Muslim Heretics Conference

Islamic Newspeak

A new version of the Prophet’s sayings is due to appear - as approved by Turkey’s Department of Religious Affairs

Brian Whitaker

Technorati Tags: Progressive Muslims

February 26, 2008 5:30 PM | Printable version

A rather excited report this morning on the BBC’s Today programme hailed a development that “could signal the start of a reformation” of Islam.

The possibility of an “Islamic Reformation” of the kind that launched Protestantism in Christianity sounds attractive - at least superficially - and it has been promoted with enthusiasm by non-believers such as Salman Rushdie. But Muslims who are actually involved in trying to liberalise and reform their religion usually regard it as nonsense.

What excited the BBC this morning was the news [audio file, with a text version here] that Turkey’s department of religious affairs will shortly issue a revised version of the hadith - sayings and deeds attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. The hadith plays an important role in Islamic jurisprudence, particularly on matters where the Qur’an itself is silent, and it is on the hadith rather than the Qur’an that most of the silliest fatwas by religious scholars are based.

In the earliest days of Islam words attributed to the Prophet were passed on by word of mouth until they were eventually written down. How many of them may be genuine is a matter of opinion, but some are certainly fakes. In his book, Progressive Muslims, Scott Kugle writes:

“… It is very difficult to establish the authenticity of most reports that circulate in the name of the Prophet Muhammad. But clearly, many reports were projected retrospectively back upon the Prophet without being reliably attributed to him. Muslims are confronted with hadith in which the Prophet reportedly speaks about issues that did not exist in his lifetime: such as the Shia-Sunni schism, various theological ‘heresies’, and even the systematic collection of hadith.”

The dubious material includes condemnations of homosexuality often quoted by scholars today which, according to Kugle, did not appear until long after the Prophet’s death:

“Forged hadith reports condemning same-sex sexual relations began to circulate in earnest during the Abbasid period (750-1258 AD), when it became aristocratic and courtly fashion to own young male slaves, employ handsome wine-bearers, and flaunt same-sex romances. Many hadiths were circulated in the name of the Prophet to address these practices, as part of the traditionalist cultural war on the cosmopolitan elite of Abbasid-era cities.”

In the light of such examples, Kugle argues that “Reassessment of the authenticity of hadith reports is the key to legal and social reform among Muslims”.

That, basically is what the Turkish Department of Religious Affairs has been doing. It has worked through the old collections of hadith, eliminating material that is “out of date, mysogynistic or anti-Christian” (to quote the BBC’s correspondent). It has also been removing “cultural baggage” which it considers to have no sound basis in religion - for example the practice of female genital mutilation and a ruling that women should not travel without a man’s permission. The latter, it says, was simply a safety measure at the time which has no relevance today.

In principle this is a valuable exercise, but it needs to be treated with a bit of caution.

In the Sunni branch of Islam (to which most Muslims belong), there are four main “schools” of law - Hanafi, Maliki, Shafii and Hanbali. Their relative influence varies from country to country but the dominant one in Turkey is Hanafi.

One of the key differences between these schools is in the reliance they place on the hadith. The Hanafi school tends to be more wary of the hadith than the other schools, with the result that its judgments are often more flexible.

It’s not terribly surprising, therefore, that a critical review of the hadith has been taking place in Hanafi-dominated Turkey. There would be more grounds for excitement if it was happening - say - in Saudi Arabia where the Hanbali school prevails and scholars produce the most conservative legal judgments, often based on literalist readings of the Qur’an and uncritical acceptance of the hadith.

One criticism of the Hanafi school is that its built-in flexibility has historically made its religious rulings susceptible to political influence. The Hanbali school, on the other hand, because it relies so heavily on the hadith, is relatively impervious to political influence; in Saudi Arabia it tends to control politics rather than the other way round.

In Turkey, the Department of Religious Affairs is not an independent body: it was established under the constitution to handle relations between the government and religious communities in accordance with the principles of secularism laid down by Ataturk. As a result of this background, no matter how academically sound the department’s editing and revision of the hadith may be, there will always be a question mark hanging over it - in the minds of Muslims living outside Turkey as well as the more traditionalist Muslims inside the country. It probably won’t cut much ice, either, with Turkey’s Alawi Muslims - from the Shia branch of Islam - who are said to number around 12 million.

It’s a pity that this very necessary process of reappraising the hadith has been tainted in Turkey by the state’s involvement. Separating the state from religion doesn’t just mean keeping the muftis out of politics; it means government keeping its hands off religion too

Comment is free: Islamic Newspeak

Organizer says “my hair is not a sex symbol”

Arabs campaign for women to “Take off the Veil”

Campaigners call for “Support Denmark, defend freedom

Technorati Tags: women,veil

” (File)

DUBAI (Farrag Ismail, AlArabiya.net)

A group of Arabic websites and blogs have launched an international campaign against the Muslim headscarf (hijab), arguing the move is a response to what they see as “intellectual terrorism” practiced by strict Islamic groups and individuals.
The campaign is called “Take Off The Veil”, and was launched March 8, 2008 to coincide with International Women’s Day.
“My hair is not a sex symbol that I should be ashamed of, and my body is not a stage for men’s fantasies. I am a noble human being with my hair and body,” Dr. Elham Manea, one of the campaign’s leaders, wrote on the participating websites.

Manea, a professor of Yemeni descent and who works in Switzerland, said she believes the headscarf was never part of Islam and chose International Women’s Day for the campaign as she views the headscarf as a symbol of women’s oppression and to warn women deceived by Islamists into putting “this rag on their heads.”
“We aim to communicate the idea to as many people as possible, and we don’t do that by violence and intimidation like Islamists,” Manea said.

 

“Religious coercion”

Manea does not see the headscarf as a freedom of choice, but rather as “religious coercion” and believes that staying silent about the issue means allowing extremist ideas to infiltrate society.
Manea’s letter stresses that calling upon girls to take off the headscarf does not mean inciting them to perversion or immorality, but rather encouraging them to use their brains.
“Women’s headscarf is a political issue and an ideology Islamists use to garner support and reach power,” she said.
Manea added that Islamists influence women by citing three reasons: that by covering her body she will protect men from sinning, will be establishing a righteous society, and that it is a religious obligation.
The campaign posted a picture of a woman taking off her headscarf and part of her clothes while saying that this is the outfit she chose for herself. This picture will be distributed in the Cairo subway as a response to the headscarf leaflets showered on women commuters on daily basis.
The campaign also posted a picture of Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris — who criticized the spread of Iranian-style headscarf in Egypt — and a traffic sign that says “No Entry for the Veiled” as well as a banner that says “Support Denmark, defend freedom.”

 

Counter campaign

Organizers of “Take off the Veil” campaign told AlArabiya.net that move was a counter-campaign to the initiative by the Digital Resistance Movement (hamasna) which calls for women to wear the headscarf and targets famous women, like Lebanese singer Haifa Wahbi and the wife of Egypt’s goalie Essam Al-Hadhari.
Hamasna, an online movement launched by a group of Islamist activists, launched their own “International Headscarf Day” campaign on February 28, 2008 and started it by calling upon Wahbi to wear “more decent clothes.”
The website posted a picture of Turkish president Abullah Gül’s wife and praised the fact that she is the first veiled woman to enter the Turkish presidential palace since the secular republic was founded in 1923.
The group also called upon Hadhari’s wife to put her headscarf back on after she appeared headscarf-less for the first time with her husband in Switzerland.
The websites that launched the counter-campaign viewed the attack on Hadari’s wife as “intellectual terrorism” and interference in people’s personal affairs. The campaign called for every girl and woman to take off her headscarf to respond to “fundamentalists that want to muzzle women and deprive them of their personal and social rights.”
The “Take off the Veil” campaign involves about 30 Tunisian, Arab, and Coptic secular websites which all posted a picture of the late Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba taking off a woman’s headscarf.
Head of Hamasna Mohamed al-Sayed told AlArabiya.net that the website will counter the “Take Off The Headscarf” campaign with religious evidence proving the headscarf was an Islamic obligation.
“We don’t force anyone to do anything. This is personal freedom. We only offer advise,” al-Sayed concluded.
Pictures of Egypt’s opposition Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and its current Supreme Guide Mahdi Akef were also posted with critical comments, in addition to pictures of other Islamic preachers accused of promoting fundamentalist thoughts.

Arabs campaign for women to “Take off the Veil”