The shock waves which have followed since the Salman Rushdie affair in 1988, culminating in the attacks on 11 September, should have told perceptive people that without deep, genuine and informed political and intellectual engagement with enlightened Muslims, chaos, and further chaos, is guaranteed. As one Muslim heart surgeon put it: “These power merchants, they don’t know us even now. They have no idea of the steaming discussions going on in our sitting rooms, the high level of intellectual debates, the absolutely different views we may have. They talk among themselves and then bring on the puppets to endorse things, giving them a medal here or a position there – they love these noddies, nodding ‘Yes Sir’, smiling like idiots The West is not interested in intelligent Muslims. Like in the empire, that is the last thing they want.”I agree completely. I have had it with apologists who think that Muslims, whatever they do, only do these foul things because they are upset, humiliated, angry, despised and maltreated.

After too long prevaricating, Jonathan Sacks openly criticised the policies of Israel with all the deep love of an insider. Maybe I just miss these speeches; maybe they are never reported; but reformist Muslims would dearly like to hear our religious leaders taking such an ethical stand instead of hiding behind Islamophobia. If we berate the West for its double standards on Israel, we must also have the honesty to condemn double standards that Muslims use. And please no more pious speeches about what “true” Islam says, as if that condones what real Islamicists all too often do. Marxists too wasted many years explaining that Soviet communism was not the real thing, instead of fighting the version which came to dominate so many countries.To ignore reformist Muslims is to abandon hope for any of us in the future. What do I mean by reformist? I mean people who see that there are universal principles of rights, freedoms, democracy and justice which apply as much to Muslims as others. I mean people insulted by the idea that they must be “tolerated” and who have the brains and guts to engage fully as democratic citizens.I mean risk takers such as Zaki Badawi, the wise Egyptian head of the Muslim College who offered Salman Rushdie sanctuary in his home in the week following the fatwa.

Or Ghiyassudin Siddique, leader of the once infamous “Islamic Parliament”, who today boldly attacks the Government as well as the treatment of women in many Muslim families. I mean young Muslims like the young university student, Sama, who wrote to me last week to say: “I think we must be brave enough to say that no religion can continue to be relevant if it remains ahistorical. We live in a world where certain important values were not part of that old world. We must adapt or die.”Thinkers around the world are coming up with the same message.