Islam Is In Desperate Need Of A Reformation

Christians had one. Jews had one. Now Islam needs to catch up and align responsibly with the modern world.

Image from Rawpixels

Last year I wrote my highest-performing Substack so far, my critical 2025 Is Not Shaping Up To Be A Good Year For Muslims. I took a lot of heat for it, ironically, not from angry Muslims but from others who damned me for not being critical enough.

I hope they saved some venom for radical Islamists as we head into 2026.

Antisemitism is partying like it’s 1935 driven primarily by a historical widespread culture of violent hatred in its heart, the Middle East. Islam is a religion of violence, as its predecessors once were, but it doesn’t have to be.

The Islamic world needs to fix itself. Now. Like its sister religions have done.

Radical Muslims

In December, father-and-son team Sajid and Naveed Akram turned Australia’s Bondi Beach into a shooting gallery for Hannukah celebrants. An unarmed man brought Junior down—just like in the gun-mad United States, where the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man without one.

Predictably, the two gunmen were Islamic State fanboys. But: The hero is a Muslim himself named Ahmed al-Ahmed who migrated from Syria in 2006. “My son is a hero. He served in the police, he has the passion to defend people,” his father is quoted as saying. “I’m proud that my son was helping people, rescuing people,” added his mother.

I mean, they must have known by this point he was saving primarily Jews. I hope he doesn’t become the target of extremists.

In Toronto, three young men planned to kill women and Jews and attempted two alleged kidnappings this past summer. One of them has been charged with, among other things, conspiracy to commit murder as encouraged by ISIS. In the U.K., police foiled what they described as “one of, if not the, deadliest terrorist attacks in UK history” targeting Jews planned by a couple of IS fanboys for this past October.

At Christmas, the IS instructed its faithful to kill Christians and Jews, to turn it into a ‘season of terror’. A few tried in Los Angeles and North Carolina.

To my knowledge, neither Jewish nor Christian groups have issued any similar ‘back atcha’ calls for murder and mayhem of Muslims.

There are plenty of ‘good Muslims’ in the world like the al-Ahmeds, but unfortunately, jihad-addled followers of the Prophet lead the world in harming others. According to Fondation pour L’Innovation Politique, a French think tank, Islamist attacks have killed nearly 250,000 people between 1979 and April 2024 (this includes wars and insurgencies). Not surprisingly, people in Islamic countries are most at risk.

The Real War On Christmas - The Free Press

Islam needs a Reformation

Islam isn’t the problem. Modern Muslims’ unwillingness to resolve ancient doctrines with an open, democratic world committed to essential human rights are. Do I need to spell it out? Violence is bad. Peace is good. That’s the difference. Islam needs a Reformation.

Christians had one in the sixteenth century, and Jews in the 19th century. They brought both religions more in-line with the modern world, recognizing personal freedom, the rights of the individual, and embracing a less murderous view of religious competitors.

Since Christian and Jewish doctrine have been at one time, violent, but today much more peaceful, Muslims must similarly reconcile. Most go about their daily lives while managing not to murder anyone, just like everyone else. They prefer to distance ‘those people’ from themselves and pretend jihadism has nothing to do with them, as though the religious umbrella stretches only enough to cover themselves. Young men are prone to radicalization of one sort or another no matter what religion they are (or not), particularly when they’re unemployed and/or living in a country with weak governance and security. For the Muslims who can speak out, do they? Do they teach their own sons that violence is not acceptable in our family?

There’s no such thing as an ‘honor killing’ for family terrorists.

It’s simplistic to claim ‘most Muslims don’t approve of or support terrorism’. A more granular question would be, “Where do Muslims fall on the spectrum of support for terrorism, from 1-10?” Such a yardstick would offer a more nuanced view of who does and doesn’t support it, and by how much. One can support, collaborate with, and finance terrorism without personally killing anyone by enabling the radicals. Others don’t speak out, afraid of ‘stigmatizing’ their religion, or of putting their families in danger. (Why?) As a result, extremists get away with as much as the surrounding culture allows.

And that’s the key: The culture. Many ‘good Muslims’ exist inside a culture that has not modernized enough to give them the freedom to call out the crazy fun-demented-lists. The culture is as much their responsibility as those of the terrorist recruiters.

When Christians in the United States complained to me, “Don’t judge us by those awful fundamentalists! They don’t stand for what we’re about! They’re such embarrassments!” I’d counter, “Do you stand up to them? Do you challenge them? Do you point out their non-Biblical, non-Gospel-oriented values or beliefs?”

No, no they hadn’t. And they didn’t even have to worry about armed cross-bearing Crusader wannabes showing up on their front porch to behead them for their ‘blasphemies’.

“Silence sounds an awful lot like assent,” I noted. “If it’s not, speak up!”

It’s not Islamophobic to say You’re not doing enough!

The dangers of Reformation

Martin Luther’s life was worth nothing after his excommunication for challenging the very foundations of Catholic authority and practices. Once a heretic, anyone could legally kill him without consequence, but a sympathetic nobleman faked his kidnapping and hid him in his castle.

This occurred during the most brutal period of the European Dark Ages, amidst socially-acceptable public violence and executions. Like breaking on the wheel, one of the most excruciating (and publicly popular) executions for the worst of the worst.

Luther’s German Reformation, followed by a parallel effort in Switzerland, served to remove the focus from the all-powerful clergy who didn’t want the common man to read the Bible for fear he’d ‘misinterpret’. The movements later rejected theological violence and embraced separation of church and state, along with ‘just war’ theory, which defined how to determine whether a war is truly just. The West eventually ended judicial torture in the 18th and 19th centuries, heavily influenced by Enlightenment thinkers partially emboldened by Christian reformers.

Christian Reformation has long since trimmed away non-Biblically-supported practices introduced via selective priestly interpretation, and recognized where their sacred texts fall short. Like the uncomfortable fact that the Son of God himself promoted compassionate slavery rather than calling for its elimination.

Violence and death are the risks serious Islamic reformers also face from jihadist death cults like Hamas and IS and isolated ‘lone wolves’ committed to destroying Western civilization. They justify killing unbelievers (including those of their faith who disagree with them), and who welcome death as it sends them, they believe, to a glorious afterlife with, of course, those famous six dozen virgins.

Danger defines rebellion: Luther faced a powerful and violent Catholic Church, while the power against Muslims today rests in the hands of corrupt governments wielding self-serving Koranic interpretations, and crazed young men with nothing to lose, since they win even when they die in battle.

Human rights violations continue to stain the Muslim world: Political imprisonment, suppression of free speech, child marriage, and denial of body autonomy (women, gays, transfolk, children). British Pakistani Muslims engage in sex trafficking while their communities look the other way; they’re ‘only’ white girls, after all, and ‘stigmatizing’ a ‘marginalized community’ is worse, apparently, than organized child rape.

Abroad, Islamic countries’ various challenges include ongoing or worsening economic problems, poor education systems, poor governance, corruption, economic inequality, low literacy rates, and especially gender inequality, a huge driver for keeping many Islamic countries figuratively stuck in the desert. Where women prosper, so prospers the nation.

Islamic reform’s greatest challenge after the risk of violent retribution, is one many Muslims want the least: The separation of mosque and state. Human rights demand more open, liberty-oriented governments. When religious authorities freeze interpretation, when enforcers, clerical or terrorist, crack down on dissent, and most importantly, when theology’s greatest strength is political power—violence ensues and human rights disappear.

Policies and sacred dogma, for any Reformation, must become fair game. The Catholic Church has never been as powerful since Luther. It’s a less violent world as a result.

The Jewish Reformation, by comparison, was much less dramatic. They weren’t a violent people anymore, not since their Biblical glory days. They were the persecuted minority everywhere they wandered. Yet still they modernized.

Minor Islamic Reforms

Some Islamic leaders are making real efforts to alleviate radicalization in the young. Violent extremists recruit free-floating rebellious young people; if they’re spotted early, there’s hope for intervention.

‘Good Muslims’ must drive the Reformation movement because the jihadists belong to them.

The meaning of jihad is a major obstacle, which for some means waging a personal struggle within yourself for self-improvement and greater moral integrity, while the more authoritarian interpretation emphasizes violent response and warfare.

Islamic modernization movements have embraced low-level reforms, but have yet to embrace major reforms that would align it better with a West that clearly sees its flaws. Which are primarily: Violence; jihadism; gender inequality; violence against homosexuals; and ancient, endemic antisemitism.

Westerners must begin scrutinizing Muslim immigrants to identify refugees for the ability to assimilate, without demanding they abandon their religious culture which, sorry haters, isn’t all bad, not by a long shot. Will these new permanent residents and citizens teach their children and grandchildren to take advantage of their new open societies offering greater economic opportunity, or will they allow them to succumb to the smorgasbord of violent death cults easily accessed on social media?

Every affiliative group, religious or not, owns their radicals, which flourish only when permitted by lax oversight or tacit agreement.

What to do next?

Helen Pluckrose recently argued in favor of liberalizing Islam, crossing swords with a devout young Muslim who likened the idea to ‘genocide’. Liberalizing Islam, as Helen pointed out, encouraged discarding bad ideas. To which I would add, because she didn’t, keeping the good ones: Bettering yourself, helping the poor, treating orphans well, forgiveness, kindness to one’s neighbors, giving debtors the time to repay their debt, treating your spouse kindly. Yes, there are contradictory verses (like ‘acceptable’ wife-beating) just as there are in the Bible. Blatant contradictions are also reasons why religions need Reformations.

Islam—Muslims—are not, as some believe, ‘hopeless’. The more violent regions in the Middle East look an awful like like Luther’s Europe—violent, filthy, uneducated, deeply oppressive. Reformation starts with separation of religion and state, a hard truth for cultures in which religion is woven deeply into society’s fabric. Furthermore, secularization is a match to the Islamist powder keg.

But let’s sally forth nevertheless with better ideas:

• Re-interpreting ancient texts to purge literalism and align it better with modern values (which don’t necessarily mean 100% liberal values).

• Re-embracing the principles of the European Enlightenment, or Islam’s Golden Age, when education, scientific inquiry, the arts, and philosophy flourished from the 8th to the 13th centuries, in sharp contrast to Dark Age Europe.

• Moving away from cultic glorification of death and emphasizing that God didn’t send humans to earth to die, but to live and make the world a better place.

• Gender equality for sure. Women have proven in the West that we’re as smart, capable, and competent as men. Please, no more shooting girls in the face because they want to go to school.

• An embrace of diversity of thought and opinion, including religious.

• An embrace of the right of all humans to exist, including and especially Jews. The antisemitism of the Islamic world is a clear and present danger to all of us, a primary driver of Islamist terrorism, and no accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ will erase that. Muslims have a long, documented antisemitic history that dates back many centuries before the creation of Israel.

If Muslims can figure out how to reform without democracy, have at it. But no more excuses. This is 2026, not 1106. When you’ve lost liberals like me, time’s a-wastin’.

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