The Islamic Reformation -- When? Where? And, How?

In America, there have been conferences of Islamic scholars meeting under the rubric of Heretics and Heretical thought.  An insight into the sort of thinking aired in these conferences can be gleaned by reading, "What Is A Muslim Heretic," by Danial Matin Verisco.  I imagine my friends, reading material presented at such a conference, thinking, Muslims aren't really that different from me.  These people are introspective and charming and thoughtful.  But, then you'd stumble over the reality that these conferences would probably be possible nowhere except in the United States.

There are Muslims who, indeed,  want to create a caliphate and who take the Quran, the Sunnah, and the Hadith literally and who yearn for a day when Sharia rules supreme.  How can you institute reform when Wahhabism still rules the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a country that has funded the construction of mosques throughout the world and has supplied Wahabbi imams to guide these mosques?  Wahhabis think of themselves as Salafists, people who practice Islam the way it was practiced in the days of Muhammed centuries ago.  But, you don't have to be a Saudi to be a Salafist.

Those among us who are less educated as to Islamic thought will posit a good Islam and a bad Islam The "bad" being Jihadists and the like.  This is false.  There is only one Islam.  It's just a matter of whether you take one lump of sugar or two.  It's still coffee.  Muslims have made no clear break from their Islamic fountainhead.

Jews no longer practice polygamy, although it was once a Jewish practice.  The Catholic Church no longer claims Jews murdered Christ, or burns heretics.  But, Muslims do still engage in polygamy and do still murder those who would insult Islam by drawing a figure of Muhammed or engage in other kinds behavior they find blasphemous.  And, that's the problem.

I don't think wiping out Salafist thought and Salafist ideals as found throughout the Islamic world is realistic.  But, I do think it is necessary to create zones of safety for Muslims who would stand for a modern form of Islam, one that could live in harmony with western culture.  And, I believe that only in America could such a school of Islam arise and flourish.

Many Muslims would argue that such Islamic thought has already emerged.  I would disagree.  I have perused "Islam for Idiots"  and nowhere is there mention of Sharia.  There is this pretense that Islamic practices that we would find abhorrent in our western culture can be understood as acceptable in other cultures.  This may have been true in an earlier day when the world was smaller, but not today.  The idea that mosques can, and should, be built throughout the world, but that no church is to be built in Saudi Arabia, the fountainhead of Salafist thought, is simply unacceptable.  The idea that one school of Islamic thought can find another school of Islamic thought impure and that this impurity can be expunged by murdering those found impure is unacceptable.

Until the various forms of Islamic thought and Islamic culture can live together in harmony, we, Muslims and non-Muslims, have a problem.  Until Kurdish Muslims and Shia Muslims, Saudi Muslims and Chechen Muslims, Iranian Muslims and Ahmadiyya can learn to live together and accept people with other religions as well as those who accept no religion we and the Muslim community will continue to have a problem.  I see no solution other than that a form of "reform" Islamic thought emerge, one capable of sweeping throughout the Islamic world.  And, I see no place on earth where this can begin other than in America.  Let heresy flourish and let it be a safe haven.