Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, by Tariq Ramadan

Guide to a new age of faith

Tariq Ramadan is a European Muslim intellectual much fêted and hated by opposing camps. He is committed to the development of a Western Muslim sensibility that integrates the basic tenets of Islam with precious occidental values. Time magazine voted him one of the 100 most influential people of this century, yet the authorities refused to let him take up a post at a US university.

Many in the US and Europe suspect he is a fanatic in academic garb. In Britain, right-wing papers sully his name, raising a stench of suspicion that he is more dangerous than Bin Laden because he is so convincingly of the West, with his smooth talk and gentleman's beard. A French journalist once warned me: "Don't trust him: he speaks different things to different people."

His devotees, meanwhile, refuse to accept that his ideas may be flawed or at least require proper interrogation. So to assess Ramadan's work, you have to shut out the reputation of the man and the noisy disputes over whether he is a saint or a sinner.

The whole world is desperate for an alternative to the doctrinaire, joyless, killer Islam spreading across the planet. A seedling Islamic Reformation is starting to appear. Disparate thinkers, writers, feminists and "Westernised" Muslims are thinking aloud, extracting new meanings from their texts and unloading oppressive orthodoxies - always a brave thing to do, but vastly more if you are a Muslim in the 21st century. But not all reformists deserve inordinate enthusiasm. Some of those eagerly embraced by powerful Westerners are shallow and play to this audience.

Ramadan is not one of them, although the first pages of this book are a tad New Age - like Deepak Chopra or Paolo Coelho, the whisperers who blow air into the ear to lull a questioning mind. It advises: "Go, travel the world, watch, look for the truth and the secret of life", or that "'I' must set out to discover another 'I': such is the meaning of life".

It does get better, and the larger part of this text is wise and revelatory. Ramadan seeks to liberate Muslims so that they understand their faith not as a rigid rule book, but as an inseparable companion with whom you constantly converse. He argues that "the great majority of the verses in the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet are not of both a strict and compelling nature." I believe that all faiths need to retreat indoors to find their true purpose. Islam is a direct relationship between the searching self and Allah.

Too many Muslims are pumped full of certainties and needy for more, seeking leaders whose dictates they can blindly follow. "Humility," says Ramadan, "is to rediscover the breath of the primordial need for Him at the heart of our being in order to live in total outward independence."

The book challenges with vigour Samuel Huntington's notorious thesis that we are heading towards a "clash of civilisations" between illiberal and unchangeable Islam and the dynamic, free and liberal West. That prophecy, Ramadan writes, is rejected by "optimistic thinkers", but he accepts that "the ingredients that could lead to it are very present in current mentalities", and that Muslims need to confront the implications.

Ramadan makes a compelling case against ghettoised faith-based Muslim schools and for a broad civic identification with fellow-citizens. The author, who now writes a column in a glossy Muslim magazine, EMEL, could make a difference to these closed minds.

The book would have been more accessible with better editing and a less turgid translation. There are too many bits of ponderous scholarly meditations, but this striving and flawed Muslim reviewer found much solace in this inspirational tome.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's latest book is 'Some of My Best Friends Are...' (Politico's)