I had a very interesting conversation with an Italian PhD student a few days ago about the possibility of reconciling Sharia with the western law cannon canon, specifically with the supremacy of the rights of the individual, which sits at the core of liberal democracies. This topic of study is especially relevant given the growing number of Muslims living in western democracies, some of whom have begun lobbying for Sharia be applied to them. The PhD student knew Arabic well and had evidently studied the legal texts extensively in their original form.

One possible accommodation, he maintained, might be for marriage contracts to allow voluntary opt-in add-ons that conform to Sharia notions of what is a legitimate marriage. This is something that I have no problem with. I have long thought that marriage should be privatized, in that it is none of the state’s business how exactly two free individuals engage in a contract that dictates mutual obligations and rights. In the US, this would solve the gay marriage dispute in an instant: The state remains neutral towards all and any contract freely entered into between two (or more) individuals, of whatever sex. If, in addition, people want to marry before their favorite God, they are welcome to it. Want a Sharia pre-nup for how to deal with an eventual divorce? Go for it. It’s your marriage.

Then I asked him about what I consider to be Islam’s Achilles heel — the wholly disproportionate outrage that the Koran reserves for those born Muslim who, for whatever reason, lose their faith. His answer was interesting.

In Islam there is a notion that nobody ever has the last word, he said. The conversation is always ongoing, and there are many schools of thought, with different imams subscribing to different interpretations of what the Koran allows. For example, he said, there are numerous noted scholars who point out to a clause in the Koran that states that a belief in Islam must not be coerced, and interpret this to mean that the Koran prescribes tolerance for the existence of other religions, even tolerance for the conversion from Islam towards those religions. Just find the imam you like most and use his arguments, he said.

Ah, I said, but what about tolerance for those with no faith or religion at all? He smiled and said, yes, this is a problem. But he maintained that even here there is one imam whose interpretation allows the complete loss of faith in a God.

Alas, that is when our conversation was cut short, and I didn’t get the imam’s name. I am now very curious as to who he might be — is he a contemporary? Well-respected?

I’m going to try to find out.