ABSTRACT
Mr. Al Ashmawy, who is a judge as well as a wildly popular writer, is also the leading thinker in the Middle East struggling for a “Reformation of Islam” –and that is why he has all those bodyguards lurking outside in the hallways. With his outspoken eloquence and well-crafted arguments for what would be a modernization of Islamic thought, this heavyset, cherubic and charming man is one of the major targets for the wrath of the Islamic fundamentalists. The idea is that a country under Islamic law will improve society at once. Since its founding in 1928, the strict Islamic group has crossed borders through the persistent idea of Islam as citizenship in a superstate. All hate the West and secularism; all want an Islamic state such as the Prophet Mohammed proclaimed in the seventh century; and all will employ whatever violence is necessary, beginning with “apostate intellectuals” such as Mr. Ashmawy.
