The gist of this article-
1. As Islam, specially the Sunni Islam, which is the main branch of Islam has no central authority akin to Roman Catholic Church, so it is not possible to reform Islam in line of Christianity. Lack of central authority after the abolishment of Caliphate is also problematic as there is no one to guide Muslims towards the correct path and away from extremist sects.
2.Contrary to the western scholars who think, current Islam is equivalent of pre-reformation era Christianity, it is actually correspond to the period of post-reformation Christendom when Catholic and Protestant as well as various Protestant sects were at each other's throat and branded each other heretics and fought genocidal warfare. Current chaos in some part of Islamic world, extremist and rigid interpretation of Islam and violent Jihadist gangs propping up here and there have much resemblance with Europe during Thirty years war. In Muslim world, now conservative Islamists, violent Jihadists, secularists, liberal reformists all are enjoying varying degree of support among the Muslim masses.
3. What Muslims need to free themselves from rigid dogmatism and intolerance is not reformation but enlightenment. Muslims do not need a reformist like Martin Luthar but enlightened figures like John Locke. With the absence of central authority, the modern nation states which Muslims around the world have overwhelmingly embraced could serve as the catalyst of this positive transformation. Democratic Muslim states even the enlightened despot/monarchy like Jordan and Morocco can guide Muslims towards the path of enlightenment.
4. As Islam is a legalist religion like Judaism and unlike Christianity, it can take inspiration from Jewish enlightenment rather than the Christian enlightenment. It can emulate religion friendly English path to enlightenment rather than anti-religious French enlightenment. To proceed in this path, it is necessary that Democracy, universal public education and free media take strong hold among the Muslim nations.
4. Last and not least, people should not take the darkest force within the Muslims as the true essence of Islam and arrive at a pessimistic conclusion. Muslim world are on the same road of enlightenment that experienced by Western Christian and Jews earlier. But it will take some more decades.
Right, and well if you want to follow the original books like Quran and few Hadiths that aren't contradictory to Quran , then I think extremism or intolerance have no place in mainstream Islam.
The problem lies on many hadiths and later days Ijma and Qyaas.
Like you can't find capital punishment for
adultery in entire Quran. Although adultery null your marriages . And you even don't have to be a Muslim to divorce an adulterous wife , everyone on this earth will do so!
Later days hadiths ( a huge numbers are actually forged but it's prohibited to confess ) , Ijma ,Qyaas made thing worse.
Like one of Bukhari Hadith claims that black carway can cure every disease other than death !
Does it make sense ? Well since you are a doctor ,I will leave it to you.
You will not find the
three talaq system at once in Quran , it later came through a weak ( or forged ) Hadith.
Some say that Hazrat Umar Ibnul Khattab did Ijma on it , but the reality is , that time some people used to give talaq and take wife back , as if it was a game .
Umar was angry and gave the fatwa that you can't take wives back , later Umar regretted for this and stopped .
Deobandis ( as well as other hanafis ) don't recognize the later part ,only accept first part that Umar performed the Ijma and still issuing fatwa.