Calls for reform within Islam ignore the fact that there has been a reformist and progressive Islam that dates back to the 1950s and 1960s: it was the Islam that was promoted and supported by Egypt’s Nasser regime.
Back then and for much of the Cold War, there was a civil war within Islam: Saudi Arabia and the other pro-American dictatorships of the Middle East supported and promoted a reactionary and conservative Islam defined by the standards of Wahhabism—one of the most intolerant and exclusionary religious movements in Islam.
Nasser, on the other hand, promoted a very different Islam. His was an Islam that supported gender equality and promoted women and fought obscurantism. Nasser used Egypt’s foremost religious institution, the al-Azhar, through his ally, cleric Mahmud Shaltut, to push for a reformed and enlightened Islam.
It was under Nasser that al-Azhar opened its doors to women, and ended the takfir (declaration of infidelity) of Shiites by the highest religious establishment.
Shaltut and Nasser never made the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites (it is unthinkable that Nasser would ever speak in such language given he avoided any sectarian language about Muslims and Christians). But Nasser did not have only Saudi Arabia and its wealth against him: He also had to contend with the US and Western governments.
In the service of Israel and taking into account Cold War interests, the US supported the reactionary version of Islam and the creation of Muslim organizations backed by Saudi Arabia because it was more worried about communism and leftism.
