Liberal Islam does not compute

Men and women pray side by side at the mosque that opened earlier this month in Berlin, which has female imams and where Muslims of all sects of the faith are welcome to worship together.

Supporters of the Ibn Ruschd-Goethe mosque said it would allow liberal Muslims to worship freely but in a tough statement Diyanet took a different stance.

It said that the mosque "neglects" the basic principles of Islam and was "incompatible with the worship, knowledge and methodology" accumulated since the faith was founded by the Prophet Mohammed 14 centuries ago.

That's the problem when you try to "reform" Islam. The fundamentalists simply have to open the religious texts to prove that your liberal rules are, in fact, anti-Islamic. This quickly gets you labelled as a heretic -- the punishment for which is death.