One of the hot new trends in religious opinion today is to advocate for an â??Islamic reformation.â? This past weekend the Wall Street Journal ran two articles on the subject: â??Islamâ??s Improbable Reformerâ? and â??Why Islam Needs a Reformation.â? Presumably, the assumption is that an Islamic Reformation would bring about the same beneficial changes as the Protestant Reformation.
As a committed Protestant (Reformed, Evangelical, Southern Baptist) I believe the Reformation was indeed one of the most significant, and largely beneficial, events in world history. But I imagine it must irk my Catholic friends to hear the implied claim that modern radical Jihadism is similar to the Catholic Church of the early Renaissance era. (In an ironic twist, some people claim that, in many ways, ISIS is the Islamic equivalent of Protestant Reformers.)
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