President Abdurrehman Wahid ... is a Muslim cleric with a wide knowledge of Hindu scriptures. He heads a country with the world's largest Muslim population and yet, contrary to conventional expectation, a friend of Israel, particularly of Shimon Peres ...

In his meeting with Prime Minister Vajpayee he dwelt at length on the Hindu civilisational and cultural width, embellishing his conversation with references to the Mahabharata and the Ramayana ...

Wahid, should he survive the upheavals in his own country, is the sort of leader we must engage on a broad civilisational basis. His tolerant and catholic vision of Islam has applicability in India as well.

Islam, according to Wahid, is a set of beliefs, a personal ethic; it cannot replace a civilisation. Islam is the dominant colour of the Arabian civilisation. But the dominant colour of Indonesian civilisation is Indonesian. Religion conditions personal lives of individuals. They do not replace civilisations which accommodate them.

Wahid is wary of labels like "syncretic cultures" and "secularism", even "federalism" ..

There is no room for religious extremism in Wahid's framework, but he does have an explanation for extremism and fundamentalism. In coping with modernism some religious groups tend to protect themselves by erecting around themselves walls of "formalism". Intolerance is the consequence.

In India, diverse cultures, religions embellish a broad civilisational canvas. Islam in Indonesia, likewise, has adapted itself to its animist and Hindu past which informs its social texture ...

Just one meeting with Wahid acquainted me with a vision of Islam which seemed to be the very antithesis of the faith the establishment across the border in Pakistan is trying to promote - a triple distilled Islam, pure in its fundamentalism, cleansed of all the civilisational colours that the great Indian Muslims (Sufis, poets, musicians) adopted and enriched ...