BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, a special report. Muslim fundamentalists have called the U.S. an enemy of Islam. But most Muslims deny that and also insist there is nothing in Islam that justifies terrorism. What are the underlying reasons for what happened September 11th? Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: They knew if their mission succeeded, when they hijacked the planes, their lives, like those of their victims, would be reduced to ashes -- but they did it anyway. Why? Were they motivated by their interpretation of passages in the Koran? Or were they following a misguided form of Islam born out of poverty and desperation?

DR. FARID ESACK (Muslim scholar, Auburn Theological Seminary): In Islamic law there is absolutely no justification for this kind of dastardly deed.

SEVERSON: Dr. Farid Esack, a Muslim scholar at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, says Muslims are God-fearing, law-abiding citizens.

DR. ESACK: I think that ordinary believers quietly go about trying to find the presence of God in their lives, through their prayers, through their ethical conducts, through their dealings with other people.

SEVERSON: But what of the 19 Muslims who shattered our sense of well-being, and of their helpers, and the others said to be in waiting -- and those in other countries, celebrating? Professor Abou El Fadl calls himself a patriotic American and [is] a leading authority on Islamic law.

PROFESSOR ABOU EL FADL: In my view, I battle it out for the soul of Islam, for who gets to define what Islam is going to stand for.

SEVERSON: Translated from Arabic, the word Islam means "peace." And there is nothing in the teachings of Islam that justifies terrorism. The term "jihad," the so-called holy war we've been threatened with on so many occasions, loosely translated means "an inner struggle for self-improvement and a social struggle for human rights."

MR. SALAM AL-MARAYATI (National Director, Muslim Public Affairs Council): I believe that Islam is a perfect faith and Muslims are imperfect.

SEVERSON: Salam Al-Marayati is with the Muslim Public Affairs Council, speaking here to a class at USC. He says extremists are using religion to spread fear and gain sympathy.

MR. AL-MARAYATI: The mistake we have made in the West is that we have allowed the extremists to exploit the term jihad because every time the term is used in the media, then everybody over reacts to it as if this is something of a serious religious nature.

SEVERSON: Some Muslim scholars argue that now is the time when Muslims should take a closer look at their theology and their culture.

PROFESSOR EL FADL: What is needed is to go into the Islamic tradition in an honest and self-critical perspective and see what in this tradition contributes to a radicalized discourse.

SEVERSON: There's a tradition of power, of control, of building empires that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of China.

DR. ESACK: There is the whole notion of us having a broken ego, of us having lived in a grandiose past before. And yearning to return to that. I do think as Muslims we need to come to terms with the fact that we are living in a plural world, in a diverse world, and there are alternative ways of being in the world and being in control.

SEVERSON: Islam is divided into many small parts, with no central or authoritative interpretation of theology. The Taliban's leading clerics give the Koran a far more rigid interpretation than the vast majority of Muslims worldwide.

MR. AL-MARAYATI: It has become a global phenomenon that Muslims are beginning to speak out about what their religion is authentically teaching. We say you can only look at Islam from the Koran or the authenticated teachings of the Prophet Mohammed. We don't care about what clerics say anymore.

SEVERSON: Faithful Muslims pray five times a day, facing Mecca, and try to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, at least once a lifetime.

Many thousands of young Muslims attend religious schools or "madrassahs" in Pakistan that teach students, sometimes dressed in uniforms, a radical interpretation of Islam. Rob Gifford, a reporter for National Public Radio, has been allowed to visit these schools.

ROB GIFFORD (National Public Radio): That is one of the main reasons why some of the more militant Muslims come to these schools, because from a very young age, all they have had is an Islamic education.