What happens with pluralization is a breakdown of tradition, and a weakening of what can be understood as faith-based religion. When the Quran emphasized reason and thinking in order to break the hold of tradition on people, a tradition that has entrapped them and made them un-free, it attempted and was successful in achieving a type of ‘modernization’, a freeing of the thought process that the West achieved only slowly because of the nature of their ‘faith based’ religion, Christianity.

Martin Luther achieved, only much later, what the Quran had achieved regarding tradition, a freeing of the mind. However since Christian doctrine could not handle reason and religion, most in the West, after this emancipation became secularized. As all social scientists know, it was this ‘protestant ethic’ that began as a religious tradition leading to a totally secular modern economic system, as elaborated by Max Weber in his “The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism”.

On the other hand in Islam a move towards a different direction took place. Whereas the Quran broke the role of dogma and tradition by freeing the mind and led to wonders, imitating the organized religion of their times, the so-called Muslim ’scholars’ tried to traditionalize and standardize their interpretation and extra-Quranic doctrines as Islam, they dominated the scene politically and hence effectively blocked the spirit of inquiry inherent in the Quran, converting Islam into a faith-based religion like Christianity. Forcing their contrived extra-Quranic worldview by seeking to politically dominate the scene, as the Mullahs are trying will lead to a similar cycle as Christianity, a totally secularizing effect. The mullah is therefore helping to bring about a total elimination of the Islamic identity, by moving away from the Quran. He is ensuring by his perverison of the message of the Quran, that what happened in the West happens to Muslim socieities that are increasingly pluralized. It is quite amazing that the Quran explicitly stated this and warned against it (57:16):

أَلَمْ يَأْنِ لِلَّذِينَ آمَنُوا أَن تَخْشَعَ قُلُوبُهُمْ لِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ وَمَا نَزَلَ مِنَ الْحَقِّ وَلَا يَكُونُوا كَالَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْكِتَابَ مِن قَبْلُ فَطَالَ عَلَيْهِمُ الْأَمَدُ فَقَسَتْ قُلُوبُهُمْ وَكَثِيرٌ مِّنْهُمْ فَاسِقُونَ

[57:16] Is it not time for those who believed to open up their hearts for Allah’s message, and the truth that is revealed herein? They should not be like those to whom was given the book before but long ages passed over them and their hearts became hardened, consequently, many of them became perverted.

To explain this modernization [by which I mean freeing of the mind, and not the BS that is commonly portrayed in the US dominated world] and its effect on tradition, let me quote sociologist Peter Berger, from his book The Homeless Mind. I am going to add explanations in brackets to make it easy:

“The pluralization of social life-worlds has a very important effect in the area of religion. Through most empirically available human history, religion has played a vital role in providing the overarching canopy of symbols for the meaningful integration of society…Indeed from a sociological and social-psychological point of view, religion can be defined as a cognitive (having to do with understanding the world) and normative (having to do with values) structure, that makes it possible for man to feel ‘at home’ in the universe. This age old function of religion is seriously threatened by pluralization ( because it involves plural and various definitions of reality-cognitive, and plural and various definitions of values- normative). Different sectors of social life now come to be governed by widely discrepant meanings and meaning systems. Not only does it become increasingly difficult for religious traditons, and the institutions that embody them to integrate this plurality of social life-worlds into one over arching world view (this also leads to the subjective hold of religion, the subjective definition of reality held by the individual to be threatened as well)….pluralization has thus a secularizing effect…which leads to a privitization of religion (in modern society)…” (1973:79-80)