One such "expert" figure is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, former Dutch parliamentarian and now a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank. A self-confessed atheist who has no academic or scholarly background in Qur’anic or Islamic Studies, Hirsi Ali claims she is seeking to reform the Muslim world, while at the same time identifying Islam itself as the source of all trouble.

Skepticism, anyone?

In fact, Hirsi Ali’s background can be termed dubious at best.

In 1992, she arrived in the Netherlands seeking asylum.

Claming she was running away from Somalia’s civil war, she gave a false name and age to Dutch authorities. She had actually arrived from Kenya, where she had been a refugee for 10 years.

She later justified the fabrications by saying she was escaping an arranged marriage and feared revenge from her tribe.

A review in The Economist notes, however, that "last May a Dutch television documentary suggested that while Ms Hirsi Ali did run away from a marriage, her life was in no danger. The subsequent uproar nearly cost Ms Hirsi Ali her Dutch citizenship, which may be the reason why she is careful here to re-state how much she feared her family when she first arrived in the Netherlands. But the facts as she tells them about the many chances she passed up to get out of the marriage how her father and his clan disapproved of violence against women; how relatives already in the Netherlands helped her to gain asylum; and how her ex-husband peaceably agreed to a divorce hardly seem to bear her out."

Jytte Klausen, a professor at Brandeis University who knows Ali and has followed her case, has said, "She wasn’t forced into a marriage. She had an amicable relationship with her husband, as well as with the rest of the family. It was not true that she had to hide from her family for years."

One may ignore or even forgive her false pretenses but for the fact that "she has built a career out of portraying herself as the lifelong victim of fanatical Muslims" and, thus, her questionable background has critical implications for her credibility and, by the same token, for her arguments.

The insincerity of Hirsi Ali’s case is further exacerbated when, on one hand, she claims to want to reform Islam and Muslims, and, on the other, she utters alienating and divisive statements such as "Islam is backward" or "The Prophet is a tyrant and a pervert."

First, one who holds in sheer contempt the very religion or philosophy that one professes to reform is hardly qualified to do so.

Effective reform always stems from within.

Martin Luther was a practicing and devoted Christian, which is why he was successful with his reform agenda.

Second, even a cursory examination of Hirsi Ali’s contentions reveals that her line of reasoning is truly unsophisticated.

For example, she repeatedly asserts that Islam itself is to blame for the atrocities committed in its name.

In doing so, she treats misinterpretations of Islam as if they were identical with Islam, ignoring the original context or occasion of revelation of Qur’anic statements and commandments.

Further, she also contradicts herself – in an interview with NPR Radio, she said, "I know that Western societies have had a terrible past from the burning of women as witches all the way to what happened in the Second World War ... that’s one part of the West. But there’s the other part which is really developing institutions that safeguard the life and freedoms of the individual … and it would be a huge pity to confuse the two and to … lump them together and describe the West only as a source of evil."

So, while Ali acknowledges that it is not logical to generalize in the case of the West, she doubles her standards of judgment when it comes to Islam and Muslims.

Another common "dispute" is that Islam oppresses women.

As is commonly known, Qur’anic and Hadith teachings clearly document Islamic ideals that advocate gender equality on all levels, whether spiritual, economic, social, political or legal.

If some in the Muslim world fail to adhere to these ideals and employ misinterpretations of the Qur’an to endorse their oppressive practices, then the blame logically lies with them and their cultures, not Islam.

This disparity between normative theory and actual practice exists in all religions.

Indeed, "as a young woman, Ms Hirsi Ali’s [own] mother, Asha, does not seem to have inhabited ‘the virgin’s cage’ that the author claims imprisons Muslim women around the world."

Suffice it to say, Hirsi Ali’s flawed conclusions are especially problematic because they confuse culture with religion, thus removing attention from what should actually be the focus of reform, i.e. erroneous cultural practices that are have already been deemed un-Islamic, such as honor killings and female genital mutilation.

Unfortunately, Hirsi Ali is simply another in the line of those who have jumped on the opportunistic Islamophobic bandwagon, capitalizing on the "Islam-bashing" industry.

Her past may include certain tragedies, but the problems she describes in her book, "Infidel," are to blamed on humans and their actions, not on Islam.

In reviewing her latest book, Ian Buruma has noted, "I’m not convinced that Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s absolutist view of a perfectly enlightened West at war with the demonic world of Islam offers the best perspective from which to get this [reform] done."

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Hirsi Ali appears to be neglectful of the fact that the concepts of islah (reform) and tajdid (renewal) are already within the Islamic tradition – clearly reflected in the reality that Islam has been successfully adopted by numerous cultures and thrived in so many different continents, including North America.