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Slightly off topic: I was watching a news commentary among some "experts" in the Middle East and the topic of "moderating Islam" came up. One of the commentators said that what Islam needed was a 'reform' movement like the Protestant Reformation that changed Christianity. A couple of centuries after those reforms, religious wars, near theocratic states, and widescale religious intolerance in Europe subsided. Another commentator rebutted that the 'extreme' and 'traditionalist' Wahabi version of Sunni Islam IS the product of Reform from the 1700s of Saudi Arabian Islam. That is the "official" Islam of Saudi Arabia now. So, according to him, an "Islamic Reformation" would not really "moderate" Islam at all.
What I think those 2 commentators missed is that Protestant Reformation was pretty severe too. It brought about the Puritans and other Christian denominations that were heavy on personal sacrifice, discipline, and other 'strict' and 'hard' readings of Christianity. Protestant Reformation "moderated" Christianity and decreased the numbers of Religious wars and intolerance not because of its reforms but because the resulting Religious wars showed that secularism and separating the political realm from the religious realm leads to prosperity and progress. Indeed, the conflicts brought about by the Reformation brought about the need for SOME separation of Church and State in some European countries. Notice the steep decline in religious wars from 1500/1600 to the 1700s and 1800s? Of course, by the time Europe reached the late 1700s and 1800s, it had found another reason for countries to try and crush each other--Nationalism and empire.
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