As an American Muslim, I have often been frustrated by the general lack of influence of enlightened thinkers like Tariq Ramadan, Khaled Abou El-Fadl and others on the global community of Muslims. While these thinkers give us intellectual pleasure and inspire deeper insights into our sacred text, their impact is strangely marginal. Ramadan's take on the French situation is incisive, as are his comments on the various ills that plague Muslims today, but as a call to action, they rarely pack a punch. In contrast, any Muslim extremist can drive his followers into a frenzy with a few words like jihad and martyrdom. Unless we moderate Muslims act on our conviction, the extremists will continue to marginalize us and we will continue to play catch-up with them.

Tariq Ramadan gives replies that confirm the futility of attempting to justify basic tenets of Islam in a pluralistic world. It is a code that grew out of battle and the young and dissaffected read it as a battle handbook. In spite of an intolerant and violent beginning, Israel learned to live with its neighbours. Christianity had its reformation and enlightenment. The crusades always were wrong and all christians repudiate the Papal edicts that drew them up. Where is the universal islamic criticism of the the hate that spews from mosques in western cities today.

Women cry out for freedom, mothers for their martyred children while all they hear from Tariq Ramadan are pathetic appeals for patience to work within the system. Islam needs an enlightenment. Like Christianity, Islam needs to see good in the secular and that discourse with God is not a one-way street.

In response to the letter above - regularly, one sees the demand that the muslim world undergo 'enlightenment', and in general, I would say that 'enlightenment' seems like good and attractive stuff - not only for muslims, though. Also, to imply that 'christianity underwent enlightenment' to me seems to confuse issues. Enlightenment, as critical thought - or, restraint in judgment - seems to me to be a good recipe for muslims, christians, jews, atheists - anybody! Let's never forget that none of the spiritual views of life were ever inherently democratic. Even capitalism, which a couple of centuries ago was an important incentive for democracy, can lead to anti-democratic tendencies.

While I don't agree 100% with everything Mr. Ramadan says, I think that pleighton's letter exemplifies the disconnect between the West and Islam better than the interview with Tariq Ramadan itself. Islam, like Judaism, was a cultural and religious reformation of Semitic desert tribes. While the followers of Mohammed had to deal with their surroundings, the Hebrew culture, born in slavery in Egypt, had very much to do with conquering and subduing other Semitic tribes in order to establish Judah and Israel and build the Temple. (See Exodus.) As a Jew, I am well aware that Jehovah, according to the Old Testament, was a self-confessed angry, righteous, jealous, and vengeful God (his words). So one can not say at all that Islam has a monopoly on a problematic ethic such as violence in the defense of religion. (Please remember, for instance, that the Vietnam War was started by a Roman Catholic President to save a Roman Catholic country from its non-Christian, northern factions, and as well that the "troubles" in Northern Ireland were ostensibly about Christianity.)

To say that Israel has learned to live with its neighbors beggars the imagination! In what universe? Does building illegal settlements in the West Bank, attacking cities in the West Bank and Gaza and killing innocent civilians in the process, or invading Lebanon constitute living (I presume you mean peacefully) with its neighbors? Perhaps it does if you live in the Paris suburbs. We all have a long way to go. That is not to say that there are not those in Israel who yearn for and are mobilized for peace and dialogue with their Palestinian brethren. Those folks are just not apparently in the government. Let us not forget that Prime Minister Sharon, the "butcher of Shabra and Shatilla", the prime mover and builder of illegal settlements in the West Bank, is not exactly Mahatma Gandhi but a right wing ideologue who uses violence as a subtext to his message to Palestinians: mind what I say or else. (I do not mean to absolve the Palestinians of their responsibility for violence towards innocent Israeli civilians at all.)

As to the Christian enlightenment, enlightenment is an enviable goal, but hardly the reality, as anyone dealing with the dominionist right-wing and rather vocal Christian groups in the United States will attest. I also include as part of the rather questionable Christian enlightenment the banning of certain professors from their posts at Catholic universities because of Vatican dislike of their theological 'deviance'. Obviously, Islam must learn to appreciate the ferment that arises from its friction with Western values and Western civilization, and hopefully to its eventual betterment. The secular humanism in the West is not necessarily a superior ethos at all to that which tries to develop a workable and sustainable relationship between people and the beautiful and magical aspects of existence in itself, that religions such as Islam attempt.

As another American Muslim, I love to hear these calls for liberalization, modernization, and secularization within our faith; however, I have to agree that these intellectuals have a minimal impact on the process of enlightening Islam.

I've read countless books, articles, and speeches by these liberalizing Muslims. There are even groups that are dedicated to a more rational Islam - see www.muslimwakeup.com for some good reading. We can be as modern and as liberal as we like a Muslims, but fundamentalists/terrorists aren't really found among our ranks to begin with.

The problem as I see it is that even if we do manage to create a secularized Islam, one that is peaceful, thoughful, rational, feminist-loving, and so forth, we're still outnumbered by the ignorant and the fearful - two characteristics that almost guarantee a fundmentalist outlook. There a few hundred thousands of us - there are a billion of them.