NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK:

In the library with a leading Islamic liberal: Egyptian Gamal Banna backs women's right to lead prayers and thinks clerics should adapt to modern times. (Jeffrey Fleishman, 5/05/08, Los Angeles Times)

A slight man in a brown suit, whose smooth face belies his 88 years, can slide one from shelves of thousands, brush its cover and tell you a story, whether it be about jihad, St. Francis of Assisi or the labor movement of the 1930s. He has written 120 books himself, many of them about Islam, which to him has too long listened to the restrictive voices of the past.

Gamal Banna is one of Islam's leading liberal thinkers. For years he has accused conservative clerics of running a dictatorship that has kept the Koran from speaking to a world much changed since the 7th century revelations of the prophet Muhammad. Banna, whose long-dead brother led a fundamentalist movement that inspired many of his critics, relishes unnerving opponents with opinions that strike at convention.

He supports the right of women to lead Friday prayers: "How can we make an ignorant man an imam and not a learned lady?" He holds that unmarried couples' kissing does not lead to sin: "An insignificant act the [conservatives] say is a step toward adultery." And his next book deals with relations between men and women under Islam.

"Islam has to go through its own reformation, and this will take 50 years at least," said Banna, who wears thick glasses and has dark, combed-back hair brightened by coils of white. "We are four centuries behind Europe on thoughts about politics and religion.

"I'm advocating radical change. We reject the clerics who rely on 1,000-year-old [teachings] which cannot live in this age."

Having started seven centuries late, their Reformation is right on schedule.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 6, 2008 8:43 AM