"Can Islam Be Reformed?"

Submitted by cvt (United States), Oct 3, 2013 at 15:10

On July 1st, 2013 in response to the original thread "Can Islam Be Reformed?", I commented via the following question: "Can you point to a single state that could be considered an incubator of a moderate Islamic society? I can't."

Dr Pipes responded "What an odd question. By this logic, nothing new could ever happen."

Well, perhaps it may seem odd but it is rooted in the understand that prior to the Reformation & Counter Reformation of the Roman Catholic Church men such as Zwingli, Hus and Calvin wrote extensively from Switzerland, Germany,Sweden etc about the excesses of the Church and provided something of an Ecclesiastical roadmap to correct these moving forward. Sure, these ideas were seized upon by wealthy German and Nordic princes as an opportunity to diminish the power of Rome, but they also provided the reformers with the benefit of security in those countries (e.g. "incubators").

So unless you can point to some nascent rebellion amongst the thousands of young Saud, Al Thani, & Al Nahyan princes,many educated in the West, looking for an opportunity to throw off the shackles of Salafi orthodoxy/orthopraxy, I don't see anything hopeful on the horizon.

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