Islam
posseses that dose of relativism that
is necessary for the normal
functioning of a multi-religious
society.
see full paper @
http://www.thecordobafoundation.com/attach/arches_4.pdf
_____________________[/quote]

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