On Sept. 11, terrorist attacks destroyed the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and punched a hole in The Pentagon. The government has determined involvement of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network, currently under fire in Afghanistan along with the country's ruling Taliban. Bin Laden has declared his cause to be a "holy war" and considers himself as a soldier of Islam.

But, what is Islam? In his PBS documentary, "Islam: Empire of Faith" producer Robert Gardner attempts to explain Islam's history, the teachings of the Koran and Islam's role in the world today.

Gardner will be online Tuesday, Nov. 6, at 2 p.m. EST, to talk about the documentary, Islam and his knowledge of the Middle East.

Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.

Gardener has been producing documentaries for over 30 years and has been nominated for an Academy Award, won three Emmys and a variety of other special awards. His body of work explores a variety of topics -- science, history, adventure and human issues.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Orlando, Fla.: In visiting the Web site, "Islam: Empire of Faith," I read the five pillars. Now from everything else I've read and seen, including other documentaries, I've made two observations: the segregation of women and an underlying hate for Jews. Please explain. If the Muslim faith is that of peace and kindness, why are women always pushed aside and there seems to be little or no tolerance for others religious beliefs?

Robert Gardner: This is a very complicated and common questions. Most of the impressions that we have about anti-Jewish or anti-female feelings within Islamic society come not from the core values or the history of the religion, but from regional traditions. Most of the reactions relating to Jews comes from the current situation in Israel relating to the Israelis and Palestinians and the 20th century history of Zionism. Islam in its core values as it is presented in the Koran, is very tolerant of other faiths, and in fact Islam sees itself as an extension of and connected to the earlier peoples of The Book -- the Christians and the Jews. Both Moses and Jesus appear as prophets in the Koran. It's important to remember that Christians historically have been much more violent in their oppression and opposition to Jews than Muslims ever were.

Washington, D.C.: In your opinion, is it correct to say (as have commentators and politicians) that Islam is a religion of peace or, on the other hand, a religion of the sword. Does either make sense? Isn't a quality of religions (all of them!) that they are amenable to a very wide variety of interpretations regarding tolerance or aggression? Is the question even worth debating?

Robert Gardner: Islam, unlike Christianity, incorporates politics from the very beginning, and as a result was involved in conquest from the very beginning. However, the core of Islam as presented in the Koran are very strongly invested in the ideas of tolerance, charity, kindness and justice. Also, it's important to bear in mind that Islam is a religion that is 1,600 years old and covers the entire world, and so to look at it in terms as simple as being a religion of tolerance or a religion of war is oversimplifying something that is very complex.

Christianity, whose core values are deeply invested in peace and forgiveness, was used as justification for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews from Spain, the Spanish conquest of the New World -- and also it's important to bear in mind that the Nazis were Christians. Every Nazi solder had a belt buckle that said "God is with us." Though the core values of Christianity are love and peace.

Erie, Pa.: Salman Rushdie in his letter to the Guardian and the New York Times last Saturday makes a distinction between Moslems, those abiding by the faith and Islamists, those using the faith for personal or political gain, i.e., bin Laden, the Taliban, etc.

Do you think this is a fair distinction and do you agree with Rushdie's comment that the Moslems will have to realize the error of the ways of these radical groups and take some personal responsibility in repelling terrorism from their lands?

Thank you.

Robert Gardner: I think we should be careful that we don't tar the religion and culture of Islam with the brush of bin Laden's terrorism. I would go back to the Nazi parallel and say that though a lot of the Nazis were Lutherans, no one relates Lutheranism with Nazism, though that was the dominant Protestant religion in Germany at the time. Certainly, the Taliban and bin Laden see what they do in Islamic terms, as the Nazis saw themselves as Christians. But the behavior of bin Laden and the Taliban and Muslim extremists does not define the core values and behavior of Islamic peoples.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada: You also state that Islam accepts the practice of related religions, Judaism and Christianity. In fact, how many and which Islamic states openly support and protect such practices? An how does this relate to Palestinian views about Jerusalem?

Robert Gardner: Twenty percent of the world's population are Muslims. There is great variety in the way Islam is practiced, and there are many different countries that have Islamic culture. So it would be very hard country by country to determine the level of tolerance. In Turkey, for instance, which is a secular Muslim state, there is a very high level of tolerance. In Afghanistan, at the other end of the scale, there is almost no toleranc at all.

The issue of Jerusalem and the holy sites raises extremely powerful and symbolic issues for Muslims, Jews and Christians, which are also deeply involved in the politics of the region.

Washington, D.C.: For many centuries preceding the European Rennassaince, Muslim scholars and natural philosophers discovered and reported on a great body of knowledge, including: cosmology, medicine, pharmaceutics, mathematics, physics and so on.

What contribution, if any, did these bodies of knowledge have with the European Rennaisaince?

Robert Gardner: They were influential -- in particular, the Muslim philosopher of Averoes was helpful and influential to Thomas Aquinas in dealing with questions of faith, God and the natural world. The translations and transformation of the earlier writings of the Greeks, Persians and Indians, as Arabic became more and more understood in the West, became extremely valuable to the eventual flowering of Western culture.

Robert Gardner: More: There was a medical book on anatomy written by Arab physicians that was in use in the Arab world and in the West for 600 years.

Singapore: The "rogue states" and the Islamic religious establishment seem to be exploiting anti-Western propaganda as a tool to increase their power by uniting their peoples against a foreign enemy.

Throughout much of the Islamic world, the media remains controled, and people are saturated with anti-Western messages. It is obvious that these messages are causing more terrorists.

What should the West do to counter these messages? How would we explain our side of the story? Should we create our own propaganda to mitigate the effects of the anti-Western propaganda? Should we demand the airing of ordinary western media in countries such as Iran, Lybia, Iraq and even Saudi Arabia? Should we simply beam our messages into these countries regardless of their cultural sensibilities?

Robert Gardner: In a way, American media, in the sense that we as Westerners understand it, is already very visible in these countries, through satellite dishes, video tapes, etc.

The very nature of our consumerist, entertainment-driven media tends to feed the extremist view that the West is fundamentally corrupt. Unfortunately, it doesn't communicate the importance of democracy and freedom in our society, consumerist though it is. When Islamic extremists refer to the West as "the Great Satan," they mean Satan as a seducer -- a corrupter in terms of things that are forbidden in Islam -- indiscriminate sex, alcohol, the desire for things, which is a kind of idolatry. If you consider that "Baywatch" is the most popular television program in the world, and the way "Baywatch" presents our culture, you can get a sense of why fundamentalist Muslims would see this as a representation of evil.

Mt. Rainier, Md.: Has a documentary ever been made of the Muslim experience in America? I would think this could be both fascinating and valuable, to see the communities, the schools, the mosques, the variety of people. A valuable learning tool for Americans who are unaware of this significant portion of our population and also for Muslims overseas who are equally unaware of how their co-religionists live quietly among us.

Robert Gardner: Yes, a documentary is currently under production for PBS on that very subject. The Muslim population in the U.S. is very interesting, and I think unique in the world as far as Muslim communities go.

San Clemente, Calif.: In studying Islam's history on the Internet, from 600AD to present, they have a very aggressive and bloody history that seems bent on destroying all who are not of their faith. Am I misinterpreting their faith?

Alfred Garcia

Robert Gardner: Most of Islamic history as we understand it is highly biased and is presented over time almost purely from a Western point of view. And in so, highlights the violence and the negative aspects of the religion. One might consider how violent American Indians were always presented in our history until recently, when their culture has been more honestly represented. That isn't to say there hasn't been violence in the history of Islamic cultures, but to focus on that violence would be as counterproductive as it would be to focus exclusively on the violence in Western culture, violence which would include the Crusades, the conquests of the New World, the colonial processes, and two world wars.

Hod Hsharon, Israel: Many theories and speculations are given to the eruption of violence in the last decades from Islamic groups of terror. Do you think the seeds of this violence can be found in the Koran more than they can be found in the Christian or Jews holy scriptures? Or there are another reasons such as the misery and poverty in most of Islamic nations?

Robert Gardner: I think that a lot of the violence we're seeing now is political violence, and a lot of it comes from issues of the 20th century, which include colonialism, oil, poverty, Zionism and the rise of the state of Israel. Much more than the impact of the core teachings of Islam.

Boston, Mass.: Why does every single one of your answers evade the issue that the VAST MAJORITY of Muslims in the Muslim world, especially in the Arab world, support violent Jihad against Jews and the West?

Robert Gardner: They don't. The situation in Israel between the Palestinians and the Israelis has caused a great deal of hostility toward Israelis in the Muslim world. But that's not the same thing as universal anti-Semitism.

Sana'a, Yemen: Are Americans really this dumb? Would you accept a "documentary" about Christianity or Judaism made by anti-Christian or anti-Jewish bigots? Most of what's played on CNN and other Western shows is absolute hogwash. For instance, why is it that you always have stupid, eerie music whenever you show people praying? Is praying supposed to be evil now? Or just praying Muslims?

If you want to learn about Islam, why don't you actually go to Muslims to do it? I know it's a radical idea for people as brainwashed as Americans, but...

Robert Gardner: I agree with this impression of a lot of American media, which is one of the reasons that PBS commissioned this particular production. And while I am not personally a Muslim, a lot of Muslims did work on this production. And speaking only for this particular production that I made, it has been widely accepted by American Muslims, and has been purchased widely internationally by foreign broadcasters.

Crusades Violent?: Excuse me, but weren't the Crusades a war of defense against Islamic encroachment on the West? I know it's fashionable to talk about how horrible they were on the part of the West, but let's remember that this was part of a fighting back of Islamic expansionism. And until recently, when the post-colonial scholars started telling them otherwise, Muslims were proud of beating back "the infidel," not victimized.

Robert Gardner: That's a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the Crusades. The Crusades were initiated by a Pope for his own political reasons at the time, and were also largely motivated by the opportunity for booty and the acquisition of land. In fact, the Muslim world at that time was in political disarray, and that's why the Crusaders were able to make the conquests that they did. But the conquests only lasted a couple of hundred years.

This interpretation of the Crusades is very common, and an example of the Western misunderstanding of Islamic culture and history.

Washington, D.C.: Mr. Gardner,

Please attempt to summarize for us how the Islamic idea of "jihad" or "holy war" has evolved and if there are similar, modern justifications and interpretations used by Judaism and Christianity. Also, do Islamic fundamentalists believe, as Protestant Pentacostals do for example, that anyone not practicing their brand of faith is going to hell as a "non-believer" -- a term used frequently by Osama bin Laden?

Robert Gardner: The word "jihad," which is generally used to mean "holy war," actually means "struggle." The concept of holy war, or a war for religious reasons, has existed in the past -- the Crusades being a good example. As to the particular beliefs of extremist Muslim groups as to who does or does not get into heaven, I'm not qualified to comment.