Struggle For The Soul Of Islam

TIME Magazine Archive Preview — Struggle For The Soul Of Islam — Sep. 13, 2004

“Three years after 9/11, an inside look at the ongoing global battle between moderates and hard-liners over the future of a faith�and its relationship with the West
By BILL POWELL
Four years ago, Mohammed Shakr sent his son away. Shakr (not his real name) lives in Baghdad, where he works as a translator, and he wanted the young man, Omar, to escape the oppression of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. So he sent Omar to a vocational school in the United Arab Emirates, where he studied automotive maintenance. But as the years went by, Shakr, 50, began to be worried about his son. Omar wrote letters to his father, a smoker, lecturing him about Islam’s disdain for tobacco. He chided his mother for wearing Western-style clothes to work.”