For some cosmic reason, I have encountered over ten references to the word ‘progressive’ in relationship to Islam and Muslims in a period of just 24 hours.

I will summarize all these references to one simple line: “Muslims need to change Islam.”

Muslims have realized for a long time that something is wrong and things need to change, but what is it, and how to resolve the problem?

It seems that every one of us has pointed our finger to a problem, and now even the Western media is joining in on the finger pointing. Everyone is out to find the enemy.

One thing is clear, the enemy of the West is not the Islam of the majority of Muslims today. The West would be in a great deal of trouble if it had to deal with one billion people bent on it’s destruction.

So the West has blamed ‘extremist’ Islam, but what is this ‘extremism’? Is it the militant religion of Osama bin Laden or is it the strict rule of law imposed by Saudi Arabia? The two often seem to blend together as one and then separate, when convenient. From the Ayatollah of Iran to the Taliban we cannot seem to generalize this word enough, it crosses sectarian boundaries within Islam as easily as international boundaries.

The use of the term “extremist Muslim” makes another subtle accusation: Islam has problems at its core. Only problematic doctrines have extremists; for example, the term “extremist” is unheard of in relation to the American constitution. An extreme ‘constitutionalist’ would only be a welcome person to American politics, potentially even a presidential candidate. Who would not want to go to extremes in the values proposed by the constitution? Similarly, any decent religion should have no problem with such extremists, who should be those who dedicate their lives to understanding and upholding the religions values.

Occasionally, we define the enemy using another term, ‘fundamentalist’. Muslims cringe at the word fundamentalist, since it seems to insinuate that those who remain true to the fundamentals are misguided. Reading a description of the origin of the term fundamentalist draws the reader to a Protestant movement which is quite similar to Islam in its high regard for sacred text. Since one of the key aspects of being Muslim is to believe in the Divine nature of the Qur’an, those who criticize Muslims this way instantly lose credibility among a Muslim audience.

If these terms fail utterly at defining the problem for Muslims, then maybe the enemy is a moving target. It seems there are more than a few players involved in the game, and each of them has chosen a different enemy. The governments of the West fear militants: those ready to die for their causes and destabilize economies in the process. Feminists simply fear the possibility of any government which imposes veils on women. Proponents of democracy see current ‘Islamic’ regimes as oppressive towards their people in a variety of ways.

These are largely superficial concerns, a traditional Muslim sees the real enemy as a lack of knowledge about Islam. Reading the history of Islam, it is obvious that Islam is what rescued the Arab people from a period of ignorance quite similar to the backwardness we see today. The values of traditional Islam allowed a great empire to flourish with scientific advancements along with spiritual and philosophical debate.

However, traditional Islam has not been implemented fully in any society for two hundred years. Today we have states implementing Islam half-way, especially where it is convenient to their own local cultural influences. Today, traditional Islam is defined and maintained in the minds and hearts of our scholars. The books and texts that embody traditional thought are largely out of the reach of American/European Muslims and the western media. These texts are written in classical Arabic and little work has been done to translate them.

This vacuum of literature and understanding of traditional Islam has caused American Muslims to join one of two camps: the Wahabi/Salafi philosophy and the Progressives. Both of which allow for free self-interpretation of source texts, disregarding the works of a thousand years of scholarship.

This break from tradition has allowed the Wahabi’s/Salafi’s to come to radical new conclusions that are to be implemented with the same zeal and authority as if they were the literal word of God. Those who come from such a background have been considered the true ‘extremists’ by traditional Muslims. They range from the teenager who is ready to accuse his parents of the highest sins in Islam (shrik, kufr, bidaa’t) to the militant who has somehow justified killing of civilians to himself. When traditionalists refer to extremism, it is therefore not at all hinting that Islam has a core deficiency, but that this new sect and philosophy is unbounded by the rules of traditional learning. These people are not extremist Muslims, but extremist heretics.

The other alternative, Progressivism, simply desires for Islam to become a pseudo-religion, a metaphor for a cultural identity rather than a reference to a distinct understanding of God and His will on earth and moral human behavior. The Progressives look at the same source texts as the Salafi’s and come to much milder conclusions about what Islam is. Similar to the Salafi’s they occasionally question the very validity of the source texts when it does not suit their end conclusion. Interestingly enough, for all the similarities between Progressives and the ideals of the West, a traditionalist would consider them equally as extreme as the militants described earlier.

Is the answer really to change Islam as these groups have? To me, it seems that a desire to change has been the problem all along. The extremist militants have been trying to change Islam for over a century, and like the Progressives, they have had their share of converts to their cause. What do these groups both have in common? They want to ’start over’, defining Islam anew by throwing out the value of a millennia of traditional scholarship. Salafi’s, Militants and Progressives want to claim the title of Muslims and Islam for their own, redefining it in their own image.

We have decided to change so much that we have forgotton what it is we are changing. Traditional Islam is all but completely un-represented in today’s media and barely acknowledged by our political leaders.

Out of all the possibilities of change (militant, conservative and liberal) the Western media has displayed an intense desire to align itself with the liberal. This movement has easily found those that are willing to take up its flag, and share in the profits. “Progressive Muslims” have emerged from the sons and daughters of immigrants to the United States, with their doves of peace aimed at the West. Unfortunately, their backs are to the East and to the Kabaa’.

Using buzzwords such as “pluralism” and “secularism” in conjunction with Islam, Progressive Muslims have drawn the attention of media outlets and publishers. Unfortunately for these people, bookstores are their pulpit and non-Muslims are their students, since they would not be taken seriously in any Muslim community. Who can take seriously the suggestion that Muslims, en masse, abandon a millennia’s worth of classical texts, rational thought, and religious debate between the great intellects of Islamic history?

At least it seems they are honest about their intentions of throwing out tradition, whereas the Wahabi/Salafi philosophy continues to play games with uneducated Muslims, using their long beards and quotes from source texts to give the illusion that they are the only scholarship worth talking about.

Rather than spending time talking about changing Islam, we need to emphasize a dialogue with the West and Muslims to begin understanding what traditional Islam really is and how it was practiced. Introducing more change will only throw gasoline on the fire, the last thing Muslims need is another century of chaos.