Public discourse, too, is moderating. Despite the extremist rhetoric and anti-Semitic statements and cartoons, which are disproportionately publicized in the West, the tone of debate and discussion is changing significantly, even in places like Saudi Arabia, where the old Wahhabi intolerance of other Muslims is waning. Neighboring United Arab Emirates has approved a jamat khana (gathering place) for the Ismaili Muslim minority. These developments augur well for the much-needed opening of religious space for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and others in Muslim societies that still resist pluralism.

Muslims are rediscovering the humanism of Islam, and its message of religious pluralism, as conveyed in the Qur’an: There is no compulsion in religion (2:256). To you your religion, and to me, mine (109:6). Whoever wills may believe, and whosoever wills may disbelieve (18:29). Had your Lord willed, everyone on Earth would have believed; / Do you then force everyone till they believed? (10:99).

These injunctions ought to remind intolerant Muslims that if God had intended all mankind to be Muslims, He would have made them so. In Malaysia, Indonesia and some other Muslim nations, questions are being raised over the notion that a Muslim who abandons Islam can be declared an apostate and potentially subject to capital punishment. “What’s the point of keeping a person Muslim if they no longer believed in the faith?” Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi told me in Kuala Lumpur in 2007. His comment has significance beyond his nation, because he was then also chair of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. In Egypt, the Dar al-Iftaa, the body responsible for issuing religious rulings, has weighed in with an edict that, given the Qur’anic injunctions on freedom of religion, Muslims can, indeed, opt for another faith.

Extremists are also being reminded that the wrath of God constitutes a minuscule part of the Qur’an. Of the ninety-nine names of Allah, ninety have to do with kindness, compassion, generosity and forgiveness. The believers are enjoined to pursue the moderate middle path, remembering that the first thing God commanded Muhammad to do was not go to war but to read: Read in the name of the Lord who created you (96:1). The most used word in the Qu’ran, after Allah, is ilm (knowledge).

An Era of Hope

The Muslim journey of reform is clearly underway. The West needs to get on with its own, by emancipating itself from its prejudices against and fear of Muslims and Islam, which severely hobble its relations with a fifth of humanity and undermine its own democratic ideals. Western democracies have had to battle anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism, and still must in many ways. Their challenge in this age surely is to wrestle down Islamophobia and to deal with Muslims in a fair and just manner. Perhaps that, too, is underway.