ABSTRACT
A wide spectrum of humanity adheres to Islam. Indeed, over a billion peoplerepresenting many different races and cultures-are Muslim. Yet within this diversity there may also be found the idea of a universal Islamic culture (adab) which includes mores, language, behaviour, and so on, and which unites Muslims across the divides of ethnicity. As Akbar Ahmed remarks: ‘It is adab that defines a Muslim: one can be a bad Muslim from the orthodox point o f view and yet be a good one because of adab, and vice versa. A convert to Islam may master Arabic and be an orthodox Muslim yet be weak on adab \l There are, o f course, several major languages that predominate in different parts o f the Muslim world o f which Arabic is only one. But being the language o f the Qur’an it holds pride o f place. Key Arabic religious words and phrases are found throughout the Islamic world, or ‘abode o f Islam’ (dar-al-Islam), whatever the local lingua franca. In Islam religion (din) and culture (adab) intimately intertwine: there is not really one without the other. Personal Islamic identity is bound up with communal identity, which is itself located and contextualised within the bounds of time and space. Today, in many lands, Muslim people are seeking to recover and assert their identity as Muslims, and Islamic communities are seeking to shape their destiny according to Islamic ideology. This is happening all across the abode o f Islam, involving countries as different as Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia and Malaysia; and none of these is ethnically or culturally Arabic.
