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

when, at the turn of every century, a renovator arrived, a mujaddid , could Islam revert back to its moment of perfection at the time of its founding, the time of Muhammad. 8 In those terms, it is only the Medina Muslims who can represent themselves as the agents of a Muslim Reformation.
    Today, the most notorious exponent of this kind of “reform,” in the sense of restoration, is the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which proposes to create a new caliphate where the only law is sharia. Adulterers there are stoned to death, infidels beheaded, and thieves mutilated. Indeed, much Islamic State propaganda is like a YouTube upload of a time-travel trip back to the seventh century. If these are the people who claim to be purifying Islam, what chance does real reform stand?
    Who Speaks for Islam?
    Luther’s Reformation was launched against a hierarchical ecclesiastical establishment. When the pope sought to anathematize him, Luther could retort: “I am called a heretic by those whose purses will suffer from my truths.” Islam is different. Unlike Catholicism, Islam is almost entirely decentralized. There is no pope, no College of Cardinals, nothing like the Southern Baptist Convention—no hierarchical structure, no centrally controlled system of ordination. Any man can become an imam; all it takes is a self-professed knowledge of the Qur’an and followers.
    I am always intrigued when on college campuses there are heated demands that an imam or scholar of Islam be present when I speak to offer the “correct” interpretation of Islam. That was the demand of Yale’s Muslim Student Association in September 2014, when I was invited to the university’s campus to give the Buckley Lecture. But whom did they have in mind for this role? A Saudi cleric? An American convert? An Indonesian? An Egyptian? A Sunni? A Shiite? A representative of Islamic State, perhaps? Or how about Zeba Khan, an American Muslim of Indian descent, who was educated at a Jewish day school while also attending a mosque in Toledo, Ohio, where men and women prayed side by side, and who in 2008 started the group Muslims for Obama? Or perhaps they would prefer the British-born lawyer turned imam, Anjem Choudary, who favors the imposition of sharia in Britain and has looked forward to seeing the black flag of IS flying over Parliament? All can legitimately claim to speak for Islam. There is no Muslim pope to say which of them is right.
    In my own Harvard seminar room, a Muslim woman from Egypt became very argumentative. She came to some sessions of my study group and not to others, but was always ready to contradict whatever I was saying. Finally, I asked her about a point that had been made in the assigned reading. She replied: “I haven’t done the assigned reading. I don’t need to. I already know everything.” This goes to the heart of the matter. Paradoxically, Islam is the most decentralized and yet, at the same time, the most rigid religion in the world. Everyone feels entitled to rule out free discussion.
    One of the fiercest critics of my course was a female Sudanese student. Despite never actually attending a single session of the study group, she was completely convinced that everything being said in the classroom was a serious affront to Islam. She was one of a number of Muslim students who lobbied the Kennedy School authorities to have my study group terminated. When one of my colleagues made the point that academic freedom—the freedom to teach and learn about viewpoints and ideas that are fundamentally at odds with others’ beliefs—is the cornerstone of the Western university, she reacted with perplexed hostility. Academic freedom was a concept that seemed to her deplorable if it permitted any questioning of her faith.
    To understand this hostility, it is important to recognize that the long traditions in Judaism and Christianity of passionate debate and agonizing doubt are largely absent in Islam. There are no great schisms