Even in the moderate Muslim-American community, Abou El Fadl is something of an outsider, and his ideas have been greeted with outright hostility in the Mideast. Yet he's someone who, increasingly, can't be ignored because he's so well-credentialed for intellectual combat over Islam's heritage.

Abou El Fadl spent a decade in Egypt learning the intricacies of Islamic law, then received an Ivy League education in America (Yale bachelor's, Penn law degree, Princeton doctorate) — a potent and rare combination. His library of tens of thousands of volumes has long since spilled from his home into the garage.

Yet as a teenager, he found the intense call of Muslim radicalism emotionally satisfying, a feeling that only dissipated as he studied Islamic legal traditions in earnest. At Yale, he plunged into advocacy of democracy and human rights.

Abou El Fadl says he returned to Egypt in 1985 after winning a key undergraduate honor and expected a warm reception. Instead he was subjected to torture.

"By the third day in there I was praying I would die," he recalls.

His tormenters provided no explanation but indicated hostility to his liberal political ideas. It took him a month to recover, physically and emotionally, and it was years before he returned to Egypt again. The ordeal made him opt to become a U.S. citizen, instead of working in Egypt.

The professor reports that Saudi go-betweens made three offers to buy his silence and that Saudi pressure prevented publication of his books in Arabic, an essential step for gaining any permanent impact in the Muslim world — though some of his writings and interviews are available in Arabic on the Internet.

"I felt I probably would not have much use in my lifetime" because of the censorship, he says.

Yet some Arabic translations have finally appeared in the Mideast the past two years, and he expects "The Great Theft" will eventually follow. He was pleased by appreciative audiences last summer during talks in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

A Christian expert, J. Dudley Woodberry of California's Fuller Theological Seminary, says "Muslims of good will are longing for someone to make a case for moderation."

That makes Abou El Fadl "a star on the rise," Woodberry adds. "I hope he's right. And for the West, he pretty much is."

Muslims who join Abou El Fadl in advocating moderation include those associated with the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and authors in the forthcoming anthology "Islamic Democratic Discourse" (Lexington).