Put bluntly and broadly, many people wish to portray Islam as a peaceful faith with a violent few, arguing that “jihad” (literally, “struggle”) is a spiritual term encompassing the Muslim’s daily religious life. On the other end of the spectrum are those who believe Islam is a violent faith in which jihad is a perpetual militaristic element. The truth, it seems reasonable to say, lies somewhere in between. Believers of all kinds have killed in the name of their conception of God, or of the gods. (Just because other faiths have sinned, however, does not give any other faith the right to do so, a point that is sometimes lost in the current discussion of the crimes of violent Islamic radicals.) Historically, some of the blood has been shed in what some traditions think of as just wars, some in unjustifiable atrocities, some in battles of conquest or vicious efforts at religious compulsion. And yet believers of all kinds have done great good in the name of their conception of God, or of the gods, in acts of mercy, charity and liberation.

How to make sense of these contradictions and complexities in an age of enduring fear about terrorism? The question is essential, and is arguably the central one of our time, for if totalitarianism was the great problem of the 20th century, then, so far, religiously inspired violence is its 21st century successor.

All of which brings us to the project at hand. Over the next six days, On Faith will host “Muslims Speak Out,” a forum in which about twenty leading Muslim clerics and thinkers from around the world will engage in what we believe is an unprecedented online dialogue about the Islam and its intersection with politics and culture. We reached out to more than fifty such clerics and scholars; about twenty agreed to participate. The list is geographically and theologically diverse; readers should know that, in general, those who are more theologically conservative and anti-American did not respond to our invitation.

The questions we will pose in the coming days touch on controversial and problematic issues. What would you tell suicide bombers who invoke Islam to justify their actions? What are the rights of women in Islam? Is it permissible for a Muslim to convert to another faith? Does Islam’s view of male-female equality differ from the Western view? Under what conditions does Islam sanction the use of violence? How can laws against apostasy be reconciled with the Qu’ranic injunction saying “there is no compulsion in religion”?

One of the questions we are most frequently asked runs something like this: “Why doesn’t the media get it? Why don’t they reflect the real Islam?” Well, here is an opportunity for well-known men and women to speak out and to educate people everywhere about their faith and its relevance in today’s world. It is also an opportunity for all of you to make your voices heard as well by posting questions and comments.

It would be naïve to think dialogue itself is a panacea. But if dialogue can give its participants and its listeners (or, in this case, readers) access to facts they may not have known or points of view they may not have considered, then it cannot hurt, and it may just help. And help we surely need: according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a contributor to “Muslims Speak Out,” two thirds of Americans say they do not know much about Islam, a figure unchanged from 2005. As the historian David McCullough has observed, you cannot love something you don’t know any more than you can love someone you don’t know. You can, however, come to hate that which you don’t know, and our hope is that readers will come away from this week’s forum knowing more about one of the world’s most influential faiths and that they will see that, as with Christianity and Judaism, it can be difficult to paint anything as vast and varied as a global religion with a single brush.

Arguments about jihad or the role of women or apostasy are prone to turn into battles of quotations, in which one side or the other attempts to triumphantly cite a verse (often in translation, and without context) supporting a particular view, only to be answered by a competing citation. As Shakespeare noted, however, “the devil can cite Scripture to his purpose.” And Christians, for example, know that sacred texts often seem contradictory, requiring detailed readings in order to establish the context and meaning of the words, which is not infrequently different from what one might have at first thought. Understanding faith, then, is an exercise in diligent study and intellectual honesty; sometimes the result creates what the Qu’ran called “middle people.” There are, as we see every day, worse things to be.