Saudi Arabia is at a crossroads. King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in particular are driving forward a vision for reform not seen in the Kingdom for decades; the reforms being initiated could easily eclipse even the social and political changes sought by King Faisal through his modernisation programme in the 60s and 70s.

With the recent arrest and detention of prominent Saudi politicians, business leaders and members of the royal family, the programme being proposed, or at least elements of it, appear now to have been accelerated in a dramatic way from planning to delivery. And more broadly the proposed reforms go to the heart of what Saudi Arabia is as a nation and as a society. It is not only financial and political interests being targeted by the leadership, but also the religious establishment and its associated cultural norms.

The modernisation programme is hugely ambitious, but if Mohammad bin Salman is as popular among the youth of Saudi Arabia as reported, it’ll be because it is in Saudi itself that the need for change is most acutely felt. But not only in Saudi: there’s been much written over recent months about the need for Saudi to modernise and to professionalise its approach to business and commerce and to build an economy that delivers sustainable prosperity to its people. The focus on job creation, the diversification of the country’s economy away from dependence on oil, Saudi Aramco’s potential IPO, attracting inward investment to develop industry, tourism and new cities, and the governance needed to help institute these initiatives, appears to have been almost universally welcomed.

Much has also been written about the arrest of clerics and Mohammad bin Salman’s pledge to return the country to ‘moderate, open’ Islam, and the risks and possible consequences of this public assault on the ultraconservative Wahhabi branch of Islam that has been an inseparable part of the Saudi model since the country was created.

What is less clear, and what is notable for its absence from the Saudi Vision 2030, is precisely what ‘moderate, open’ Islam means and what the existing socio-cultural model will be replaced with. Other than a cursory mention of the values of tolerance and moderation, the substance of what these words mean remains unexplored, or at least unexplained. And having exported Wahhabism to many parts of the Islamic world over the last 40 years, it is not only Saudis who have an interest in understanding what it might be replaced with.

What the reform programme has acknowledged and articulated is firstly that the world has moved on since the Saudi model was established and secondly that whatever the model that replaces it looks like, Islam will, in some shape or form, be a significant part of it. What it lacks, then, is an articulation of the core ideas about culture, society and state that would provide a basis for the development of more detailed ideas, institutions and policy, and underpin the launch of Saudi Arabia into the 21st century and beyond. And if Saudi Arabia is serious about being seen a global player and a leader in the community of nations, then this gap can’t be left without the attention it deserves, much less left to chance.

If prosperity in a society is the accumulation of solutions to human problems, it is these core ideas in the form of a coherent and compelling socio-political philosophy around which its citizens are willing to coalesce which can help shape the motivation and systems through which the solutions are arrived at and implemented. That’s not to say that this assumes a diminished role for practical solutions and doing ‘what works’. Rather it is a recognition that there is a clear benefit for a society to have a set of core ideas that it can confidently depend on in times of both advantage and adversity, both prosperity and hardship and both peace and hostility.

If a mission statement, a vision and values inform strategies, planning and method statements, a set of core ideas will inform the development of a robust and cohesive society and will articulate a set of foundational principles from which an identity can be formed, solutions can be derived and ambitions can be realised.

Secularism, individual liberty, democracy, pluralism and reason are some of the key ideas that have underpinned Europe for centuries. A broad agreement on these ideas has in part allowed Europe to weather the storms it has suffered and heal the fractures it has experienced both across the continent and within individual countries. And although there are countless different strands of thought within this body of ideas, there is a core set of beliefs around which there is a broad consensus and against which institutions, policies and political movements are measured.

The social contract that has propelled China forward over recent decades revolves around the idea of state capitalism, incorporating an open market economy and a dominant state sector. The Communist Party still rules exclusively but it has delivered unprecedented economic growth and poverty reduction. And although there are still very significant restrictions on individuals’ personal liberty, people are nonetheless freer than they had been in the recent past. And the direction of travel continues to be in the direction of both a more market based economy and a more liberal social model. Aware that it is in a state of transition, China’s political leadership appears to be charting a course that is sufficiently flexible to accommodate a rapidly changing society a global framework of co-operation without compromising its core ideas about how to organise state and society.

There are countless other ways to illustrate the point and others will be more qualified to do so, and a brief glance towards the Islamic world on this subject will confirm the point — not because there are so many examples of countries to choose from which have settled on a socio-political philosophy that drives their success, but because there aren’t any. That’s not to say that such a basis is a guarantee of success and prosperity. There are doubtless many other factors. But for a civilisation that is essentially religious in nature not to have resolved the key question about what its religion and religiousness mean for society, and how that might be expressed, clearly leaves a big hole at best; in reality it has contributed in large part to the Islamic world being stuck in a mire of confusion and paralysis.

Countries in the Islamic world that could be described as having some kind of coherent philosophical basis might include two countries on the boundaries, both physically and culturally, of the Islamic world: Malaysia and Indonesia. And that, presumably, is no coincidence. By virtue of being geographically distant from the cultural centres of the Islamic world, they have been able to forge societies that have been able to reach some form of accommodation in respect of a socio-political model — even if it is through an amalgamation of often disparate ideas. But even these countries have yet to resolve the issue of what role Islam plays in state and society; perhaps partly due to their comparative ethnic and religious diversity, the issue has perhaps not been as pressing for them.

What these two countries perhaps also share is the willingness to allow their citizens to engage in a conversation about what is the best way to progress and a mechanism for those conversations to have consequences. Even if these conversations produce challenges of their own, they nonetheless allow a country to escape from the binary discussion about ‘Islamic’ or ‘secular’ that leads to polarised societies and identity politics at best, but increasingly to an endless cycle of power grabs and violence.

Saudi Arabia, however, is very much at the heart of the Islamic world, and a change in direction towards a moderate, open Islam needs to start with an articulation and acknowledgement of where the Islamic world, and not just Saudi Arabia, currently sits in the league table of progress of prosperity. An acknowledgment, then, that the Islamic world, broadly speaking, has got things badly wrong, that past glories are in the past and the world is not what it was even a hundred years ago, let alone a thousand years ago or more. Its problems are not limited to Islamist terrorism: sectarianism, intolerance, poverty, ignorance, superstition, misogyny and anti-intellectualism all abound, to name but a few. Furthermore, the Islamic world has been in decline for centuries and, with a few individual exceptions, has had little to offer the world in terms of intellectual, political, economic, social, cultural or technological progress for a long time.

The good news is that by virtue of being at rock bottom, the Islamic world has little to lose and therefore less need to be risk averse. Rather it has an opportunity to embrace a greater degree of risk — and while that doesn’t mean having to start from scratch, it could and should mean a greater willingness to revisit the basics. What better time to engage people’s minds, to think through ideas, to shape a social identity, to hammer out a renewed sense of heimat and transform its politics? It could be argued that the West, as the dominant civilisation, is at something of a disadvantage in that it has more to lose by taking risks. In a sense it is the West that has started to close the doors of ijtihad, with intellectual and political discovery depleted, hope squandered and a corporate sector focused on unsustainable goals, as it clings to the hope that technology will save us. Maybe it will, but quite how is too early to say.

If the search is for ideas to drive progress, Muslims continue to search. Answers arrived at to date have largely been ones that look backwards to a golden age rather than facing up to the realities of the world as it is. Not that there is nothing to be learnt from the past, but effort is required to connect the lessons of the past to the problems of the present. Without that effort, the backwards glance will inevitably see only the answers that are the easiest to identify and require the least effort to pursue.

This doesn’t mean a need for Muslims to deviate from the fundaments of Islam, but a preparedness to step outside of one’s comfort zone is a prerequisite for creative ideas. It is not enough to say simply that ‘our philosophy is Islam’. The Islamic world has repeatedly witnessed the failure of sloganeering; rather than being a bold and energetic statement of intent, it is lazy, vague, divisive and of no practical value.

If it is insufficient to say ‘Islam is the answer’, it is equally misguided to say that Islam cannot and should not have a role to play outside people’s private lives. To try to shoehorn the trajectory of the Islamic world into the historic path of Christianity is a sure-fire recipe for failure. And more to the point, if the Islamic world is to develop a framework of thought that it can coalesce around, that is ambitious and that it can own, it needs to find a uniquely authentic, compelling and distinct set of ideas that together form a coherent and cogent philosophy.

Can the Islamic world become more forward looking? Can it respond to new challenges in an ever changing world? Can it adopt ideas from other civilisations? Can it do this while remaining true to itself? This seems hugely challenging, but the irony is that this is very much part of the authentic character of Islam. In the prophetic era and historically, Islam, as a philosophy, never tried to ignore the reality of the world in which it existed. The core sources of Islamic law unfolded in response to the live issues of the day, as they happened, rather than in a sterile vacuum with a wilful disregard for the messiness of existence.

If Muslims believe that Islam was sent for all mankind, then it can only remain static if time stands still. If the world changes as time passes, then either Islam has to be dynamic and respond to change or the claim to be for all mankind is patently false.

The fear of creativity and the retreat into the past is a modern phenomenon for the Islamic world. One lesson of Islamic history is that the downward trajectory of Islamic thinking was accelerated when the Islamic world closed its mind and stopped reflecting on the world around it.

Saudi Arabia, then, has a huge opportunity. But this opportunity is actually open to every country in the Islamic world. An opportunity to have a conversation, to discover new ideas, to build a nation and to lead the Islamic world in a direction that manages to combine the two seemingly divergent ideas of being authentically Islamic while being innovative, forward looking, dynamic and adaptable. This is actually not about the Islamic world just pulling up its socks and getting to grips with being part of a world that has been massively transformed over the last century; it’s about the Islamic world reclaiming a heritage of intellectual dynamism, eradicating the feelings of defeat, grievance and victimhood and demonstrating an ability to transform itself into a force for good in the world.