I don’t mean to sound as if I’m picking on you—but…

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a very clear idea of the Islam she is speaking about. She grew up in it, she escaped it. She makes no pretense that this is the only form Islam can ever take, but it is the form that is most powerful and influential.

That’s why this group is fighting to get just a little bit of publicity. So here’s what they have to do. They have to name themselves. Moderate Muslim is the name that Westerners hope most Muslims will choose to be. It’s not based on the Koran, not on any rulings by clergy, it just means that they (the theoretical Muslim) feels that co-existence with other cultures is possible and they (the theoretical Muslims) don’t have a terrorist’s definition of Jihad.

Jews have different types of Jewish practice, all theoretically and halachically argued by a founding rabbi. Conservative Jews can tell you exactly where they ritually differ from Orthodox Jews, they can tell you the reasoning behind that difference. The same is true of Reconstructionist Jews and Reform Jews. These are names that Jews have given themselves.

Moderate Muslims will have to do something similar. Clergy has to step forward and say, this is our interpretation of the Koran. We are now called…whatever. This is how we differ from Wahabists, and so on. It doesn’t matter how they feel about the proposed building in New York, or about airport security. Believe it or not, Americans want to know about the Koran and the different ways it can be interpreted.

And this is what the article says:

Jasser said Islam needs to have its own Reformation similar to the one in Catholicism which began centuries ago and separated church and state:

“Our faith has not gone through that process. So as much as Imam Rauf wants to say…that the Constitution is just like sharia law, it may be so in his brain. But wherever sharia gets implemented, it oppresses the rights of minorities and moderate Muslims and Christians and all those who don’t follow the rules of the mullahs.”

So let the process begin.