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Here's an excerpt from something I'm writing...Sorry for the academic language, but that's the way I write (it's my job), and I'm too tired to paraphrase it right now. Sorry also if this is a little long. But maybe there's something you can use here.
From the very beginning the Prophet Muhammad’s message aimed to challenge certain limits that had been erected between self and other, “us” and “them.” The early Meccan revelations counsel Muhammad’s contemporaries to overcome the limits of tribalism (in pre-Islamic Arabia, inter-tribal violence was the norm, and one had no moral obligation to extend any rights or sympathy whatsoever to those belonging to a tribe other than one’s own) and the limits of economic self-interest (the wealthy merchant class of Mecca showed little concern for the social welfare of others, of those epitomized in the Qur’an as “widows and orphans”). Later revelations counsel the now large and ever-growing Islamic community--a community built upon the extension to others of the category of “selfhood”--to question the limits dividing peoples according to their religions. The Qur’an teaches that it is not just Muslims but rather all peoples from all communities and cultures throughout history who have been blessed with a true and legitimate prophet: “A messenger has been sent to every people” (10.47). Muhammad does not offer a radically new revelation, a heretofore unheard of message (Qur’an 46.9: “Say: ‘I am not an innovation among the messengers’.”) What is new is not the truth that Muhammad brings but rather the insistence that all peoples have always been brought this truth.
The Qu’ran’s most notable ecumenical verse tells us that each divinely revealed way is, in its own way, a right way: “For every one of you We have ordained a law and a way. Had God pleased, He could have made you one community: but it is His wish to prove you by that which He has bestowed upon you. Vie (as in a race) with one another in good works, for to God you shall all return and He will explain for you your differences” (5.48). God does not merely tolerate, but rather he actively orchestrates and maintains religious and cultural differences. The Qur’an envisions a world community that is locally diverse but also ultimately unified: all virtuous humans are part of God’s community insofar as they submit themselves to God’s guidance, to the truth that God provided for them in their own traditions and in their own languages: “Each messenger We have sent has spoken in the language of his own people” (14.4). God, who delights in cultural and racial diversity (“Among His other wonders are the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and colors”; 30.21), has given each particular historical people the message in its own vernacular--so that the truth is never something alien to a community, never something imposed by one human community upon another (as Ibn Arabi puts it: God has sent “to each and every community an envoy who is one of their kind, not someone different to them.”) Despite their differing ways, all virtuous believers--all who heed the teachings that God has given them in their own religious tradition and in their own language--will end up returning to God, and all in the end will be saved: “Believers, Jews, Sabaeans and Christians--whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does what is right--shall have nothing to fear or to regret” (5.69). The religious limit that divides “us” from “them”--although it remains in place here on earth as testimony to God’s wondrous unlimited creativity--is in the final analysis effaced.
There was in the medieval Islamic exegetical tradition a debate concerning the referent of Qur’an 5.48’s li-kull-in (“unto each”). A minority of commentators took “unto each” to mean “unto every Muslim”; they thus took the verse to mean: “For every Muslim we have ordained a law and a way.” The diversity at stake here then is internal to Islam--a matter of the multiplicity of Islamic sects, which, according to a famous hadith (one of the canonical “Traditions” concerning the sayings and deeds of the Prophet) are said to be seventy-three in number. The aim of this minority reading of Qur’an 5.48 would then perhaps be to lend scriptural support to the legitimacy of pluralism within the Islamic community as a whole. Such a reading would be in accord with the non-canonical hadith: “The disagreements of my community are a blessing.” Here one might mention the position of the eminent scholar al-Baghdadi (d. 1037 AD), who maintained that any teachings that fit in the framework of the seventy-three sects, no matter how “heretical” they may appear in the eyes of others, have a legitimate place in the Muslim community. He cites an earlier thinker, al-Ka‘bi (d. 931 AD), who goes even farther, deeming legitimate anything taught by anyone who affirms the Prophethood of Muhammad and the truth of the Prophet’s teaching: “When one uses the expression ummat al-islam , it refers to everyone who affirms the prophetic character of Muhammad, and the truth of all that he preached, no matter what he asserts after this declaration.” The thrust of this position that, within the Islamic community, there are no doctrinal limits--that anything taught by a Muslim is by definition authentically “Islamic.”
But the majority of medieval exegetes understood the referent of Qur’an 5.48’s “unto each” to include Muslims and non-Muslims alike--so that the verse is understood not to be directed exclusively to the Muslim community but rather to a variety of religious communities. In accordance with the commentary of the great historian and exegete al-Tabari (d. 923 AD)--who showed that taking “unto each” to mean “unto each Muslim” makes no sense in itself and fails to respect the context of surrounding verses--every major medieval commentator took Qur’an 5.48 to be God’s declaration of ecumenical pluralism. Some of these took the referent of “unto each” to be the so-called “People of the Book,” a category that comprised Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but which, as Islamic civilization moved farther east and encountered more peoples in possession of scriptural traditions, was expanded to include Zoroastrians, Hindus and Buddhists. On this reading, the verse teaches that all virtuous individuals belonging to communities that profess scripture-based religions will in the end be counted among those in Paradise. An even more “liberal” interpretation was implied by commentators such as al-Zamakhshari (d. 1144 AD) and al-Baydawi (d. 1286 AD), for whom the referent of “unto each” is all humans, regardless of their religious identities. The thrust of this interpretation is that, when it comes to the matter of afterlife, there are no religious limits (dividing cultures or peoples that will be “saved” from those that will be “damned)”: all virtuous humans will be accorded their place in Paradise.
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