WP: Unveiling Islam: Author Challenges Orthodox Precepts

[DeepModem Mom]

Unveiling Islam: Author Challenges Orthodox Precepts
Aging Egyptian Says Religion Allows 'Freedom of Thought and Evolution'

By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 7, 2005; Page A11


CAIRO -- The Islamic state? A contradiction in terms.

Jihad? Far too much emphasis these days on military action.

A requirement that women wear a veil? A quaint leftover from pre-Muslim times that is not mandated by Islam.

These and other observations by Gamal Banna, an 84-year-old Egyptian author, have created a stir in Egypt recently. They are indicative of the ferment within Islam at large, and of the increasingly passionate discussion of political and religious issues in Egypt, the Middle East's most populous country.

Controversy surrounds Banna's books because they challenge some Islamic orthodoxy and the roots of Muslim teaching. His work is also a curiosity because of his family connections. He is the younger brother of Hassan Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, the prototype of radical Islamic groups throughout the Middle East. The Brotherhood is associated with rigorously pious practices, with an intense role for Islam in politics and with violence....

***

In the West -- where general attention to Islam among non-Muslims seldom extends beyond the threat of terrorism and the pronouncements of Osama bin Laden and his followers -- it is common to hear that Islam has no new ideas and has been unable to adapt to the modern world. Yet for decades, Islamic scholars have challenged the notion that Islam is opposed to everything Western and that only radical and violent solutions can bring change to Egypt, the Middle East and Islam itself. Today, Banna says, the perception of a cultural war between the West and Muslims has brought life to the promoters of new Islamic thinking....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12340-2005Mar6.html

[Spinzonner]

1. Looks like Fatwa bait to me