However, there are many divisions that must be overcome before we can attain unity. We are divided by race, nationality, ethnicity, clan, class, socioeconomic status, and sectarian outlook.

One of the most serious schisms is the division between educated urban Muslims and uneducated rural Muslims.

In his book The Twilight of Democracy, former CIA analyst Patrick Kennon said that political Islam would never be successful because the Islamists are mostly urban intellectuals whereas the Muslim masses are mostly rural peasants who believe in Folk Islam.

The Islamic world will eventually unite, so his premise is wrong, but he was correct in pointing out the current division.

Most Islamic intellectuals are people educated at universities or seminaries who live in large cities and who have little understanding of the rural Folk Islam. Many are members of the urban bourgeoisie, too, in contrast to the rural peasants, who are mostly poor and uneducated.

However, in general, the rural peasants have stronger and more sincere faith than the urban Islamists.

The urban Islamists have a certain academic education but must learn piety, sincerity, simplicity, and modesty from the rural peasants and nomads who practice Folk Islam.

Many of the urban Islamists look down upon the rural masses, which actually defeats the purpose of the Islamist movement and undermines efforts to attain Islamic unity. Their rhetoric speaks of connecting with the masses but they take very little concrete action toward that end.

If we could create some kind of New Folk Islam to unite the urban intellectuals and the rural peasants, this might help to advance the cause of Islamic unity.

This call for a New Folk Islam is not a call to endorse and codify the superstitious practices often prevalent in Folk Islam. Rather, it is a call for the urban Islamist intellectuals to learn from the sincere piety of the peasants and to show more tolerance toward their beliefs. The Iranian mystic Molana Rumi wrote a very deep story that perfectly illustrates this point.

Ideally, urban intellectuals should educate the rural masses while learning piety and simplicity from them.

This project is a two-way street. Urban intellectuals must acknowledge that there are some things they can learn from the peasant masses. Unfortunately, many have not yet understood this.

The proposal for the adoption of a New Folk Islam trend is not a suggestion to alter all of Islamic philosophy and mysticism so that they conform to Folk Islam. It just means that Islamic philosophers and mystics should take something from the pure faith of the rural peasants in order to enrich themselves and their ideas.

If we want the Islamic world to make progress, if we want to start the long-overdue Islamic Renaissance, we must educate the masses, especially since large numbers of them are illiterate.

At the same time, it is essential that we retain and cultivate the piety and sincerity of the masses. We do not want the Muslim masses to become educated but jaded, which is what happened, to a certain extent, in the Western world after compulsory education became the norm.

The goal of the Islamic Renaissance is not an educated but soulless Islamic world.

There are many things that must be done to start the new Islamic Renaissance that will unite the Islamic world, and uniting the urban intellectuals and the rural peasants through some form of New Folk Islam just may be one of the paths we must take.