Free Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism by Omid Safi

to undertaking the transformation and reformation of the social and spiritual order, it is also necessary to mourn the injustices that we have willingly and unwillingly participated in. Failure to do so always runs the risk of reformers getting caught in arrogance and self-righteousness.
In Arabic, as in other Semitic languages, most nouns are based on a triliteral root system which is then applied to different forms to yield slightly different shades of meaning. Both jihad and ijtihad come from the triliteral root ja-ha-da .
Quotes of Gandhi , 99.
It is significant that in this Mu‘tazili interpretation, ‘adl did not stand for an abstract principle of justice, but rather was seen as being directly related to human free will. If human beings were not free to choose between good and evil, then God would be unjust in punishing us for actions that we are not ultimately responsible for. See W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Oxford: Oneworld, 1998), 231.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. , ed. James M. Washington (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1986; reprint, 1991), 633.
The Qur’an uses the phrase bani adam , literally “children of Adam,” on at least seven separate occasions to refer to the totality of humanity: 7:26, 7:27, 7:31, 7:35, 7:172, 17:70,
    and 36:60. “Thus we have honored the children of Adam. . .”
The Rose Garden. Shaykh Muslih al-Din Sa‘di, Gulistan , ed. Muhammad Khaza’ili (Tehran: Intisharat-i Javidan, 1361/1982), 190. Translation is mine.
Mawlana Jalal al-Din Balkhi Rumi, Masnavi-yi Ma‘navi , ed. R.A. Nicholson (Tehran: Intisharat-i Nigah, 1371/1992), 532. This line is found in the third book of the Masnavi, line 4726 of the Nicholson Persian edition.
Quotes of Gandhi , 25.
Translation is from R. Walzer, “Islamic Philosophy,” cited in Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (Delmar, NY: Caravan, 1964), 11. This same sentiment is echoed by many other Muslim philosophers.
Only half jokingly, I like to refer to these last two figures as “the two holy Bobs.”
Abdullahi A. an-Na‘im, Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International Law (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990).
Robin Wright, “An Iranian Luther Shakes the Foundations of Islam” , The Guardian , February 1, 1995 (quoted from the Los Angeles Times , January 1995). Available online through Soroush’s own website: http://www.seraj.org/guard.htm.
There were of course some exceptions, and there are records of women teachers and students at madrasas who were usually still required to teach from behind a screen to an audience of male pupils.
I am here referring to the different corpus of hadith collections that contain the statements of the Prophet Muhammad.
Among contemporary Muslim authors, one of the most eloquent critics of authoritarian tendencies has been Khaled Abou El Fadl, particularly in his Speaking in God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority, and Women (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001) as well as his And God Knows the Soldiers: The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001).
To be fair, one has to admit that the very nature of the web does allow for greater flexibility of scholarly and activist presentations of Islam than in the realm of pamphlets, which tend to be dominated by neo-Wahhabi interpretations. Despite what has been called the “digital divide,” there are great opportunities for Muslim communities and individuals to place their views on the web, even if they do not have access to costly printing and distribution resources. Today we find Muslim websites devoted not just to literalist interpretations of Islam, but also to women’s groups, social justice organizations, peace movements, gay and lesbian Muslim groups, and Sufi communities.
The Dalai Lama, A Policy of