Dr Atuallah Siddiqui

‘And indeed We have honoured the children of Adam…’ Qur’an 17:70 ‘If your Lord so willed, He could have made mankind one people.’ Qur’an 11:118 ‘O mankind, We have created you from a single (pair) of male and female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other.’ Qur’an 49:13

The Qur’an is the anchor of the Muslim community. The subject matter of the Qur’an is human beings and they are the basic addressees of it. And to establish a cohesive humane and just social order is its earthly objective. The Qur’an creates a society where the individual and the community are under an obligation to ‘enjoin good and forbid evil’ (3:104; 110; 9:71). Differences of belief are seen as God’s plan. The abolition of such differences is not the purpose of the Qur’an nor is the Prophet Muhammad sent for that purpose. The Qur’an also emphasises that such differences do not suggest that their origin is different rather it emphasises that human beings have a common spirituality (7:172, 91:7-10).

These differences are there because God has given human beings the freedom to choose. In this Qur’anic vision of unity and diversity the human task is to find a way to handle the differences. I am glad that one of the aims of this Centre is become ‘a hub of faiths: a place where people from different faiths can collaborate on issues of the common good’. In this collaboration, I am sure, that we will discover the ‘otherness of the other’. Thank you