Given the week of Islamist terror we've all witnessed -- the slaying of 12 Nepalese cooks and cleaners in Iraq, the double suicide bombings in Israel, the kidnapping of two French journalists and, of course, the hijacking of a school in Russia (preceded, lest we forget, by a suicide attack in a Moscow subway and the loss of more innocent lives) -- one thing seems clear: Muslims worldwide need new forms of leadership. But for any leaders to emerge, Muslims today must first speak out against the ghastly abuses being committed in our names.

Some seem to be doing just that. In France, for example, even hard-line Islamic organizations are pleading with the hostage-takers to release the two reporters. Last May, after American contractor Nicholas Berg was decapitated in Iraq, the Muslim Council of Britain issued an apparent condemnation. Iqbal Sacranie, the council’s secretary-general, described Berg’s execution as “utterly repugnant to the Islamic rules of war.” No doubt, he would say the same about the targetting of school children in Russia, which ratchets up repugnancy to an unconscionable level. Problem is, such Muslims continue to cradle a dangerous illusion. Islam, they insist, has nothing to do with these crimes.

In truth, however, Islam’s holy book, the Koran, contains passages that can easily be exploited for vicious ends. There’s nothing Islamophobic about recognizing this. Just as moderate Christians and Jews acknowledge the nasty side of their holy texts, modern Muslims ought to come clean about how our sacred text informs terror. If we don’t , we can’t effectively challenge the actions that flow from certain readings of the Koran. In which case, all we’ll be doing is chanting that the terrorists broke the rules, without ever coming to terms with where they got their concept of “the rules” in the first place. Muslims need to say that the Koran has its share of negative passages, and then offer peaceable interpretations that compete with the hateful ones.

I’m hopeful, yet I’m not naive. More than 15 years after the government of Iran issued a death warrant against novelist Salman Rushdie, being a Muslim dissident remains a risky business.

I speak from experience. My book, The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change, has put me on the receiving end of anger, hatred and vitriol. That’s because I’m asking questions from which we Muslims can no longer hide. Why, for example, are we squandering the talents of half of God’s creation, women? What’s with the stubborn streak of anti-Semitism in Islam today? Above all, how can even moderate Muslims view the Koran literally when it, like every holy text, abounds in contradiction and ambiguity? The trouble with Islam today is that literalism is going mainstream.

Muslims who take offense at these points often wind up reinforcing them in their responses to me. I regularly get death threats through my website. Some of my would-be assassins emphasize the virtues of martyrdom, wanting to hurl me into the “flames of hell” in exchange for 72 virgins. Others simply want to know what plane I’m next boarding, so they can hijack it. Somehow, I don’t feel the urge to share my schedule.

A few threats have been up-close and personal. At an airport in North America, a Muslim man approached my travel companion to say, “You’re luckier than your friend.” When she asked him to explain, he turned his hand into the shape of a gun and pulled the trigger. “She will find out later what that means,” he intoned.

But, for all of the threats, there’s good news: I’m hearing more support, affection and even love from fellow Muslims than I thought possible. Two groups in particular – young Muslims and Muslim women – have flooded my website with letters of relief and thanks. Relief that somebody is saying out loud what they have only ever whispered. Gratitude that they’re being given the permission to think for themselves.

That’s why I don’t take my bodyguard everywhere I go. I once did. But if I’m going to have credibility conveying to Muslims that we can, indeed, live while dissenting with the establishment, I can’t have a big, burly fellow looking over my shoulder. I must lead by example. So far, so good.

To be sure, I haven’t tried visiting Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan since the release of my book. (One challenge at time, please!) Still, the relative safety with which I’ve debated Islam in the West – from Britain to Sweden, from Australia to Canada, from the Netherlands to the United States – convinces me that Muslims in the West have a sterling opportunity. Muslims in the West are best poised to revive Islam’s tradition of independent reasoning. Why in the West? Because it’s here that we already enjoy the precious freedoms to think, express, challenge and be challenged – all without fear of state reprisal.

I’m not denying that some Muslims have been targeted for harassment, profiling and discrimination by Western governments. I faced the same during the 1991 Gulf War, when I was marched out of a federal building in Ottawa, Canada for no apparent reason. But none of this negates a basic fact: that if Muslims in the West dare to ask questions about our holy book, and if we care to denounce human rights violations being committed under the banner of that book, we need not worry about being raped, flogged, stoned, or executed by the state for doing so. What in God’s name are Muslims in the West doing with our freedoms?

I know what many young Muslim would like us to be doing: thinking critically about ourselves and not solely about Washington. Indeed, a huge motivation for having written my book came from young Muslims on American and Canadian campuses. Even before 9/11, I spoke at universities about the virtues of diversity, including diversity of opinion. After many of these speeches, young Muslims emerged from the audiences, gathered at the side of stage, chatted excitedly among themselves, and then walked over to me. “Irshad,” I would hear, “we need voices such as yours to help us open up this religion of our because if it doesn’t open up, we’re leaving it.”

They’re on the front lines in the battle for the soul of Islam. Whatever the risks to my own safety, I won’t turn my back on them -- or on the gift of freedom bestowed by my society.