There is no doubt that the loss of the traditional faith has left many people confused and rudderless, and they are finding that there is no adequate satisfaction in mere excitement or in flight from their finer ideals.
[citation needed] Secularists, who reject the idea that implementation of rationalistic or critical thought leaves any room for religion altogether, likewise dispute religious liberalism.
[citation needed] The Catholic Church in particular has a long tradition of controversy regarding questions of religious liberalism.
[9] German-Jewish religious reformers began to incorporate critical thought and humanist ideas into Judaism from the early 19th century.
[12][page needed] This can vary from the slight to the most liberal, where only the meaning of the Quran is considered to be a revelation, with its expression in words seen as the work of Muhammad in his particular time and context.
Liberal Muslims see themselves as returning to the principles of the early ummah ethical and pluralistic intent of the Quran.
[13] They distance themselves from some traditional and less liberal interpretations of Islamic law which they regard as culturally based and without universal applicability.
[citation needed] The reform movement uses Tawhid (monotheism) "as an organizing principle for human society and the basis of religious knowledge, history, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics, as well as social, economic and world order".
[16][page needed] It featured a "critical reexamination of the classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence" and a new approach to Islamic theology and Quranic exegesis.