Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

within the Sunni or Shia branches (a division that was not originally theological in nature, but was essentially a dispute over succession). Instead, there is conformity. There is no Reform or Reconstructionist Islam, as there is in Judaism. Rather, like the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, Islam is still persecuting heretics.
    Consider this admonition from a Roman Catholic professor of theology, David Bonagura, who notes that Catholic worship is often considered more “stoic” compared with the “energy” of Protestant services, but who goes on to say that these “different styles are pathways to faith,” adding that “we need not think our preferred religious experience should be shared by everyone else.” 9 How many Muslim clerics today would dare say such a thing?
    In no other modern religion is dissent still a crime, punishable by death. When a conservative Jewish rabbi said in a Modern Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Washington, D.C., that Orthodox Judaism needs female rabbis, he was not denounced. A few people in the audience even applauded. When Pope Francis broached the idea of toleration for homosexuals within the Catholic Church, there was heated disagreement, but no violence, and no one called for his overthrow or death.
    By contrast, consider the case of Hamza Kashgari, a twenty-three-year-old Saudi man, who in 2013 was accused of blasphemy and threatened with death for having openly challenged the authority of the Prophet Muhammad. What did Kashgari do that was so reprehensible? On the eve of the Prophet’s birthday, he addressed a series of tweets directly to Muhammad. In an almost immediate response, Saudi sheiks took to YouTube to demand his execution; a Facebook group demanding his death had ten thousand “friends” within one week—not surprising perhaps when one considers that Saudi Arabia’s homegrown Twitter heroes are clerics such as Muhammad al-Arifi, who cannot enter any European nation because of his unabashed support for wife-beating and his hatred of Jews. (Al-Arifi has 10.7 million Twitter followers.)
    Kashgari, a newspaper columnist from the port city of Jeddah on the Red Sea, promptly deleted his tweets and fled to Malaysia, where he was detained in the departure hall of Kuala Lumpur International Airport by police as he tried to board a flight to New Zealand. He was soon thereafter repatriated to Saudi Arabia.
    What had he written in 140 characters that was so blasphemous? The answer is this:
    On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity surrounding you. I shall not pray for you. 10
    He also posted: “On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.” And finally: “I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.” 11
    For these innocent words, clerics rose up to demand Kashgari’s death for the crime of apostasy, and King Abdullah ordered a warrant for his arrest. It did not matter that Kashgari had apologized and erased his tweets. He was jailed. And although he was freed some eight months later, he has effectively been silenced.
    This is a young man who grew up in a conservative religious home, who was doing no more than testing and feeling about the contours of his faith. He did not reject Islam, Allah, or the Prophet. His words merely sought to humanize a religious icon. And for this he was jailed.
    The Unexpected Reformation
    For many years, Western writers have dreamed of a Muslim Reformation. None has come. Accordingly, most observers of the Islamic world today have given up on the idea. But I believe that a Reformation is not merely imminent; it is now under way. The Protestant Reformation itself erupted quite suddenly. With Islam, with equal suddenness, the change