I just finished reading Reza Aslan's recently published book entitled "No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam" I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others. Aslan makes the argument that Islam is, and continues to be, in a constant state of evolution and has been for 1400 years. He shows from that from the earliest revelations, the Prophet was a social reformer and that the ideologies of egalitarianism, human rights and popular sanction of governing bodies is not outside the values of Islam. Aslan goes on to make the case that Islamic terrorism for the most part a symptom not of a clash of civilizations but an internal conflict within the Muslim world.
According to Aslan "We are now living in the twilight of that era of Arab-Islamic reformation. This is a process that began around the time of the colonialist experience, some 100-150 years ago, when Muslims were, for the first time, forced to respond to not just the realities of the modern world -- secularism and modernization, and industrialization -- but also the western cultural hegemony that came part and parcel with the colonialist experience... What we’re seeing now is a natural evolution of this reformation that began then, and which, in essence, is coming to a close."
I am less optimistic, but do subscribe to the idea that the conflicts we tend to see as Islam versus the West are too simplistic. What we are seeing is an internal series of crisis on a global stage. Aslan ends with "“The West is nearly a bystander and an unwary complicit casualty of rivalry that has raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story.” That chapter is being written now, but I am very unsure of the outcome. The book is worth reading.
