Mr. Ghouse opens up his piece by stating his context for his statements:

As a Muslim fighting for reform within our Muslim world, I watched the Secular Islam Summit, aired earlier this week on CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck show, with great anticipation. I believe in religious pluralism and the separation of mosque and state. I know Muslims need to speak up against extremism.

Granted, I don't quite appreciate the full extent of what he means by "reform" -- I would hope he is not pushing the same secularization theory BS that I've grown to love to hate -- but anyone with a working eye and a media receiver of any type can surely see that many Arabic-speaking locations need a change of leadership...bad.

But then Mr. Ghouse continues, and his words drop like comets into secularist atmospheres:

...that's not what we got with the "Secular Islam Summit," held at the Hilton Hotel in St. Petersburg, Fla. The summit was supposed to be about Islam, yet there was hardly a Muslim at the podium. With the exception of two panelists — Hasan Mahmud, director of sharia law at the Muslim Canadian Congress, and author Irshad Manji, who believes the Qur'an is the basis for being a Muslim — the summit was filled with Islam bashers, some of them ex-Muslims. The event should have been called the Anti-Islam Summit. It's a shame CNN and Beck got suckered into giving so much air time to this fraudulent gathering of Islam bashers.

The summit was just an attempt by extremists of another persuasion — hatred of Islam — who want to destroy Islam.

Whether it was former Muslim "Ibn Warraq" with his book title, "Why I am Not a Muslim," or Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, a political and human rights activist, the theme was the same: They want one-fifth of humanity to disappear.

At this "landmark Secular Islam Summit," there were no "moderate" Muslims.

The intent of the conference was bad from the start. Due to this fact, mainstream Muslims, including progressive Muslims, chose not to participate in the conference. Days before the summit, I talked with leaders of groups challenging conservative interpretations of Islam, including Radwan Masmoudi, president of Islam for Democracy, an organization based in Washington, D.C. We decided not to attend the meeting. None of us wanted to become tools in the hands of the anti-Islam extremists. The need to be represented in the summit became less important than speaking out against the intent of the summit, which was Islam-bashing.

And it just continues.

An expression of democracy and an expansion of free -- including spiritual -- thinking? Or anti-religious, maybe even Islamophobic, extremism posing as intellect?

In explaining his decision, Masmoudi told me: "...the effort [to reform Islamic societies] must be led by Muslims who are proud of their heritage, religion and culture and who are credible within their community. The people who attended the 'Secular Islam Conference' are neither, and that is why this conference was a complete waste of time and money, except perhaps to provide some anti-Islamic voices a podium from which to speak."

Again, I don't quite understand the full extent of this "reform" he's proposing, but his sentiment is clear.

He didn't want to be a tool in the hands of extremists, buying into secularization theory.

Or more simply, he didn't want to be a tool.