A few weeks ago, the Ministry of Culture in Egypt awarded the state's highest prize in the social sciences to Sayed al-Qimni, a controversial historian and sociologist who has received death threats for what many believe is heresy in his writing and for strong denunciation of what he calls the intellectual bankruptcy of Islamic extremists. That decision has opened wide gates of fire as some Egyptians and other Arab Muslims on satellite television scurried for places to call for the withdrawal of the award and in some cases file lawsuits against the committee that selected al-Qimni as this year's winner of the prestigious award. "How dare you award someone who thinks so poorly of Islam and often insults the Prophet Muhammad?" said a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, al-Qimni, a graduate of the famed Al-Azhar University, never insulted Islam, but he often takes issue with what he sees as religious anarchy in Egypt which attacks any attempt to study Islam using scientific tools. Al-Qimni has recently come out of a four-year writing hiatus imposed on him by death threats from a number of groups in Egypt. In fact, in 2005 he went as far as retracting all his statements against religious leaders and aplogized for offending Muslims after he was informed that five people signed up to assassinate him. All this fury and belligerent requests to strip al-Qimni of his award aside, this incident has started an long overdue debate in Egypt and much of the Arab Muslim world about the limits of criticism of religion. For those of you who understand Arabic, you can watch below a segment of an Egyptian TV program where al-Qimni defends himslef against accusations of heresy. There is still a long way to go and certain taboos have to be dropped for these societies to have an intelligent and critical discussion about their own religion and the role of their intellectuals in getting them beyond a blind following of religious dogmas. It must be suffocating to be an intellectual in places where free speech is curtailed not only by the political establishment, but increasingly by self-proclaimed religious powers that be. It's curious how much brain power is wasted on these issues when these countries face momentous social, economic and political problems.