[link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54509-2002Jan2.html|Why not to give up on Islam per se just yet]

Excerpt:

I belong to a third camp that refuses bin Laden's options of being on his side or with the "infidels." I am fed up with the self-pity and self-denial that for too long have paralyzed Muslim thinking. By constantly blaming Western conspiracies for our ills we fuel our own helplessness. Strength is the essence of introspection.

We must make that introspection public. We should not be ashamed to question out loud. Muslims love to remind the world that the Islamic empire at its height stretched from Morocco to China. That we gave the world Avicenna, Averroes and the concept of zero. That at its founding, Islam gave women more rights than any other religion or social system.

All that is true, and I have shared in that pride. But by pointing to our achievement and not to our shortcomings we give in to what I call the Pyramid curse. I am from Egypt, home to the Great Pyramids of Giza. When I lived in Cairo I would swell with pride whenever I saw those magnificent structures. But that pride was often tempered with sadness that their magnificence was a reminder of what Egypt used to be. They are three gauntlets thrown down nearly 5,000 years ago by a golden dynasty whose splendor we strain to understand, let alone better.

Some may question who I am to speak for Muslims. My answer is who is bin Laden? He received no formal religious education but took it upon himself to represent us. He does not represent me. I am a Muslim woman who is wrestling with her faith and questioning its meaning for me today. It is equally my right to speak out.

About 10 years ago, I went through a crisis of faith that swept away lazy answers and made me realize how much work it takes to keep my faith viable. For inspiration I turned to Muslim scholars whom I considered revolutionaries. They were reinterpreting Islam by looking at it squarely with modern eyes. They dared to utter the R-word -- reformation.

One of these books was "Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and International Law," by Abdullahi An-Na'im, an Emory University law professor. I recently turned once more to his book and wrote to Prof. An-Na'im to seek his advice.

He wrote back to tell me that he was about to oversee a new program that includes supporting nine fellows over the next three years to promote human rights in their own communities from an Islamic perspective.

Muslims in America are fortunate because we are free to debate without risking our lives. Prof. An-Na'im's book presents and builds upon ideas of Sudanese Muslim jurist Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. The Sudanese government publicly executed Taha in January 1985. Many Muslims consider Taha's ideas controversial because of their espousal of reform, but they offer a welcome alternative to the fundamentalists, whose ideas too often go unchallenged.