Samir Khalil Samir, SJ

As the demand for fatwas, responsa on what is or isn't lawful, goes up and the types of issues are increasingly wide-ranging, Muslims rely more and more on Islamic clerics and fundamentalists. yet in Morocco women are becoming imams. This is the third article on Islam in crisis, by Fr Samir Khalil Samir.

Rulers in Muslim countries are coming to terms with the fact that their religion is in a deep crisis. One sign is the growing number of fatwas or legal pronouncement ordering the murder of atheists, apostates, Israeli civilians . . . . But their calls for reform are just cosmetic. For Muslim governments the "violent and terrorist" Islam is a figment of the Western iimagination, except for a few liberal Muslims who are ready for self-criticsm. Here is the second in a series of articles analysing Islam's crisis, by Fr Samir Khalil Samir.

The Islamic world is frontpage news. In places like Iran Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon a warlike Islam is facing off the West in increasingly harsh ways. In the West itself, Muslim communities grow in number as do conversions. But what might appear as a renaissance is in fact the sign of a profound crisis within the religion founded by the prophet Muhammad. Fr Samir Khalil Samir, a Jesuit and Islam scholar who teaches in Beirut, offers an across-the-board analysis of what ails contemporary Islam and the ways radical and progressive Muslims try to nurse it back to health. Here, exclusive for Asia news, is the first part of a series of article on the subject.

After its timid diplomatic manoeuvres, Europe has the chance to regain lost ground through reconstruction at the donor countries conference in Stockholm. This could save an inter-denominational Lebanon.

No one is benefiting from Israel's war in Lebanon and Hezbollah's and Hamas's violence against Israel. Jesuit Fr Samir Khalil Samir, an Islam expert and professor in Beirut, offers a few suggestions to the United Nations.

Israel's military reaction cannot beat terrorism; all it can do is increased hatred. Hezbollah's claims are unforgivable and are causing Lebanon's destruction. Christians are paying the highest price for the violence, as not even the international community seems ready to deal with the core issues of the Middle East crisis: a homeland for the Palestinians, security for Israel, a return to the borders set by the United Nations. Here is the analysis by Fr Samir Khalil, an Egyptian-born Jesuit; now a professor in Beirut.

For Pope Ratzinger, religions should be compared on the basis of the cultures and civilizations they generate. To avoid a clash of civilizations, Islam should distance itself from terrorist violence; the west from secularist and atheistic violence. This is the analysis of a renowned expert, who last September participated in a meeting on Islam behind closed doors with the pontiff.

The apostasy debate sparked in the Islamic world by the case of Abdul Rahman highlights the prevalent perplexity in the Islamic world, not only about the apostasy issue, but about other points too: suicide bombers, terrorism, family law and love.

The ordeal of Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan is shared by many converts from Islam and poses the problem of Islam's systematic violation of human rights. If Sharia kills a man who changes religion, it is to be condemned and cannot be the principle inspiring law, in that it destroys any ideal of coexistence and contradicts the UN declaration on human rights, approved in 1948 by almost all Muslim countries.

The enormous wave of polemics, of governmental and popular initiatives against the publication of cartoon strips is provoking the rejection of Islam, which still finds itself ill at ease in modernity. Islamic governments are using the controversy to distract local public opinion from internal problems.

Tantawi (Al-Azhar) agrees with French on prohibition of veil