On 9/11 a handful of Muslims flew two planes straight into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The aim: to strike at the very heart of the sole Superpower’s economic and military might. The result: In retaliation to the thousands of innocents killed on American soil, Bully Bush unleashes his own terror machine in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing many more thousands of innocents and ravaging the lives of millions.

Understandably, American belligerence and hypocrisy continues to anger people across the world, Muslims included. But the premeditated and reprehensible massacre of innocents on that tragic September day and elsewhere since then – Beslan, Spain, Indonesia – by the al-Qaeda and other extremist outfits have, unwittingly, shaken and shattered the prison gates of the Muslim mind.

No, no revolution is in sight; Muslim societies are not about to be turned upside down overnight. Muslims have a long, long way to go in coming to terms with modern day sensibilities: fundamental freedoms, human rights, gender justice, non-discrimination, pluralism, democracy. But only a cynic, a pessimist or a fanatic will deny the myriad signs of change across the Muslim world. Tentative, uneven, irregular and reversible though it might be, there is a visible stirring within Muslim-predominant societies – Morocco, Malaysia, Kuwait, Qatar, as much as among Muslim minorities living in democracies – USA, Canada, India, Germany. If nothing else, it is the beginning of something.

In the days immediately following 9/11, Muslim clerics, scholars and politicians expressed shock and horror over the fact that monstrosities such as 9/11 could be committed in the name of Islam. Statements and articles by them were published in prestigious international publications under headlines such as, ‘Islam was hijacked on September 11’, ‘My fatwa against the fanatics,’ ‘Islam is its own worst enemy’...

The spontaneous outrage soon gave way to serious introspection and soul search. It is not enough to dismiss or denounce wanton acts of terror as un-Islamic, wrote some of them. Muslims must ask what in their religious teaching or tradition inspires some among them to commit such heinous crimes. They must recognise the sickness that has come to afflict the very soul of Islam, said Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, a radical Muslim leader who had earlier championed the "Islamisation" cause.

Even a cursory survey of news headlines indicates that the introspection, the widespread search for an articulation of Islam that is at home and in peace with the modern world has led to some significant developments in the last year or so:

May 19, 2005 (Malaysia/Germany):

In his keynote address on ‘Islam, International Peace and Security’, at the Bertelsmann Foundation, Berlin, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, propagates his newly developed concept of "Islam Hadhari" ("Civilisational Islam", "Progressive Islam"). His idea, he believes, could help bridge "the increasing gulf and misunderstanding between the West and the Muslim world".

"Islam Hadhari promotes tolerance and understanding, moderation and peace, and certainly, enlightenment. It is entirely consistent with democracy because it is about living peacefully and respecting each other in society," he said. Badawi has been vigorously promoting Islam Hadhari both within Malaysia and among the member countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), an association of 57 countries from three continents, of which he is currently the chairman.

Meanwhile, Islamists across the globe are greatly perturbed over a not entirely unrelated development. Since his release last year after spending six years in a Malaysian prison, Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister and Badawi’s chief potential rival, has become "a darling of the West" for his promotion of an understanding of Islam that is regarded as ‘moderate’ and West-friendly. Recognised as a radical Muslim leader in the ’70s, Ibrahim was inducted by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in 1981 to implement his "Islamisation policy".

May 16, 2005 (Kuwait):

After years of struggle, Kuwait’s Parliament at long last passes a law granting women the right to vote and to run in elections.

May 8 (India):

At a crowded press conference in Mumbai called by the Muslim Women’s Rights Network jointly with other secular women’s groups, Muskan Sheikh of Hukook-e-Niswaan, tears to shreds the ‘model nikaahnama’ adopted with much fanfare by the "blatantly anti-women and reactionary" All India Muslim Personal Law Board on May 1. Earlier, the recently formed All India Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board had dismissed the draft as a toothless ‘‘dua ki kitab (prayer book)".

March 18 (USA):

For the first time since Islam’s early days, for the first time ever perhaps, a woman, professor Amina Wadud, leads a mixed-gender group of around 120 men and women to Friday prayers (imamah) in Manhattan, New York. At this unprecedented congregation, azaan, the call to namaaz, too, is given by a woman, Suehyla El-Attar of Atlanta. The much-publicised "first intifada in a widespread gender insurgency" invites a flood of fatwas from every trend of thought but also triggers a global debate on the right of women to lead prayers. (See pages 14-15.)

March 11 (Spain):

The Islamic Commission of Spain, representing 200 or so mostly Sunni mosques, or about 70 per cent of all mosques in Spain, issues a religious order declaring Osama bin Laden to have forsaken Islam by backing attacks such as the Madrid train bombings a year ago. The fatwa, the first of its kind from anywhere in the Muslim world, is timed for Friday to coincide with the first anniversary of last year’s attacks, which killed 191 people and were claimed in the name of al-Qaeda in Europe. At Madrid’s main mosque, worshippers observe a minute’s silence before Friday prayers, while Morocco’s King Mohammed attends a wreath-laying ceremony in honour of the victims. (See page 9.)

Six Islamic groups, accounting for 70 per cent of Germany’s Muslims, plan to unite under one umbrella to push for having Islam taught in public schools. The groups want to ensure that Islam can be taught in German in public schools to better integrate children and prevent misinterpretations. "If we don’t, the next generation of Muslims will grow up without values, and if they don’t get their religious education in schools they risk being influenced by bad interpretations of the Koran," said Nadeem Elyas, president of the central council of Muslims, after a meeting of Muslim groups in Hamburg last weekend… One of the things I think is very important for Muslims and Islam in our times is to teach the next generation of Muslims more about their religion, show them what’s right from wrong and explain the peaceful message of Islam, he added. (Source: Al Jazeera)

From a secular perspective, teaching religion in a secular educational institution may be a debatable issue. Germany’s Muslims, however, seem to be asking for their children to be taught an Islam that is open to the full scrutiny of secular authorities.

The Saudi royalty has for decades promoted Wahhabism, a rigid intolerant version of Islam that according to many Muslims has provided the breeding ground for Muslim extremism. And the same Saudis who along with the US were the main sponsors of "Islamic extremism" in the more recent period, host their first international counter-terrorism conference. Questions are beginning to be asked about the link between the terrorism that they first nurtured and now want to fight and the Wahhabi brand of Islam that the Saudi dynasty proclaimed in their own country and exported across the Islamic world.

Only days after the conference, Riyadh becomes the first city to vote in the only nationwide elections that have been held since the modern Saudi kingdom was founded three quarters of a century ago. It is an election where Saudi women, who hoped to stand as candidates, are even denied the right to vote. But as one commentator put it, "it’s a precedent, the beginning of something."

February 2 (Canada):

The Muslim Canadian Congress, a Toronto-based grassroots organisation, welcomes a proposed legislation that redefines marriage to include same-sex partners, and urges Muslims and other minority groups to stand in solidarity with gays and lesbians. "This legislation is not about religion; it is about fundamental and universal human rights that are a guarantee that all Canadians, irrespective of their religious or ethnic background, feel part of the same family," a spokesperson explains. (See page 16.)

"Fanaticism is the root of Muslim backwardness," declares Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the faculty of Shari’a and Law at the University of Qatar, in a long interview first published in a Qatar daily. Much of what else Al-Ansari has to say in his two-part interview would have been considered absolute heresy not long ago. (See page 13.)

January (USA):

At an ‘Islamic Art Conference’ held in Oakland, California, Marvin X, a distinguished poet, playwright and essayist of the Black Arts Movement, challenges the fellow artists present: "Be revolutionary and, yes, disobedient. To hell with those who desire to suppress Muslim art, they are the backward ones, they are the evil ones and must be opposed by, yes, any means necessary."

Lamenting the fact that "so much that goes for Islam is ancient and primitive," he asks, "How can we possess "supreme wisdom" yet have nothing, behave as spiritual slaves to any storefront Imam with a rote memory of Al-Koran?" Marvin X ends with an impassioned plea: "Let a Martin Luther Muslim arise to destroy idols of ignorance and suppression of creativity. Yes, let everything praise Allah, from the flute to the lute, from the dancer to the poet."

December 2004 (Canada):

The Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) launches a staunch campaign challenging an official proposal to allow Muslims in Ontario province to use their religious law in the settling of family and inheritance disputes. (It’s somewhat like Canadian Muslims having their own family laws, as Indian Muslims do.) CCMW argues that this would in practice work to the detriment of Muslim women and take away from them the rights they enjoy under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In his campaign for the general elections in Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi proclaims that Islam, which has come to be associated with violence and extremism, was in urgent need of reformulation. His ‘Islam Hadhari’ (‘Progressive Islam’) electoral plank ensures an unprecedented 90 per cent seats to his coalition while his opposition, the fundamentalist Islamic Party (PAS), is routed.

February 2004 (Morocco):

Muslim majority Morocco enacts a new family code that makes women equal partners in marriage and family life. The new code rejects the notion that the husband is head of the family and that women are mere underlings in need of guidance and protection. Significantly, every change in the law is justified - chapter and verse - from the Koran, and from the examples and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. And every change has the consent of religious scholars. Even Islamist political organisations in the country welcome the change.

If in Malaysia the impetus for reform within Islam comes from the top, Indonesia is taking the bottom-up route, says Pakistan-born, London-based Ziauddin Sardar, columnist and author of several books on Islam. According to him, the drive for change in Indonesia post 9/11 has been led by the Muhammadiyah, an intellectuals-led body and Nahdlatul Ulema, an organisation of religious scholars. Being the two largest and most influential Muslim organisations in the country, they command between 60 and 80 million followers in mosques, schools and universities throughout Indonesia. Also engaged in a similar task is the newly formed Liberal Islam Network, whose membership consists largely of young Muslims.

All three organisations, says Sardar, have two main concerns: one, de-emphasis on the formality and symbolism that has drained Islam of its ethical and humane dimension; two, separation of the formal links between Islam (Shariah) and politics.

In short, the clamour for change within the world of Islam, which is being articulated in a variety of ways and at different levels, is spread across countries and continents. If the State is the primary actor in Muslim-majority countries like Malaysia, Morocco and Kuwait, Muslim organisations commanding the allegiance of millions are in the forefront in Indonesia. And in countries where the Muslims constitute a minority – India, America, Canada – the voices for change are as yet those of a "minority within a minority". The common factor uniting such diverse initiatives is the quest for change.

As is only to be expected, radical change, or the demand for it at the ground level, necessarily goes hand-in-hand with the battle of ideas. In the context of the Islam and democracy debate, and given constraints of space, here is some limited food for thought from two contributors to the process: an Islamic scholar, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, and the activist-intellectual, Ziauddin Sardar

An-Na’im is a professor at Emory University School of Law, USA. While intellectuals and scholars normally concern themselves with the bipartite relationship between religion and State, An-Na’im puts forward a theory of the tripartite relationship between religion, State and politics. His is an interesting theory in so far as it puts forward an "Islamic argument" for the necessity of a clear separation between religion and State that is sure to make the ulema uncomfortable. But it also supports an active role for Islam in politics that is not likely to make many secularists happy.

An-Na’im’s fundamental argument against an ‘Islamic State’ based on the Shariah is simple. For him, as for many other Muslims, both fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and the Shariah (Islamic principles) being the product of human interpretation of the Koran, and the Sunnah (or Hadith), in a particular historical context, are open to risks of human error and influence of ideological or political bias. In other words, the Shariah can in no way be considered divine. The administrative and legislative wings of any State claiming to rule according to the Shariah necessarily pick and choose from the vast and complex Shariah corpus. Since a State expresses the political will of the ruling elite, "whatever is enacted and enforced by the State is the political will of the ruling elite, not the religious law of Islam as such."

An "Islamic State", for An-Na’im, is not only conceptually untenable but also highly undesirable: "It is dangerous to confer the sanctity of Islam on the present State with its extensive power to control and regulate far more of the daily lives of citizens and communities than was ever possible."

But at the same time, he argues strongly in favour of a continued and active role of Islam in politics. As Muslims derive their ethical principles and social values from them, the Shariah principles will and must remain in the realm of individual and collective practice of the community as a matter of freedom of religion and belief, and the right to self-determination of Muslims, An-Na’im argues.

In An-Na’im’s idea of "the religious neutrality of the State", the Shariah as such must not be enforced by the State, but nor must it be excluded as a possible source of public policy and legislation. How is this delicate balance to be maintained? By making any proposed Shariah-inspired legislation "subject to the fundamental constitutional/human rights of all citizens, men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims equally and without discrimination". An-Na’im is the first to agree that for this to work in practice, certain aspects of the Shariah would have to be reformed, reformulated.

But reform of the Shariah is no easy task, Ziauddin Sardar argues in a thought-provoking article he wrote about two years ago. In it he diagnoses the freezing of Islamic history and the deep-rooted ossification of the Muslim mind as a consequence of the three self-inflicted "metaphysical catastrophes" compounded by the malaise of "endless reduction".

The three metaphysical catastrophes: the elevation of the Shariah to the level of the divine, with the consequent removal of agency from the believers, and the equation of Islam with the State.

By mistakenly treating man-made Shariah as something divine and therefore immutable, the Muslim sets himself a trap from which he can never escape. If all laws have been enunciated for all time centuries ago, a Muslim has no need to think. And once the State is accepted as the guardian of Shariah, tyranny is the only possible outcome.

The endless reductions:

"In early Islam, an alim was anyone who acquired ilm, or knowledge, described in a broad sense. So all learned men, scientists as well as philosophers, scholars as well as theologians, constituted the ulema (plural of alim). But after the ‘gates of ijtihad’ were closed during the Abbasid era (centuries ago), ilm was increasingly reduced to religious knowledge and the ulema came to constitute only religious scholars."

Similarly, the idea of ijma, the central notion of communal life in Islam, has been reduced to the consensus of a select few. "Ijma literally means consensus of the people. The concept dates back to the practice of Prophet Muhammad himself as leader of the original polity of Muslims. When the Prophet wanted to reach a decision, he would call the whole Muslim community – then, admittedly not very large – to the mosque. A discussion would ensue; arguments for and against would be presented. Finally, the entire gathering would reach a consensus. Thus, a democratic spirit was central to communal and political life in early Islam. But over time the clerics and religious scholars have removed the people from the equation – and reduced ijma to ‘the consensus of the religious scholars’. Not surprisingly, authoritarianism, theocracy and despotism reign supreme in the Muslim world."

"The concept of Ummah, the global spiritual community of Muslims, has been reduced to the ideals of a nation state: ‘my country right or wrong’ has been transposed to read ‘my Ummah right or wrong’... Jihad has now been reduced to the single meaning of ‘Holy War’. This translation is perverse not only because the concept’s spiritual, intellectual and social components have been stripped away, but it has been reduced to war by any means, including terrorism. So anyone can now declare jihad on anyone, without any ethical or moral rhyme or reason. Nothing could be more perverted, or pathologically more distant from the initial meaning of jihad. Its other connotations, including personal struggle, intellectual endeavour, and social construction have all but evaporated."

If metaphysical catastrophes and endless reduction have together "transformed the cherished tenants of Islam into instruments of militant expediency and moral bankruptcy", how is Muslim society to regenerate itself?

"It is now obvious that Islam itself has to be rethought, idea by idea," argues Sardar. "We need to begin with the simple fact that Muslims have no monopoly on truth, on what is right, on what is good, on justice, nor the intellectual and moral reflexes that promote these necessities. Like the rest of humanity, we have to struggle to achieve them using our own sacred notions and concepts as tools for understanding and reshaping contemporary reality… Primarily, this requires Muslims, as individuals and communities, to reclaim agency. To insist on their right and duty, as believers and knowledgeable people, to interpret and reinterpret the basic sources of Islam. To question what now goes under the general rubric of Shariah, to declare that much of fiqh is now dangerously obsolete, to stand up to the absurd notion of an Islam confined by a geographically bound State. We cannot, if we really value our faith, leave its exposition in the hands of under-educated elites, religious scholars whose lack of comprehension of the contemporary world is usually matched only by their disdain and contempt for all its ideas and cultural products."

Sardar’s argument about rethinking Islam, idea by idea, includes a radical redefinition of the notion of the Ummah. For the now reformed Anwar Ibrahim, the Ummah is not ‘merely the community of all those who profess to be Muslims’; rather, it is a ‘moral conception of how Muslims should become a community in relation to each other, other communities and the natural world’. "Which means Ummah incorporates not just the Muslims, but justice-seeking and oppressed people everywhere," Sardar concludes.

Muslims clearly have miles to go. While there are visible signs of change on the ground, the obvious roadblocks to the Muslim mind are also easy to see. If change is palpable in Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslims of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, among others) have a long, long way to go. If anything, while Pakistan still seems poised on the precipice, Bangladesh appears headed towards the extremist abyss.

On a different level altogether, the Bush administration is sure to make every Muslim reformists job that much more difficult. Having taken it upon themselves to bring democracy to the world, a concept paper prepared by an American think tank, RAND Corporation, divides the world of Islam into Good Muslims (‘Modern’, ‘Secular’), Bad Muslims (‘Traditional’) and the Worst Muslims (‘Extremists’). The idea is to cultivate, support, patronise, utilise the first three to fulfil two American objectives: one, to marginalise, uproot the extremists; two, to ensure that reformed Islam is America-friendly.

And since the American administration shows no sign of reforming itself, in addition to the uphill task that they face in any case, modern and secular Muslims run the additional hazard of being maligned as "American agents".