Assalam o Alaikum!:halo:
Islam teaches that religion is the most important aspect of human life. It must be adopted consciously after careful thought, critique, evualuation, and rationalization. It must make sense and appeal our intellect. Even those born in Muslim families must re-evaluate, challenge and accept or reject their faith rationally. They must make a personal choice and conciously adopt Islam.
Now if you look at most of the Muslims around us, they rarely ever think, they blindly accept anything that anyone says and don’t critically think about it! There are very few people who actually think and ponder on the verses of the Quran. In the Quran mentions that God loves people who ponder the verses and think about things around them and glorify the praises of God. Quran promotes rational thinking and yet stupidity is at its best nowdays. This is one main reason why Quran must be the closest book to you and must always be held tightly and must be read and understood regularily!
So the question is, why do Muslims lack Progressive thought? Is it lack of education? I have also seen people who despite being educated have locked thier hearts and never try to think about anything in their religion.
God mentions in the Quran that he does not need people who follow people like sheeps follow his sheppard and he also mentions that an example of a donkey is like the people whom the Torah were given and failed to uphold it and us Muslims read the Quran day and night [most people without translation] but fail to uphold it and take it lightly and follow other manmade things and leave God’s word on the side.
How can we promote progressiveness in Islam? 
Re: Progressive Thought in Islam
Progressive means not having blind faith. It means staying human and not letting oneself turn into a blind sheep. Progressive means having a mature debate on things. It means realisation that Islam is at least (if not more) asmuch about the rights of our fellow beings (compassion, justice, tolerance etc.) as about the rights of Allah (namaaz, fasting, hajj etc). This would mean a revolutionary concept of our Deen, where faith becomes more than a habit of praying five times or fasting habitually, of praying mechanically, as a routine while neglecting the sad plight of our fellow human beings or causing injustice, corruption and violence on Allah's earth. Half of our faith was systematically eradicated in order to establish a status quo where nobody bothered about rights and duties towards human beings. As a result we see the rotten, so-called Islam which is nothing but a means to get hold of power and blind ritualism. Progress is in the mind. I don't know what is happening in Pakistan but what I gather, from some posts on this MB, I think people are drinking alcohol, adultery etc are promoted in media and real life. This is not progress, this is the opposite as such situation necissitated the arrival of Islam and the last Prophet, PBUH. On the other hand, the treatment of women, the injustice, the VVIP Culture, the violence, the Klashankov Culture, the arrogance, the cruelity, the total disregard for human dignity and decency, these are also the conditions streight from the times of 'jahliya', i-e. pre-Islamic society. Islam in its true form does not exist. What exists in the Islamic World is a set of rituals that protect and even nourish the evils of jahiliya in the name of religion. All this needs to be changed. Allah never tells you how many times you should pray a day, but he goes to great lengths to determine your sisters' share in inheritence, about how to write an agreement and what to do if you break an agreement with your fellow human being, how not to touch the 'Allah's limits' and avoid cruelity towards others. We have forgotten all that. Can you expect Maulvi sahib to teach you compassion?
Re: Progressive Thought in Islam
Good luck with the project.
Re: Progressive Thought in Islam
Thank you for your supoort my friend.