Islam places great stress on morality. In a hadith report recorded in the Muwatta of Imam Malik, the Prophet Muhammad is said to have declared: ‘I have been sent to the world to establish the pinnacle of morality.’ Accordingly, the Quran places great stress on social ethics, which includes perseverance, mercy, forgiveness, avoidance of conflict, justice, and benevolence. The Quran exhorts Muslims to be patient and steadfast and not to unnecessarily enter into conflict with others. It repeatedly calls upon Muslims to tolerate difficulties and things that they may dislike, and speaks of heaven as reward for those who remain steadfast. -- Maulana Waris Mazhari

Thirdly, a new ijma (consensus) should be developed on issues that are peculiar to our age and time. If the ulema could do it in the first three centuries of Islam, why not us today? The past ulema’s ijma was limited to their own school; today in a globalised world a much wider consensus across all Islamic schools of thought will have to be developed. Modern means of information and communication technologyhave made it much easier.

In medieval Islamic jurisprudence they used qiyas (analogical reasoning) and ijma, and both are intellectual instruments to solve legal problems. Why can’t we develop new analogies on a global scale today? What passes on as divine in the Sharia law is nothing but local, culturally embedded elements and practices, particularly of the Arab and Persian cultures, as they existed centuries ago. -- Asghar Ali Engineer

New Age Islam is a group of Muslims living in the Middle East and North America who find the thought of supporting Jahiliya completely unacceptable.  Promoting non-violence across the globe, this movement desires to align work that enables the sharing of enlightenment with others and to educate young people about the dangers of being susceptible to misinterpreted beliefs including activities that endanger other Muslims as well as innocent people.
Of utmost importance is the constant emphasis on the Islamic spiritual traditions of tolerance, pluralism and acceptance of multinational-cultures.
The following historical passages, taken directly from  www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamAboutUs.aspx, serves as a reminder of divine wisdom that illuminates a way to live in peace and harmony with all living things.
Mansur al-Hallaj (The Essential Rumi, p. 13)++++
“Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self, or things that have happened to you.  There's no need to go outside. Be melting snow.  Wash yourself of yourself.” (Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, p. 221)   -- Sandra Smith

Sultan Shahin sees New Age Islam as part of a global effort by believers to reclaim Islam from the religious right, and address the questions and conflicts which confront believers in the twenty-first century. “Islam,” he argues, “is a spiritual experience; a system of beliefs through which believers seek to live a meaningful life. For the Islamists, though, religion is primarily a tool through which they seek power. In practice, they worship power, not Allah.”

In a recent essay, Shahin argued that the Islam of the neo-fundamentalists was in fact a “a completely new religion” theologically founded “on a wilful misinterpretation of the Islamic concept of jihad.”

Electronic journals like New Age Islam reach out to a small, but influential, section of India’s Muslims: an emerging class of Muslim professionals and entrepreneurs who are finding that the traditionalist practices of the parents offer few solutions to the struggles of life. Islamists have been adroit at capitalising on their anxieties. Many of India’s jihadists — among them, the leadership of the Indian Mujahideen — came from urban middle class backgrounds and had received a privileged elite education.

West and East

Shahin says he hopes New Age Islam will give this new class a progressive voice. “When the media or the government wants to understand what Muslims think about something,” he says “they’ll always turn to some cleric or the other, not Wipro’s Azim Premji or Himalaya Heath Care’s Meraj Manal or the eminent physicist Israr Ahmed. We need a wider Muslim engagement with public life.”

Shahin’s own understanding of Islam was forged in both India and the West—much like the young audience New Age Islam addresses. -- Praveen Swami, The Hindu, New Delhi

If the shariah can be changed then anything and everything in the Muslim world is amenable to change. Not least in India, where the efforts of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board to declare 'triple talaq' null and void suggest stirrings of a forward movement. But the narrow-minded conservatives , in India as elsewhere, move quasi-statically . For sure, fundamentalism will continue to be with us for some time. But it is totally vacuous, based on nothing more than hateful slogans and, as such, is bound to wither away. Adaptation and emulation of the successful aspects of the Islamic movements in Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey will increasingly become the dominant theme. As in the past, so in the future: the centre of the Muslim world will be slowly but surely transformed from the periphery. -- Ziauddin Sardar

... these ‘reformist’ Muslim scholars revisit traditional Islamic as well as modern Islamist thought, dealing with a wide range of issues: women’s rights and status, relations between Muslims and people of other faiths, madrasa education, international relations, economic and political institutions, secularism, democracy, citizenship in a modern state, war and peace, and so on. In the process, they articulate alternate Islamic understandings on these subjects that depart considerably from traditionalist as well as Islamist positions, and that appear much more socially-engaged and contextually-relevant. -- Yoginder Sikand reviewing Reformist Voices of Islam—Mediating Islam and Modernity edited by Shireen Hunter

Huququn Niswan (Rights of women) was published at a time when Muslim women were not supposed to be seen outside the four walls of their homes; inside their homes, they were meant to remain within the confines of the zanankhana (women’s quarter). Undaunted by his milieu, for this maulvi with a mission, it was not enough to establish logically and theologically that women are in no way inferior to men.

Citing the Quran and the Hadith, he proceeded to argue that the female sex is, in fact, the better half of the finest of Allah’s creation: human beings. Don’t know enough but one can well imagine Maulvi Syed’s book setting many a mullah’s beard on fire. Even today, Huququn Niswan will among other things be a big downer for Muslim men because it punctures male fantasy about the gorgeous-as-gorgeous-can-be houris awaiting pious men in paradise! No such luck, argues the maulvi! All that Islam promises is a reunion of God-fearing husbands and wives! On the Day of Judgment all men and women will be resurrected, looking great and in the prime of youth. And those who make it to heaven will forever be young. -- Javed Anand

And like the Osamas, the Taliban and the Ikhwan ul Muslimeen in Egypt, many Pakistanis are further hobbled by their belief that they are not successful in life because they are not committed enough to their religion. As many of them see it, to cure their ills they must have an even larger dose of their religion. Welcome to the Club of Doom. This is like the Malay saying ‘biarkan si luncai terjun dengan labu labunya’ which loosely translated means ‘let the fat guy sink himself in the deep end’. Their understanding of religion seems to focus their energies on hate, hate and more hate. They have nothing better to do with their lives. ... Islam on the other hand is not a religion. Islam is a Deen or a way of life. Islam does not breed hatred. Surely then what is breeding all this hatred in Iraq is not Islam. ... Just educating the Muslims and making every Muslim an engineer or doctor is not enough to create a successful Islamic country. Somehow a PhD does not automatically make a Muslim respect his neighbour, his environment or stop him from being ‘holier than thou’ or be able to contribute some useful work in a disciplined and professional manner which can compete with the non Muslims. The continuing suffering of the Islamic countries bears witness to these failures. -- Syed Akbar Ali

A major target of (Syed Akbar) Ali’s ire are ‘Muslim’ clerics, whom he derisively refers to as ‘priests’, and ‘shamans’ and ‘morons’ [10], denying them the exalted title of ulema or ‘scholars’.  He accuses many of them of ‘depend[ing] on outright lies to make a living’, of using religion as a ‘money-making venture’. He remarks that the Quran condemns priests for taking people’s money, and that it viscerally opposed to the concept of priests offering ‘the keys to paradise’ and serving as intermediaries between Man and God, which is what he regards the class of Muslim clerics as having virtually become. To make matters worse, he argues, the average guru agama or Malay Muslim religious teacher ‘will likely not know the contents of the Quran’, which is why the people they preach to also remain ignorant of the real message of the Islamic revelation. -- Yoginder Sikand

First of all, the Arabs are aggressors, spreading a corrupt and irredeemable version of Islam around the world. According to Manji, Arabs have used Islam to “colonize” the other Muslims. “Seems to me,” she writes, “that in Islam, Arab cultural imperialists compete with God for the mantle of the Almighty.” The veil, for example, is “a brand victory for desert Arabs.” In this way, Arabs have forced their own cultural degradation on the other Muslim peoples, forcing millions to “parrot the desert peoples,” and propagating “myths [that] have turned non-Arab Muslims into clients of the Arab masters.” “Who is the real colonizers of the Muslims,” she asks, “America or Arabia?" She even refers to “Arab-occupied Sudan.” -- Hussein Ibish

It is essential that Muslims embrace the American president’s offer to collaborate in establishing regional “centres of excellence,’’ among other initiatives in higher education. Egypt in particular should lead the way to advance educational and government reform. Otherwise, despite its auspicious start, Obama’s Ramadan “date’’ will remain little more than a passing encounter, with limited prospects for a closer relationship. Ahmed Zewail, a professor at Caltech, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999. He was recently appointed to President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. -- Ahmed H. Zewail

If Muslims want to succeed in anything useful, determine new directions and new dimensions and if they want to influence the world and restore their glory they need urgently to re-examine their religion. The Muslim hatred of democracy, pluralism, religious tolerance, co-existence and freedom of expression still continues unabated. The battle between the rigid, closed and dogmatic ideology of religion and unfettered thinking is by no means decided but its outcome will determine whether Muslims will embrace freedom, democracy, pluralism, coexistence, progress and tolerance or succumb to non-compromising fundamentalism, conflict and relentless war against the civilized world. The incessant rage, hostility and violence of the dejected Muslims will further destabilize the entire world…. Indeed the West runs almost entirely on 'ilm or knowledge. On the other hand the Islamic countries are often shackled by the ideas of the habar or the priests of religion who run on hot air. -- Syed Akbar Ali

The concept of tajdid has been interpreted diversely by Islamic scholars. For some, it simply means cleansing Muslim society of what are seen as superstitious practices and beliefs that have no sanction in the Quran and the authenticated Sunnah. Some extreme literalists interpret tajdid as indicating an effort to mould Muslim society on exactly the same pattern as that of the times of the Prophet. In contrast, other scholars see tajdid as aiming to revive or restoring true Islamic beliefs and practices as well as reformulating Islamic thinking, or what Zaindul Abidin describes as 'renewal of religious comprehension', in order to maintain its continued relevance in the face of changing social contexts. In this latter case, it is closely related to the concept of ijtihad, which is precisely the opposite of blind taqlid. It is in this more expansive sense that Zainul Abidin uses the term tajdid and advocates its practice, which he sees as a religiously-mandated duty, and not simply an intellectually luxury that can be ignored. It is, as it has been throughout Muslim history, he says, instrumental in protecting the Muslim ummah from 'becoming weak and impotent'. -- Yoginder Sikand

Wanted: Islam’s Voltaire

TO MOST Western ears, the very idea of punishing heresy conjures up a time four or five centuries ago, when Spanish inquisitors terrorised dissenters with the rack and Russian tsars would burn alive whole communities of ultra-traditionalist Old Believers. Most religions began as heresies. Today the concept of “heresy” still means something. Every community built around an idea, a principle or an aim (from fox-hunting enthusiasts to Freudian psychotherapists) will always face hard arguments about where the boundaries of that community lie, and how far the meaning of its founding axioms can be stretched. But one of the hallmarks of a civilised and tolerant society is that arguments within freely constituted groups, religious or otherwise, unfold peacefully. And if those disputes lead to splits and new groups, that too must be a peaceful process, free of violence or coercion. How depressing, then, to find that in the heartland of one of the world’s great religions, Islam, charges of heresy are still being bandied about in a violent and threatening way, in the hope of silencing critical voices. -- Economist

Serious rethinking within Islam is long overdue. Muslims have been comfortably relying, or rather falling back, on age-old interpretations for much too long.

This is why we feel so painful in the contemporary world, so uncomfortable with modernity. Scholars and thinkers have been suggesting for well over a century that we need to make a serious attempt at Ijtihad, at reasoned struggle and rethinking, to reform Islam. At the beginning of the last century, Jamaluddin Afghani and Mohammad Abduh led the call for a new Ijtihad; and along the way many notable intellectuals, academics and sages have added to this plea - not least Mohammad Iqbal, Malik bin Nabbi and Abdul Qadir Audah. Yet, ijtihad is one thing Muslim societies have singularly failed to undertake. Why? -- Ziauddin Sardar

Let us resolve to keep helping Muslims in the New Year mapping an agenda for Islam in the Twenty-first century – the task New Age Islam has set before itself.

Islam is of course, a universal Deen, for all people in every corner of the world and for all times to come; but in order to fulfil its destiny it has to keep reinventing itself in every new age; it has to be rethought and reinterpreted in the light of the orthodox Islamic principles of Ijtihad, the gates of which were opened for us by Allah and the Prophet (Peace be upon him) and no Muslim has the right to close them down.

The pace of change has accelerated so much in the last decades that our very way of life has become quite distinct even from the recent past. How does the Islamic way of life mesh into and cope with the demands of the New Age is the major challenge before us Muslims, that too at a time when we have not only vast numbers of Muslim societies in nearly all parts of the world varying from one another in our social norms and customs, but also a vast number of interpretations of Islam resulting in deep sectarian divisions. While for enemies of Islam in the extortionist and exploitative sections of human society Islam is one religion and Muslims are one religious community the world over, for Muslims themselves there are scores of Islams and scores of Muslim communities, nearly all baying for each others’ blood. We apparently need to reboot Islam in our systems.

Let us at least resolve that in the New Year 2009 we will at least find the lowest common denominator or the greatest common divisor for what should have been the simplest of questions and has become a very complicated one: who is a Muslim? Let us also resolve to work in the New Year towards closing down all the Kafir-and-Mushrik-manufacturing factories that are flourishing so much in our midst. There are so many things to be done; but let us start at the easiest first step. -- Sultan Shahin, editor, New Age Islam

One of the most notable reformist Muslim voices today, Tariq Ramadan is viewed as a "supporter of terrorist organisations" by some and as an "agent of the West" by others. Based in Oxford University, UK, he is active both at the academic and grassroots levels, lecturing throughout the world on social justice and dialogue between civilisations. In Doha to participate in the 'Innovations In Islam' conference, he spoke to Qatar Tribune's Saif Shahin recently about the roots of Islamic fundamentalism and his vision of reform. Excerpts:

Leading Islamic reformist and literary scholar, Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, believes that individual freedom is an essential prerequisite to faith. Everyone, therefore, also has the right to convert to another faith. He talked to Erhard Brunn about some of his ideas.