Most people recognize that there are significant problems with the world-wide Muslim community. Perhaps the biggest problem is the uncritical adherence to "tradition" which, over the centuries, has proven an impediment to every sort of positive change, development, or reform. Today, perhaps, there are movements that will achieve something.

The Guardian reports:

The battle under way to reclaim the soul of Islam is challenging the conventions of tradition and unpicking the issues that have been at the heart of the revivalist agenda for decades: the call for an Islamic state and reintroduction of the sharia law.

The battle is being waged with ideas, debate and scholarship. But most of all it is being propelled by Muslim women. The reason is not hard to find. Over the centuries, in all Muslim homes, women have been the first teachers of religion. If women are demanding a new dispensation for themselves, then at its most basic level society begins to change.

ADIKI reports on secular Muslims in France:

Only 21 percent of young Muslims in the survey go to mosque “at least once or twice a month”, while 81 percent consider secularism to be a “positive value”, according to the opinion poll - carried out by the Paris-based Cevipof research institute and published in the Le Monde daily on Wednesday.

A total of 80 percent said they fasted during the month of Ramadan, and 77 percent said they never consumed alcohol. But just 5 percent of those interviewed said they would send their children to a private Islamic school, and 20 percent called themselves atheist - a similar proportion to the 28 percent of France’s general population who say they are not religious.

And while 16 percent of those surveyed said they attributed “less importance to religion” now than in the past, 65 percent said they would have nothing against their own daughter marrying a non-Muslim (which is forbidden by the Koran).

Islamic reform can only come from Muslims themselves. Outsiders can certainly help create conditions that encourage and support reform, but reform from the outside will never be widely regarded as legitimate. Internal reform has enough trouble being perceived as legitimate, but if it has a large enough base of support from people whose qualifications as devout Muslims are unimpeachable, then at least it stands a chance.

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