I’ve updated the KML file for Google Earth. If you’ve previously already opened it in Google Earth, the updates will be there automatically next time you start up the application.Zamalek’s Diwan bookstore has all the ambition to be a mini-Barnes & Noble, but alas far too much of its shelving is taken up with trinkets, pop psychology and Deepak Chopra. Its philosophy section comprises two short shelves at crouching level, with fully one shelf taken up by the Greek philosophers, who are hardly pushing the envelope. Then there’s not one but two copies of Robert M. Pirsig’s Lila — that book being to philosophy what a millstone is to swimming.

But the Islamic studies section is fascinating, and it is the reason why I was back yesterday — looking for some kind of reader on Islam and freedom of expression.

Imagine my surprise to find a thick tome entitled Freedom of Expression in Islam, by Mohammad Hashim Kamali, from the mid-90s. With chapters titled Freedom of Religion, Insult and Blasphemy, this was an obvious purchase. I spent the next hour reading the chapter on freedom of religion on the terrace of the Marriott Garden Café.

What’s immediately clear is that the Italian PhD candidate I talked to a few days ago was right — there is a large body of Islamic thought — a historical majority, even — which maintains that conversion to Islam or even to other religions cannot be coerced or impeded. Chief piece of evidence in favour of this view appears to be that Mohammed himself dealt with serial apostates without punishing them (today they’d be called flip-floppers). As for the oft-quoted passages that appear to condone the killing of apostates, the scholarly majority contends that in context, killing is only ever condoned if the apostasy is part of some larger political or military treason, which are the only instances in which the Koran condones such punishment.

But what about freedom from religion? Unfortunately, the chapter does not make the differentiation, and it leaves me wondering whether disbelief in the notion of God itself was ever even mooted in the seventh century AD, akin to Queen Victoria refusing to believe that there was such a thing as lesbians, and thus not explicitly forbidding homosexual relations between women.

But even if there is no specific injunction against losing your faith in faith per sé, I think there remains the problem of how an atheist might be able to express her sincerely held world view without being seen to insult God. Is expressing the opinion that God does not exist, however politely, automatically an insult? I haven’t read the chapter on insults yet. I’ll let you know.