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I have one comment about "reformation". In general there were always three main streams in Islam as well as in Christianity. The first one is reformation, for which there is in my opinion a very skewed perception in the West. Reformation in Islam and Christianity is about "going back to roots". Take bible literally, implement sharia law as it is written in Quran and so forth. The second stream is modernization: this is about incorporating new findings or influences in prevailing culture. An example here may be scholasticsists who incorporated antic philosophy and learning into Christianity. The last stream is that of traditionalism which is mostly concerned about stability, hierarchies and status quo. This is the one that is most frequently tied to political powers and state.
I think that one of problems of Islam is that unlike Christianity which originated as persecuted heresy, Islam was since the beginning a state religion tied to the government and is spread via conquest. This is quite unlike Christianity which was during various periods and locations forced to make compromises with power-at-be like Roman empire or Japanese Shogunate to survive underground, so it has tradition of ideological flexibility that supports modernization. There were several modernization efforts in Islam including that of the early conflict between modernization school of Mu'tazila with its push for rational understanding of god through natural world and that of reformist school of Ash'ari who saw sacred scriptures as basis for understanding of god with latter becoming victorious. Paradoxically Mu'tazila school had great influence on Maimonides and Christian modernizers who incorporated it into Christianity. So if anything Islam lacks modernization, it was for centuries embroiled in cyclical conflict between traditionalists who created ossified structures until "reformists" came along and turned the cycle another revolution further. In this sense Daesh are your cookie-cutter reformists which existed in Islam for thousand of years.
Another thing that is Islam did not go through religious wars like 17th century Europe. It was a century of bitter religious conflict that made all sides sick of the whole situation until the policy of religious tolerance was grudgingly accepted by both sides in order to not devastate the continent again. This was one of the main conditions for other even non-religious ideologies to thrive including enlightenment. I have read that the current conflict of Iran vs Saudi Arabia has some similarities with that European era.
I've always found the existence of the Mu'tazila tragic and fascinating, but I never knew their influence on Maimonides and Christianity. Can you direct me to where I can learn more?
Mu'tazila school had influence in Cordoba Caliphate, which is unsurprisingly also where Maimonides was born and where Irish and other traveling Christian scholars studied. However it has to be said that it is not only theology that was important here, Cordoba was also a center where more philosophically as opposed theologically inclined learning was accessed by the West including writings of Ibn Rushd and others. Mu'tazila was not exactly secular in that sense, but there can be direct comparison with later Catholic church that tolerated various philosophers studying natural world although with implicit assumptions of the findings not threatening dogma too much.
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