ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, June 22, 1996                TAG: 9606240015
SECTION: RELIGION                 PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: QOM, IRAN 
SOURCE: GREG MYRE ASSOCIATED PRESS

IN IRAN, A CLERIC PUTS ISLAM ONLINE FOR RESEARCHERS

Beneath the gold-and-turquoise minarets of a theological seminary, Korani runs an ambitious project to place 5,000 Islamic texts on computer and make them available to scholars worldwide via the Internet.

It's believed to be the biggest project of its kind, and after seven years and countless aching fingers, Korani and his small staff have hand-punched 2,000 Persian and Arabic books onto their computers at the Golpaygani Seminary, an hour's drive south of Tehran.

``We still have a long way to go,'' said the engaging Korani, a Shiite Muslim cleric who wears a white turban, brown glasses and a perpetual smile.

Korani says his aim is simply to help scholars of Islam, whose research often requires digging through countless religious texts dating back to the birth of Islam and its holy book, the Koran, some 1,400 years ago.

But Korani's work also reflects a modernizing impulse in Islamic Iran that's not often visible from beyond its borders. While some older, traditional clerics in Iran see such technology as a threat to their pre-eminent roles, a younger generation embraces the changes.

``In the human sciences, it takes so much time to conduct research,'' said Korani, age 50. ``If you have this facility, you can really use your time well.''

A quick computer search can produce a list of Islamic commentaries down through the centuries on issues ranging from how a husband should relate to his wife to why Muslims should not eat pork.

Qom, best known as Iran's leading religious center, is not a place one associates with modern technology.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, taught in Qom for decades. Some 30,000 would-be clerics study in the many seminaries, and it seems every second man on the streets wears a long robe, a turban and a beard to denote his religious calling.

Grand Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Golpaygani, the man the seminary is named after, was so conservative he believed that Islam did not permit music of any kind.

But before the ayatollah died in 1993, Korani was able to persuade him that putting Islam online would be a boon for clerics and scholars.

``The great ayatollah [Golpaygani] gave the order to use the computer, and then no one disagreed,'' said Korani, a self-taught computer buff who proposed the project shortly after receiving a personal computer as a gift.

Korani, originally from Lebanon, is himself an incongruous mix of traditional and modern.

His Spartan office has a small desk and one simple chair. Even that remains empty when he entertains visitors by sitting with them on a faded green carpet and drinking cardamon-flavored tea.

His metal bookshelf is filled with classic Islamic texts in Persian and Arabic, interspersed with the Reader's Digest Bible, several boxes of computer diskettes and a well-thumbed copy of ``Teach Yourself DOS.''

Down the hall, gray-bearded clerics in the library still pore over dusty books with worn covers and cracked spines. But Korani's charges, most of them in their 20s, feverishly pound away on the keyboards in the nchnology,'' Korani said. ``We believe that this technology is the gift of God and should be available to all people.''

LENGTH: Medium:   90 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. Ali Korani of the Encyclopedia of Islamic Center in 
          Quom, Iran, is putting 5,000 Islamic texts on computer and making 
          them available to scholars via the Internet.