Thursday, August 11 2005 11:44 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: Controversial Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie has advocated reforms in Islam to help bring the concepts of the religion into the modern age and combat jihadi ideologues.

"What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age," Rushdie wrote in The Times newspaper.

"A Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadi ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows of the closed communities to let in much-needed fresh air," the novelist whose forthcoming work 'Shalimar the Clown' figures in this year's Man Booker Prize long-list for fiction said.

Observing that many Muslims in Britain lead lives apart from the rest of the community, he said, "In Leeds, from which several of the London bombers came, many traditional Muslims, lead lives apart, inward-turned lives of near segregation from the wider population. From such defensive, separated worlds some youngsters have indefensibly stepped across a moral line and taken up their lethal rucksacks."

The Booker prize winner said, "The deeper alienations that lead to terrorism may have their roots in these young men's objections to events in Iraq or elsewhere, but the closed communities of some traditional Western Muslims are places in which young men's alienations can easily deepen."