From the pulpit to the studio: Islam’s internal battle

In February 2006, when Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-American activist in Southern California who advocates secularism in Muslim countries, defiantly told an Islamic sheikh on a widely popular Al-Jazeera news show 'to shut up and lis- ten, it's my turn', she knew she was making history on Arab television. Never before has the authority of Islam represented on this show by a conserva- tive sheikh from. Cairo's famed Al-Azhar University been challenged in a similarly brazen way by another Muslim, and much less so by a woman.