BACK TO THE FUTURE:

The 'People's Mufti' (Jay Tolson, 2/19/08, US news)

Like many moderates within Islam, [Ali Gomaa, the grand mufti of Egypt] views himself not as a reformer or modernizer but as a traditionalist. He considers fatwas a bridge between the rich traditions of Islamic law (with four major schools and literally scores of minor schools of interpretation) and the modern world, and he is very concerned about self-appointed muftis who, with only the scantest knowledge of those traditions, issue judgments to support extreme or rigidly puritanical understanding of sharia. The grand mufti believes that such extremism tends to come from the so-called modernizers and reformers of Islam, including the Wahhabis, the Salafists, and the various Islamists who seek to make Islam into an all-encompassing political ideology.

Whether Ali Gomaa and other like-minded Muslim scholars have enough influence to counter the extremist tide is one of the questions I will be exploring.