Prolonged student protests in Iran following a death sentence for a prominent intellectual for alleged heresy are a symptom of a larger crisis within Islam, Muslim scholars say.

At issue is the question of whether this faith is immutable, as Iranian and other hardliners insist, or whether each generation can interpret the Koran and the tradition and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad from within its contemporary context.

Is this a matter for the clerics alone to decide, or could others also be qualified to do so? Every aspect of human life in the world is linked to this – freedom of expression, human rights, and the relationship between religion and the secular state.

Hashem Aghajari, a reformist scholar and ally of Iranian President Muhammad Khatami, clearly believes that Islam today cannot remain stuck in the 7th century AD, when Muhammad lived. For suggesting that every generation has to view scripture, sayings and traditions from its own perspective, Aghajari was sentenced to die.

But these are no longer the days of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Young Iranians have become increasingly restless. No sooner was the verdict announced than thousands of students, supported by hundreds of professors, took to the streets in Teheran and several of other cities.

According to the Jomhouri Islami newspaper, Iran's supreme religious leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered an appeals court to review Aghajari's sentence, and his release from jail.

But this is merely the local part of the story. Much more is at stake, Sheikh Muhammad Muhammad Ali, a London-based Iraqi scholar, and Abdul Wahab Alkebsi of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington agree.

Ali, a Shia, recounted a prophetic tradition according to which God raises about once every 100 years a Mushdahed Mujedad who renews the faith. It is not the function of this person to change the Koran, Tariq Ramadan, an Egyptian scholar teaching in Switzerland, once explained.

"Rather, he makes the Koran comprehensible to people reading it from the perspective of any given era."

This is a reformist view that had been almost eradicated a millennium ago. Alkebsi admits that today it is common currency only among a small though growing minority of Islamic thinkers, especially in North America and to some extent in Europe.

But then, he added, "militant Muslims are also few, no more than the reformers. Most Muslims are in-between, and the reformers have a potential for becoming a majority."

The recent events in Iran appear to substantiate this.

As so often in the field of tension between faith and the secular realm, there is a danger of demagogues and ideologues blurring the issues where clear distinctions should be made. Alkebsi illustrated this as he discussed the prophetic tradition of ijtihad, meaning "exerting effort into innovation."

New inventions, scientific discoveries, and political systems require ijtihad, Alkebsi insisted. But as the Aghajari case in Iran shows, great care must be taken not to question the Koran and the Hadith – the traditions and writings of the prophet - as such.

Three questions should be asked, he said:

1. "Do Muslims need reform? The answer is, yes, they have gone astray in many ways – political, social and religious."

2. "Does Islam need Reform? Yes, it does. It must "exert itself into today's realities."

3. "Do Islamic authentic sources, such as the Koran and the Hadith need reform? No! Changing one word in the Koran would be heresy."

Given this kind of reasoning, Western Muslims such as Alkebsi, Tariq Ramadan and Bassam Tibi, a Syrian scholar teaching in Germany, might be forgiven for conducting an often more fruitful dialogue with their Christian and Jewish compatriots than with their co-religionists in the Middle East.

They draw from the experience of Christians and Jews as they distinguish between two types of secularism. There is, as Alkebsi pointed out, the Tunisian form of secularism that would forbid fasting and women wearing their headscarves in public because both would be considered "religious signs."

"That's imposing secularism," Alkebsi said. Christians and Jews, familiar with similar forms of the secular extremism of certain groups in the United States, would presumably nod in agreement. But then there are also the blessings of the secular state for all citizens to be considered – all, including Muslims.

As Alkebsi said, "What would happen to 200 million Indian Muslims if India were not a secular state?"Uwe Siemon-Netto is the religious correspondent for United Press International.