“Terrorism and Religion”, an extract from Amartya Sen’s book Identity and Violence (Penguin, 2006)

[…] an important meeting of Muslim scholars in Amman in Jordan. The conference, to which 170 Islamic clerics and experts had come from forty countries, tried to define “the reality of Islam and its role in the contemporary society.” The final communique of the Amman conference, issued on July 6, 2005, stated categorically: “It is not possible to declare as apostates any group of Muslims who believes in Allah the Mighty and Sublime and His Messenger (may Peace and Blessings be upon him) and thte pillars of faith, and respects the pillars of Islam and does not deny them any necessary article of religion,”

[…] As was discussed earlier, we have to ask whether it is at all possible to define a “true Muslims” in terms of beliefs about confrontation and tolerance, on which Islam does not dictate and on which different Muslims have ttaken widely different positions over many centuries. This freedom, allowed, of course, King Abdullah II of Jordan to firmly assert, as he did during the very same conference, that “the acts of violence and terrorism carried out by certain extremist groups in the name of Islam are utterly contradictory to the principle and ideology of Islam.”

[Extractfrom pages 80-81]