Pushing for peace and harmony beyond the barriers of orthodoxy

Occupied Jerusalem: Shaikh Ishaq Abdul Jawad Taha's phone is ringing off the hook.

"You're welcome, go ahead," says Taha, sitting behind his desk at the Palestinian National Authority's Al Fatwa Council, of which he is the director. "She's still recovering, so she doesn't have to pray," he says.

The voice on the other end of the phone is that of a man, asking if his wife - who recently gave birth by Caesarean section - is required to return to five-times-daily prayers.

While a fatwa is often equated in the West with extremism, in the East, it's a religious guideline that can be useful in daily life, especially for those who know whom to call for a ruling that fits the context of Islam.

That's where Taha comes in. His council dispenses advise across the Palestinian territories and across the party lines of rival Fatah and Hamas factions.

While he commands much respect among Muslims, Taha is pushing boundaries for his ongoing conversations with others - the Israelis.

Taha is involved in dialogue forums and meetings with both Christians and Jews: a controversial practice since many of his colleagues deem such meetings as normalisation, which is frowned upon here in the absence of a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On one recent evening, for example, he met with an Israeli-Jewish group and talked on the subject of forgiveness. The organisers of the event, however, said Taha's appearance was sensitive and therefore asked journalists not to cover it.

Later, Taha explained his position: He does such meetings in his personal capacity, because an official visit would require a stamp of approval from the highest levels of the Palestinian National Authority. Nonetheless, he decided to yield on his official silence about such meetings.

"Had I not been convinced that these events help bring peace, I would not have attended," says Taha, an affable man who wears a trim white beard and a red-and-white headcovering that comes from the Fatamid period, and which signifies he is a distinguished scholar entrusted with legislating Islamic law. "I look at it as an experiment," he says. "The questions that came up showed how much people misunderstand Islam."

Not all Islamic scholars here feel the same, but he is fine with pushing the envelope - at least somewhat.

'I don't care'

"I don't care what people say about me," he says, his face spreading into a wide grin. "I'm following Prophet Mohammad's [PBUH] ways, who met with Jews and Christians regularly. I'd like to mix more with nationalities. I feel an office like this one should not be operating behind closed doors."

To that end, he makes sure that the council's decisions get publicised in local newspapers and in other forms of media and that there's a number through which to make anonymous queries - a sort of dial-a-fatwa - like that of the man who wanted to know if his wife should resume praying.

That request, he says, was actually about something more. What the man was really asking for was whether he can expect his wife to return to normal sexual relations with him: If she is able fulfil one duty, logic says that she should also fulfil the others. Taha's answer to that: No.

"He asks this way," he explains, "but it's a way of getting an answer to the question he really [wants to] ask. "They consider me a modern shaikh. I'm very proud of that," Taha acknowledges, before reaching for one of the huge black-and-white binders where he keeps questions up for discussion. Almost like a presiding Supreme Court judge, he collects questions that have been submitted to him from around the country, in this case, the West Bank and Gaza.

Above and beyond fielding calls from the public, he oversees a council of 24 other religious scholars, giving each expert two weeks to think and research before coming to a ruling on an issue.

Despite the political split between the two territories since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007, he says the system is still working: He has a number of Islamic religious authorities who are loyal to the Al Fatwa Council, not Hamas.

Discussion and learning

Elana Rozenman, who runs an interfaith women's group called Emun-Trust, was instrumental in bringing Taha for an evening of discussion and learning, along with Rabbi Daniel Landes, the head of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.

"Anytime a shaikh at his level and in his position of prominence is willing to meet with and teach with someone like Rabbi Landes, it's a very encouraging sign in general and it shows specifically that he's a very unique individual," Rozenman says.

On the one hand, such groundbreaking work makes him one of the more temperate imams in Middle East. On the other, on some issues involving women, he rules in a way that would probably make the average American feminist apoplectic.

A particularly interesting question in the docket asks how much a woman is permitted to "reveal" to a suitor who is interested in asking for her hand in marriage. His answer: everything must be covered except her face, hands and feet.