Islam - What is a truly liberal Muslim to do?

Good luck with this.

• Fight for the equality of women and for an end to the use of the Koran as the fountain of the law, especially by eliminating its function as a penal code.

• Face the brutal fatwahs of imams who condemn dissenting writers to death.

• Denounce the warmongering nature of a religious creed that consecrates the virtue of the jihad (at least to the fundamentalists) and separates the world into two halves: the half that already has submitted to Islam and the half that must be conquered.

But not even those heroic battles constitute the hardest part of the immense task facing liberal Muslims. The bitterest swallow, but an inevitable test, is to:

• Lead the defense of Israel's right to exist as an independent and peaceful nation alongside an equally free and peaceful Palestinian state.