An interesting movement towards a very major reformation is going on in Turkey - a reformation as radical as Martin Luther's reformation in Christianity. They are attempting to return to the original values of Islam.


Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts
By Robert Pigott
Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion. The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran. The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad. As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.

But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam. It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion. Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their ambitious aims for it. The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara University's School of Theology. An adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, says some of the sayings - also known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society.

"Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says.

"You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."

Leaders of the Hadith project say successive generations have embellished the text, attributing their political aims to the Prophet Muhammad himself. Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the Prophet.

But this is where the revolutionary nature of the work becomes apparent. Even some sayings accepted as being genuinely spoken by Muhammad have been altered and reinterpreted.

Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example. "There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or more without their husband's permission and they are genuine. "But this isn't a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet's time it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary ban for safety reasons." The project justifies such bold interference in the 1,400-year-old content of the Hadith by rigorous academic research. Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said "he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone". So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet's goal was.

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They have also taken an even bolder step - rejecting a long-established rule of Muslim scholars that later (and often more conservative) texts override earlier ones.

"You have to see them as a whole," says Fadi Hakura.

"You can't say, for example, that the verses of violence override the verses of peace. This is used a lot in the Middle East, this kind of ideology.

"I cannot impress enough how fundamental [this change] is."

To read the entire article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7264903.stm

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I'm a leftwing fascist, disease spreading, devil worshipper!

Wow! Cool! The Islamic Reformation gathers steam!

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Scarred survivor of the April 2008 Mod War.

it could be argued that turkey is motivated by the effect and not the veracity of the hadiths and is embarking of a compound complex fracture with the past which could lead to unintended consequences given the butterfly effect in complex events.

but given that the Uthman koran, the modern koran was manufactured.

http://answering-islam.org/Green/uthman.htm

one wonders what its fate will be with the new historians efforts to improve islams appearance, perhaps changing content validity with face validity.

appearances are everything.

I think this is a good thing. If you actually read the Quran, its not as conservative as even moderate muslims practice it.

I was surprised by that since i grew up with christianity, which is practiced very liberally in relation to what the bible literally says. It was strange to find out that the modern Islam had stricter laws than those Muhammad wrote more than a thousand years ago.