I have posted before about Melanie Phillips' naive brand of optimism regarding the promises of Muslim "reformers," but here she proceeds into even shallower waters, if that were possible. Reporting on the debate between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Muslim "reformer" Ed Husain sponsored by Douglas Murray's Centre for Social Cohesion, Phillips predictably gushes over Husain and dismisses Ali:

I find Ed Husain’s arguments more persuasive. Although last night Ayaan Hirsi Ali acknowledged the distinction between Muslims and Islam and accepted that Muslims can achieve reform, the logic of her position is surely that there can be no space for Muslims like Ed Husain. But we know that there are and always have been Muslim individuals and communities who live peaceful and unthreatening lives and derive only spiritual sustenance from their faith. We know that religions which claim to rest on the immutability of God’s word nevertheless depend on human agency to interpret that word, which opens the way to alternative interpretations. And we also know that the history of a culture is no predictor of its future. Before the Reformation, Christianity was a savage religion that burned heretics and put meek Jews to the sword; in medieval times, who could have possibly envisaged that Christianity would come to underpin the central Enlightenment doctrine of the separation of church and state that gave rise to individual freedom and liberal democracy? As circumstances change, so people change. None of us is a prisoner of the past. There is currently a great debate raging within the Islamic world about all this. Who can say how it will end?

Phillips notes Husain "said a few troubling things, claiming that the Muslim world had been anti-Nazi." for example,  but she is willing to overlook them claiming, "Recovering Islamists have much baggage to jettison, and it can take time to throw it all overboard." Just as, in Phillips' imagination, Christianity evolved from a "savage religion," so can Islam by drawing on its "pluralist religious tradition."  And even as she ridiculously equates Islam with Christianity, Husain even more implausibly equates Zionism and Islam(ism) here (hat tip Andy Bostom):

...Behind every single world event, from the Holocaust to 9/11, Arab Islamists blamed a global Zionist conspiracy. Similarly, in Jewish circles, Zionists from Binyamin Netanyahu to Daniel Pipes have made careers out of lambasting Islamists. But are Islamists and Zionists really all that different, despite their blatant enmity? I think not.

Zionism and Islamism are both political perversions of ancient Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam. They were both born out of protest and anger: Zionism in response to tsarist pogroms and Islamism as a retort to colonialism. The heavy political content of both ideologies came from men who had no theological training in the centuries-old traditional understanding of the Torah or the Koran. Theodore Herzl, an Austrian journalist, mapped out Zionism in an age of ubiquitous nationalism. Syed Qutb, an Egyptian literary critic, was the chief ideologue for Islamism. And yet they appealed to people of religious faith. Or did they?...

Disregard for the sanctity of human life is a hallmark of both Zionism and Islamism.

Just as Israel is an expansionist state which remains in occupation of the Golan Heights, Islamists plan for a state that would have an occupying army to support ever-expanding borders (see Hizb ut-Tahrir's draft constitution). Just as Zionists claim territory based on notions of "Jewish land" and God-given rights, Islamists wish to reconquer India and Spain as "Muslim land", once ruled by Muslim monarchs.

Zionists have achieved their state; Islamists are busy trying out every conceivable option to bring their dream Zion to fruition. For centuries, Jewish people said "Next year in Jerusalem", and for decades for now, Islamists have been repeating "Caliphate by next Ramadan".

Melanie, do you really know who your new friends are?