That there is a dual personality of ‘Arab’ and ‘Islamic’, a swinging back and forth between the past and the present, is made clear by statements made by some of our contemporaries. What concerns us here is to trace those characteristics which stand in the way of progress.
ISIS has invented nothing for it to be qualified in any sense as ‘sectarian’. Other than its extreme brutality, this group is simply applying to the letter what the Sunnis have always understood by their religion. So, according to a formal logic, the factions of ISIS and al Qaeda are the most coherent groups in the Sunni world – internally coherent, coherent with their archaism, and above all coherent with the single theological juridical version of Islam existing at present, one that is sacralised and promoted by everyone, above all by official Islam [1].
The reform of Islam today is both essential and possible; what is lacking is political courage. It is true that the age of the religious intelligentsia, both in traditional Islamic circles or in the circles of political Islam does not make adaptation to the world we live in an easy matter. [1] But courage is nevertheless required, the courage of an intelligentsia that has a clear vision for the future, and who can with decisiveness lead their peoples.
In these current circumstances in which the argument of the Islamic caliphate has come to the fore, we may usefully cast our minds back to what took place following its abolition in 1924 by the founder of the modern Turkish state Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
ISIS has invented nothing for it to be qualified in any sense as ‘sectarian’. Other than its extreme brutality, this group is simply applying to the letter what the Sunnis have always understood by their religion. So, according to a formal logic, the factions of ISIS and al Qaeda are the most coherent groups in the Sunni world – internally coherent, coherent with their archaism, and above all coherent with the single theological juridical version of Islam existing at present, one that is sacralised and promoted by everyone, above all by official Islam 
In these current circumstances in which the argument of the Islamic caliphate has come to the fore, we may usefully cast our minds back to what took place following its abolition in 1924 by the founder of the modern Turkish state Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
