Islamic Societies Have Spawned Reformers in the Past

For Muslims to build fully functioning democracies, they
basically must reject the Shari ‘a's public
aspects. On occasion, intellectual and political leaders have stepped forward
to make that a reality. Atatürk succeeded in rebuilding Turkey into a
modern, secular, largely democratic Muslim state. Others have offered more
subtle approaches. For example, Mahmud Muhammad Taha, a Sudanese thinker,
dispatched the public Islamic laws by fundamentally reinterpreting the Koran.

Atatürk's efforts and Taha's ideas imply that Islam is
ever-evolving, and that to see it as unchanging is a grave mistake. Or, in the
lively metaphor of Hassan Hanafi, professor of philosophy at the University of Cairo , the Koran "is a supermarket,
where one takes what one wants and leaves what one doesn't want."