by John Lewis
According to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post (“Is Turkey's Government Starting a Muslim Reformation?” Daniel Pipes, May 22, 2008), a government ministry in Turkey, the so-called “Presidency of Religious Affairs and the Religious Charitable Foundation,” has undertaken a three year project to study and condense thousands of pages of material associated with Islam. The problem, they claim, is that fourteen hundred years of “Hadiths,” reports about the sayings and deeds of Muhammad, have distorted the meaning of Islam as revealed in Islam’s central text, the Koran. The goal of the project is to weed-out all that is inconsistent with the Koran.
According to one of the eighty Islamic theologians involved, “The Koran is our basic guide. Anything that conflicts with that we are trying to eliminate.” According to Mehmet Görmez, a senior lecturer at Ankara University, “We want to bring out the positive side of Islam that promotes personal honor, human rights, justice, morality, women’s rights, respect for the other.” To promote the spread of Islam in the 21st century, the Turkish theologians want to redefine how Muslims must practice Islam. |