Meet the new Turks

ARTICLE: "The New Face of Islam: A critique of radicalism is building within the heart of the Muslim world," by Christopher Dickey and Own Matthews, Newsweek, 9 June 2008, p. 30.

Cool and big effort by Turkish scholars to contextualize, historically, the 170k known statements by the Prophet, known as the Hadith.

The goal? To stop the literal readings by fundamentalists to justify violence and separatism and resistance to the outside world.

Just like with Christ, you have to understand that the Bible's main books were all written for contemporary audiences, not today's world, so interpret or become captive to yesterday's logic, slowly twisted by history's advance.

We have judges do this with the Constitution. Same basic purpose and goal.

The literalists are dangerous in any religion. To me, it's pure escapism—a failure to communicate and a resistance to adaptation. Both are worth avoiding as we evolve.

So kudos to the Turks, who impress more and more even as Europe finds them still too weird to incorporate in the EU.

They should join the US instead.

Comments

[David Emery]

(Disclaimer: I'm not a mideast Scholar, but this represents my understanding from a college course and reading since then...)

Well, Turks are clearly Muslims with a long tradition of Muslim scholarship. But they are NOT ARABS. So the question is whether the Arabs will accept a non-Arab Muslim initiative.

Now if Turkey can build connections with Egypt, Cairo has been one of the centers of -Arab Muslim- thought (along with Baghdad). That might solve the historic animus between Turk and Arab. (Don't forget Lawrence of Arabia fought the Turks.)

[Louis Heberlein]

But the past Turks were in long term conflict with Persian Shiites, and they were regarded as evil secular exploiters by the Sunni Arab core. They even made deals with those evil Israelis. Will those historic perspectives taint an attempt to make rational evaluations of Turkish ideas? This Turkish effort may be a necessary, but not sufficient step toward modernization.

[Tim]

http://jihadwatch.org/archives/020145.php

as per the link above, I think this is just smoke and mirrors. It will not change the religion.

[Michael]

In the grand scheme of things, maybe the non-arab nature of the change is necessary? A way of making the religion about more than just one people or one part of the world?

[Javaid Akhtar]

I also thinks its a natural de-coupling of the Turks from the Arabs.A kind of innocculation against any possible foothold in the future arabisation of the population through any religious medium.Countries like pakistan have wholesale sold themselves out in this ( renaming a city after a Saudi) for handful of Silver.The insecurity of the Saudi's ( loads of oil..handful of people) have led them into this kind of security-blanket-mentality expansionist phase.These are the same pathways that AQ now makes use of.But not in Iran ( that must have CREATED shia style religion as a drawbridge against this kind of possible arabisation of itself....way way back in time) .Turkey is just continuing on its own traditon of the same thing..( latinazation of alphabet..secularisation)Three power blocks..all muslim...but they will always proactively distance themselves from each other.

[Andrew in Baghdad]

With respect to Mr. Emery above, until about 50 years ago, the Egyptians did not consider themselves Arabs. Not until Nasser's great "pan-Arab" dream did they start to identify themselves as Arabs - and that was fought bitterly for a decade by the Saudis.

So, while Cairo has, for centuries, been a center of Islamic study, you must weigh carefully how "Arab" that center has been.

Truth be told, unless the initiative is coming from whatever nation controls Mecca, I don't think it matters to the Arabs. If that means forcing the Kingdom of Saud to yield Mecca back to the Hashemites, well, so be it.