WITH his hair combed neatly to the right, Muhammad Quraish Shihab looks different from how he looks on TV. And in his brown shirt, somehow bigger. "It's not me, its the TV camera that gets it wrong," the 71-year-old Quraish told Tempo at his home in South Jakarta.

Quraish Shihab has authored some 30 books, including Tafsir al-Misbah, a 15-volume work that took him four years to finish. In his career, he has held several important posts: including a