"Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.Best news to come out of Turkey lately. We keep hearing from Muslims how Islam has always been changing, yet, the last hundred years it has generally been for the worse. But a move like this is real progress.
[...]
Significantly, the "Ankara School" of theologians working on the new Hadith have been using Western critical techniques and philosophy.
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."
BBC News, 26 February 2008
""There is no compulsion in religion" declares a famous verse (2:256).Higher criticism would be needed indeed.
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How then came the ban on apostasy? Well, it was a political, not religious, verdict that soon became a part of the religious canon. David Forte, professor of Law at Cleveland State University, explains this fact very briefly and vividly in his article titled "Islam's Trajectory."
"The primary justification for the execution of the apostate is," he notes: "That in the early days of Islam, apostasy and treason were in fact synonymous. War was perennial in Arabia. It never stopped. To reject the leader of another tribe, to give up on a coalition, was in effect to go to war against him. There was no such thing as neutrality. There were truces, but there was never permanent neutrality. It is reported, for example, that immediately after the death of Mohammed, many tribes apostatized. They said in effect, "the leader whom we were following is gone, so let's go back to our own leaders.' And they rebelled against Muslim rule. The first caliph, Abu Bakr, ordered such rebels to be killed.
Many scholars argue that the tradition that all apostates had to be killed had its origin during these wars of rebellion and not during Mohammed's time. In fact, many argue that these traditions in which Mohammed affirmed the killing of apostates were apocryphal, made up later to justify what the empire had been doing."
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The second thing that the origin of the apostasy ban shows is that Islamic sources need a serious reconsideration. What most Muslims attach themselves to as divine commandments are actually the political and cultural codes of the early centuries of Islam, which were, to be sure, man-made facts. The divine principles of a religion should remain eternally valid, but not its historical context."
Turkish Daily News, November 3, 2007
"Britain’s contemporary artists are fêted around the world for their willingness to shock but fear is preventing them from tackling Islamic fundamentalism. [...]“I’ve censored myself,” [Grayson] Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”[...]Across Europe there is growing evidence that freedom of expression has been curtailed by fear of religious fundamentalism. Robert Redeker, a French philosophy teacher, is in hiding after calling the Koran a “book of extraordinary violence” in Le Figaro in 2006; Spanish villages near Valencia have abandoned a centuries-old tradition of burning effigies of Muhammad to mark the reconquest of Spain, against the Moors; and an opera house in Berlin banned a production of Mozart’s Idomeneo because it depicted the beheading of Muhammad (as well as Jesus and other spiritual leaders)."The Times, November 19, 2007
"If it were proved that highly qualified, ambitious doctors were Islamist mass-murder plotters, it would put a hole through another comforting theory - that this is "all about" under-employed young men of low self-esteem and educational attainments.More:
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On Start the Week on Monday, all the distinguished guests, including the philosopher John Gray and the historian Eric Hobsbawm, vehemently agreed that the word "Islamist", which I have used at the top of this column, was wrong and dangerous. It implied a strong link to Islam, which was unfair. I thought the distinction between "Islamic" and "Islamist" was enough: but if we need a new and more accurate word for extremist Muslims, what is it?"
Andrew Marr, Daily Telegraph, 04/07/2007
Terror-spooked EU: 'Don't say Muslims'But being a reasonable fellow, I decided to look up "muslim" at Thesaurus.com to see the alternatives:
Gordon Brown's ban on the word "Muslim" in relation to terrorism can be blamed on the EU. The prime minister has told Cabinet members not to mention "Muslim" and "terrorism" in the same breath. It comes after the European Commission issued a guide for government spokesmen to avoid offence by ruling out the words such as "jihad", "Islamic" or "fundamentalist" in statements about terrorist attacks.
Daily Mail, 4th July 2007
