A Fresh Look At Islam

Under a three-year, government-backed project designed to make Islamic practice more tolerant, Turkish religious leaders will soon publish a "significant revision" of the hadith, the primary source of Sharia law. Clerics and scholars who are behind this effort have voiced skepticism with many of the dominant interpretations of the hadith, claiming that a number of the sayings are falsified and that others have been opportunistically mischaracterized to justify a harsh view of Islamic practice. An advisor to the project was recently quoted as suggesting that certain sayings can be shown to have been created "hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society." (BBC)

"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."

In an effort to take on centuries of "cultural baggage," the project aims to craft a new, liberal vision of Islamic law and practice. Ali Bardakoğlu, the chairman of Turkey's Department of Religious Affairs, is the main player behind this effort. Appointed by the Islamist AKP government in 2003, he announced that "a new collection of hadiths, free of such misogyny, would be prepared by 2008." He even took it a step further, suggesting that he would send liberal-minded Turkish clerics to bring this more tolerant version of Islam to conservative parts of southern Turkey. Quoted by Sabah newspaper recently, Bardakoğlu had this to say: "A team of 80 are scanning all existent hadith. For example, words humiliating women are attributed to the prophets. We are combing through such interpretations. We will publish six volumes....we are not reforming Islam; we are reforming ourselves, our own way of religiosity."

The BBC has a very positive report on this effort, as does The Financial Times. On the flip side, Ali Eteraz, a respected scholar, isn't so keen, arguing that it's wrong for the state to intervene in the field of Islamic reform. "I support Muslims bringing Islam in line with the world they live in. However, what I do not support is the state taking the lead on this," he writes. Eteraz then raises an interesting question:

However, if we won't accept the Italian government going into the Churches to excise all the homophobic, Jew-baiting, woman-hating literature, why would we accept the same when the Turkish government does it? Just because some people claim it is a form of liberalising Islam?

It's a good question, and I'm still mulling over the answer. (Reader responses are most welcome.) Yet for whatever reason, I find myself sympathetic to this type of limited state involvement. In part, I think it's because a gradualist approach to Islamic reform has progressed so slowly that I have few qualms with this state-led effort. Perhaps there is also an argument to be made for state intervention when the dominant religious practices have deviated substantially from human rights norms. Whatever the case, I basically agree with Tom Heneghan, a religion blogger for Reuters: "Change on this front will only come step by step, and even a state authority...can make some of it happen."