You really don't think this has been attempted, was attempted? One could start with Iqbal and that equation of his: Islam = Bolshevish + God. Or, from a nationalist angle, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. The marxist biography of Muhammad by al-Sharqawi. Or, more recently Ali Shariati, as also the Mujahidin i-Khalq group. From a more liberal tradition, Fazlur Rahman, or even Wilfrid Cantwell Smith. There was the Indonesian Nurcholish Madjid, who in 1970 called for a "secularisation" by which he meant to distinguish between the transcendental and the temporal in Islam, for which he was branded "murtad" (apostate) by the islamists. There have been many others who sought to draw from the hadith of Abuzar/Abu Dhar. There have been political thinkers who sought to argue that the proper form of the caliphate today is the democratic republic, from as far back as the 1920s -- one guy, in particular, who was then thrown out of al-Azhar. Call them the "modernists", although the category may not fit well someone like Shariati.
You probably know what happened to the Mujahidin i-Khalq. Fazlur Rahman was hounded out by Maududi and his group. Azad might as well be a "murtad" as far as the islamists are concerned, as also Iqbal. Even the likes of ibn Khaldun, al-Farabi, ibn-Sina, the whole Mutazilah tradition are beyond the pale, and one might as well forget about Rumi and Omar Khayyam. It's Maududi and Qutb. I really can't see any saving grace to Maududi; Qutb was, I think, more complex, but the Qutb that has come down as filtered through the epigones... And it's Qardawi (temporizing as he may be).
Thanks for the Lowy piece with which I've no disagreement, but did you read the concluding paragraph?
> What is sorely lacking in these "classical" Marxist discussions on
> religion is a discussion of the implications of religious doctrines
> and practices for women. Patriarchy, unequal treatment of women, and
> the denial of reproductive rights prevail among the main religious
> denominations -- particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- and
> take extremely oppressive forms among fundamentalist currents. In
> fact, one of the key criteria for judging the progressive or
> regressive character of religious movements is their attitude towards
> women, and particularly on their right to control their own bodies:
> divorce, contraception, abortion. A renewal of Marxist reflection on
> religion in the twenty-first century requires us to put the issue of
> women's rights at the center of the argument.
And if there's any one criterion to distinguish the islamist from other muslim groups and movements, it's precisely this: the islamists have an obsession about sex, specifically, women's sexuality, which then extends to clothing, behaviour, etc.
If you haven't, take a look at Sabry Hafez, "The Novel, Politics and Islam: Haydar Haydar's Banquet for Seaweed", in NLR Sep-Oct 2000.