What is the meaning of the word "Easter," and how did an egg-bearing rabbit become associated with the celebration of Christ's resurrection?

Easter, according to 7th-8th century monk and historian the Venerable Bede, is derived from Eostre, the name of the Teutonic goddess of spring, though debate over the claim's veracity persists.

In fact, many of the customs associated with the Christian holiday, particularly the curious symbols of the egg and rabbit, have been traced back to paganism. Though the egg supposedly represents a new birth of mankind in the arisen Christ, modern-day theologians suspect that meaning was a later invention.

In the centuries predating Christianity, the egg was a more general emblem of burgeoning life brought about by spring. Similarly, the rabbit, or hare, was long a symbol of fertility associated with spring and Eostre in pagan traditions, apparently co-opted later to serve as the carrier of Easter eggs in the Christian holiday.

The Church, says Bede, assimilated these practices to make Christianity more attractive to potential pagan converts who were reluctant to give up their holiday festivals.

"On Faith" panelist Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen and Islamic scholar, will discuss Islam and the West in three satellite conversations April 10-12 at Georgetown University.

Ramadan, a leading Islamic thinker among Europe’s second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants, has been barred from entering the U.S. since 2004, shortly before he was to start working at the University of Notre Dame. His visa was revoked under the "ideological exclusion" provision of the Patriot Act.

U.S. authorities told Ramadan that they will not issue him a visa because of a contribution he made to an Islamic charitable organization - a group later blacklisted by the U.S. government for providing money to Hamas. Ramadan said he made the donation a year before the organization was blacklisted.

The visa denial is the subject of an ongoing legal challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the American Academy of Religion, the American Association of University Professors, and PEN American Center.

Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs is sponsoring three conversations with Ramadan by satellite: April 10, Islam and Democracy; April 11, Muslim Minorities in Western Europe; and April 12, Catholic-Muslim Relations.

"Islam-West dialogue is a crucial imperative in today's world. But in order to understand one another we have to listen," said Dr. Thomas Banchoff, Georgetown professor and director of the Berkley Center.

"Thanks to global communications technologies we can engage Ramadan in conversation here in the US, even if he cannot be here in person."

Each conversation will take place from 10:30 a.m. to noon in Gaston Hall on the Georgetown University Campus, 37th and O Sts, NW. All conversations are open to the public.

Read more about Ramadan's ideas, the visa controversy, and submit questions for the conversations.

This weekend, Sikhs around the world will celebrate Guru Nanak's birth.

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion that emerged around the turn of the 16th century in the Punjab region that today is divided between northern India and Pakistan.

Its founder, Nanak, regarded as the first Guru, or teacher, was born into a merchant-caste Hindu family in 1469. He worked as a shopkeeper until a prophetic epiphany prompted him to leave his home and family, and he spent the subsequent decades wandering the country and preaching.

At the time of Sikhism's founding, Hinduism and Islam pervaded the Punjab, and Sikhism bears hallmarks of both faiths, such as a belief in reincarnation similar to that of Hinduism and belief in a single god more akin to Islam. Sikhs, however, assert that their religion is not syncretic (i.e. created by the merger of two religions), but say it was rather a new idea that only appropriated elements of the existing belief systems.

According to Sikh tradition, Guru Nanak's first words following his revelation were, "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim," and among the principle tenets of the faith is the conviction that anyone, regardless of caste (or gender), can become one with God.

Today there are an estimated 19 million to 25 million Sikhs, most of whom live in India's Punjab province.

They consider themselves disciples of the ten human Gurus (Sikh literally means "disciple" or "learner"), beginning with Guru Nanak and ending with Guru Gobind Singh, who died in 1708; thereafter they deem the Granth Sahib, a holy book containing devotional hymns as well as moral and spiritual guidelines, the current Guru and their supreme spiritual authority.

Is it a moral compass? A political agenda? A spiritual journey? A culture apart?

These are the ideas that will be discussed and debated when Georgetown University hosts the first "On Faith Live" event April 19. The symposium will be held at the Copley Hall Formal Lounge.

The 90-minute symposium will inaugurate Georgetown/ On Faith -- a new partnership aimed at providing On Faith readers a deeper and more scholarly exploration of religion in the news.

The April 19 symposium will be moderated by On Faith panelist Dr. John L. Esposito, Georgetown University professor of religion and founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

He will lead a discussion that includes five other On Faith panelists:

-- Salman Ahmad, a Pakistani-born rock star who started the wildly popular South Asian band known as Junoon.

-- Ingrid Mattson, a Canadian convert, a professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford (Conn.) Seminary, and the first woman to be president of the Islamic Society of North America.

-- Dr. Sherman Jackson, a native of Philadelphia, and professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan.

-- Sally Quinn of the Washington Post and Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, both co-moderators of On Faith.

The symposium also will include two other panelists:

-- Imam Yahya Hendi, Muslim chaplain at Georgetown University.

-- Hadia Mubarak, senior researcher at Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

The event will be held from 4-5:30 p.m. April 19 at Georgetown University's Copley Hall Formal Lounge.

On Faith producer David Waters will blog the event and forward readers' questions to the panel.

To obtain press credentials for the event, or to schedule an interview with the symposium panelists, contact WPNI's Donna Sawyer at donna.sawyer@wpni.com or at (703) 469-2965, or Georgetown's Jacques Arsenault at arsenauj@georgetown.edu or at 202 687-4328.

Georgetown University's front gates are at the corner of 37th and O streets in the Georgetown section of Washington DC. Click here for driving and parking directions.

And stay tuned for more information.

Islam makes no distinction between the sacred and secular, thus Islamic law, or sharia, governs not only religious affairs but also daily ones, from criminal justice to banking and business ethics. Traditional sharia, for instance, dictates that Muslims should only invest in ventures that hew to Islamic doctrine. Since the Koran forbids drinking, investing in a winery is not permitted.

Sharia literally means "path" or "path to water," referring to the path a Muslim must follow to salvation. The law comprises multiple elements: most important is the instruction of the Koran, considered the literal word of God; next is the sunnah, or the model of how one should live set by the Prophet Muhammad; the final components are the ijma, or consensus of Islamic scholars, and the qiyas, a sort of reasoning by analogy that extends the law to issues not explicity addressed in the holy texts (for example, extending the drinking prohibition, drugs may also be assumed to be forbidden).

Most Middle Eastern countries have some degree of sharia law integrated into their legal codes. Mostly these measures deal with issues of personal-status, such as marriage and divorce, while sharia guidance on criminal law has largely been tempered with legislation that is seen as more modern or secular; generally adulterers are not stoned to death in the contemporary Middle East. Even so, Saudi Arabia and Iran claim to implement sharia fully in all matters.

How does the Greek goddess Gaia figure in modern-day earth worship?

In Greek mythology, Gaia (or Gaea) was the name given to the goddess who personified the Earth, worshipped by the Greeks as the mother of all creation.

In the 1970s, British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock and U.S. biologist Lynn Margulis adopted the moniker to describe their controversial theory that the Earth, with all its living and nonliving systems ostensibly interacting to sustain life, could be viewed as a single complex organism rather than the chaotic interplay of disparate processes.

The so-called "Gaia hypothesis" met with resistance in the scientific community, but numerous environmentalists, New Age thinkers and neopagans latched onto it.

The Earth goddess has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity since, and today many pagans still revere the deity as the mother of all nature.