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the Muslim world, the arrested political development in the Muslim world, and the
unfortunate nurturing of a conspiracy theory mindset that traces all the ills of the
Muslim world to a global Jewish-Zionist plot to control the world. Hostility toward non-
Muslims in the Muslim world is a reaction to the historical attitude of the non-Muslim
world toward the Muslim world, e.g. the experience of the crusades, followed by British
and French colonialism and other manifestation of European imperialism, Zionism that
led to the creation of Israel on the territory that had been under Muslim suzerainty, and
in more recently the United States foreign policy vis-à-vis Muslim world.
Notwithstanding all these structural impediments, there is a critical need for Muslims on
a global scale to be fair and re-evaluate their attitude towards non-Muslims. A first step
towards this is to distinguish between non-Muslims who are openly anti-Islamic and
those who are not. The Qur’an is explicit in making this distinction when it states,
“They are all not alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a staunch community
that recites the revelations of Allah in the night season, falling prostrate (before Him).”
[TMQ
41
-4:113-114]
Therefore, it is essential that the global Muslim intelligentsia proactively lead the way
for the ummah to truly understand Islam, which will prevent extremist groups from
appropriating the discourse of Islam. The Islamic discourse has to be re-claimed by the
mainstream from sectarian, extremist, and violent groups. It has to be excavated from
the cobwebs of medievalism. Islamic discourse has not progressed in an institutional
manner since the time of the closing of
Bab al-ijtihaad (gate of interpretation) back in
the 11th century. While institutionally ijtihaad had come to a halt, but the fact that a
large body of scholars continued to engage in this practice, I argue, has over the course
Convention