This number has risen in recent decades mostly due to that fact that it is more acceptable then ever to question or not believe that there is a god, along with that fact that worldwide more younger people have been shedding religion. So, expand your knowledge and grow your understanding by realizing it is human beings that are having these experiences and most religious authorities that want to monitor the information before it goes out to their parish aren’t authorized to change what comes directly out of the mouth of the mystics who bring the people their experience directly as it happened. There are no opinion polls on the subject, but in talking to people on the streets, one gets the sense that they are grappling with these issues within their own understanding of their faith. The AJS wants people to know how data are collected, what kind of data are being collected, to have some sort of accountability, and to be able to take action to modify the AI’s behavior.

When the mayhem in Iraq slows, events like the slaying in September of more than 300 people at a Russian school — half of them children — or some other attack in the Netherlands, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia or Spain labeled jihad by its perpetrators serves to fuel discussions on satellite television, in newspapers and around the dinner tables of ordinary Muslims. The violence has not only reduced sympathy for just causes like ending the Israeli occupation, he says, but set off resentment against Muslims wherever they live. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Proponents of jihad argue that it is only natural for Iraqis and Palestinians to fight back, and point to what they call American hypocrisy. Osama bin Laden and his followers emerged from a similar call 25 years ago to fight in Afghanistan, a fight that they subsequently spread around the globe. Mr. Shahrour and a dozen or so like-minded intellectuals from across the Arab and Islamic worlds provoked bedlam when they presented their call for a reinterpretation of holy texts after a Cairo seminar entitled “Islam and Reform” earlier this fall. One sense of the growing public dismay in the Arab world is the muted reaction to the Falluja assault last month compared with the one six months ago.

Mr. Rashed senses there is a movement in the Arab world, if perhaps not yet a consensus, that understands that Muslims have to start reining in their own rather than constantly complaining about injustice and unfairness. Do you want to test if you have what it takes, then, to be a nun? Evil, then, is the result of both the creation of a soul-making environment and of the human choices to act against what is right and good. For Hindus, good karma is usually produced by correctly performing the duties of one’s caste, or social class. Arrayed against them are powerful religious institutions like Al Azhar University, prominent clerics and a whole different class of scholars who argue that Islam is under assault by the West. This is unfortunate because any hope that the predominantly-Christian West and the Muslim world might transcend conflict requires that the former be accurately informed about the latter (and vice-versa, but that’s an issue for another column). Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, director of the Dubai-based satellite network Al Arabiya and a well-known Saudi journalist, created a ruckus this fall with a newspaper column saying Muslims must confront the fact that most terrorist acts are perpetrated by Muslims.

But whose whole, the would-be reformists respond, lamenting what one Saudi writer calls “fatwa chaos.” A important difficulty under Sunni Islam, as opposed to, say, the Shiite branch predominant in Iran or the Catholic Church, is that there is no central authority to issue ultimate rulings on doctrinal questions. Asked whether that included civilians, the sheik responded with a question, “Are there civilians in Iraq?” In the ensuing uproar across the region he issued a clarification, suggesting that he meant only those who abetted the occupation, and pointed out that he had previously condemned beheadings. The debate, which can be heard in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, is driven primarily by carnage in Iraq. Anthropology, as a science, thus makes no judgements, theological or otherwise, about the validity of any religion, because nothing can be scientifically proven about them. Reconciling the two is impossible, he writes, because religion’s “combination of certainty, morality, and universal punishment is toxic,” while science, in contrast, acknowledges the fact that it might err, arriving at truths that are “provisional and evidence-based,” but at least testable.