Reinterpretation of Islam in Turkey

zeemax,

.... sigh! .... look, i don't know what is it between you guys and the poor pig, but even the most sane of muslims (and i might add, jews) will break every other god given rule but they won't eat pork ..... even some hardened murtids have a hard time swallowing a ham sandwich with their beer at lunch - jinnah was a rare exception .....

.... so, to answer your answer truthfully, bhabi does not cook pork in the house and i have to go to famous dave's or memphis smoke when i have a craving for ribs .... i usually go there with a jewish friend whose wife keeps a kosher kitchen and a hindoo whose wife is a strict vegetarian ..... i know it is shameful for grown men to be sneaking around at high noon, but that is the price we pay for matrimonial harmony and all the benefits it brings ...... but, alhamdolillah, mrs hamidm doesn't mind my drinking because it is not forbidden in the koran ......

forget the stuff about facial hair....what about the blowing up of people and flying planes into buildings? how about re-interpreting the koran to say stuff like that isn't kosher?

How do you "reinterpret" chopping the heads off of 700 unarmed civilians? How do you "reinterpret" selling their innocent and helpless women and children into slavery? How do you "reinterpret" physical attraction to a 6-year old? (Yes, that's when mohammad expressed his desire to marry Ayesha). How do you "reinterpret" licence to rape war booty?

The list is long. There is a reason Muslims don't want ANY discussion or criticism about the Koran or Muhammad's life. Because if that were to be permitted, and the general population including potential "converts" were to find out the facts, people would leave this religion in droves.

I was just watching NTV - which is a Bangladeshi Bengali channel. They are having a nationwide "dialogue" on how to move the country forward. Lots of educated, sincere and well-meaning faces. Problem is, none of them DARED to bring up the topic of changing Islam as the State Religion, to NO state religion at all.

This kind of reflects the central dilemma of ALL Muslim-majority countries. It is like smoking 3 packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and simultaneously making plans for health improvement - jogging, exercising etc.

It is an exercise in futility.

.... it seems nobody is seriously interested in reforming islam other than me and some horrible hindoos who don't have a real religion of their own ... so let us move on to more interesting things .....

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) initiated formal contacts on Saturday when Hamid Nasir Chattha met PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari shortly after his appointment as PML-Q’s parliamentary leader in the Punjab Assembly.

now, what do you think, tahmed ???

president musharraf zindabad !

haha...so much for that...

Turkey Classifying Not Revising Hadith

By Ahmad Maher, IOL Staff
Image

"No Muslim in the right mind would dare delete any hadith or tamper with the Prophet's heritage," Gormez told IOL.
CAIOR — Eighty scholars from 23 Turkish universities are working on a major project to classify and translate the Hadith (the collection of sayings of Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him).

"Make no mistake, we are not after modifying or revising the Hadith," Mehmet Gormez, deputy director of the religious affairs authority Diyanet and supervisor of the project, told IslamOnline.net in a phone interview.

"What we are actually doing is re-classifying, re-categorizing the Hadith and translating it into Turkish, no more no less."

A hadith literally means "saying," but in the Islamic technical sense, a hadith refers to the sayings of the Prophet, the Prophet's acts, the Prophet's tacit approval of an action or practice, or the Prophet's attributes, whether physical or moral.

Re: # 13 Khud nhin bedalty qURAN KAU BADAL DEY\TY HIEN!

hamidm #21 Must I remind you on every board to quit clutching at straws? Mush's tush was toast the day he was separated from the Pakistan military uniform that he disgraced.

At best,even if by some miracle he manages to stay on for a little while longer, he would be nothing more than a useful idiot to PPP. And even that is a long shot indeed.

Okay guys, jokes apart; let me suggest something seriously. It is recognized that reinterpretation is difficult particularly when there is no precedent for it. For centuries, for example, the Muslims have disputed on music. It was never seriously undertaken by any Muslim Government or any Government authorized bodies to rule on music. If it is ruled that music is allowed by Islam under certain reasonable conditions and then those conditions are specified, there would be at least a precedent. On the other hand, if it is ruled that music is haram, then there is no reinterpretaion because many already believe that it is haram. Yet majority of the people want it to be part of their life.

Once the issue of music is settled, then movies, television shows, etc. can be similarly Islamized. Once these precedents are in place, further task of reinterpretation becomes simpler.

The whole thing may sound trivial but it is not. Such precedents will open the way for reinterpretation of more difficult issues. This process should bring us into the modern times rather than taking us back into the 7th century Arabia. Each Muslim government can settle issues for its own people and universality may not be sought. In the absence of such precednts, no body knows who should do the reinterpretaion and whether such reinterpretaions would be binding to settle down the ongoing disputations.

Prostitution is haram yet it is part of almost every Muslim country. The prostitutes are condemned and no amelioration of their social conditions is possible. The government should take the proverbial bull by its horns and make peace by suitable reinterpretation.

Seen in this light, maybe the Turkish effort has a potential to deliver the goods.

Mohammad Gill

Every thing is rotten here beyond repair. Shows of nuclear-bomb and missile tests are being held here while the suicide bombers are devastating the people. Where does Islam or any religion for that matter stand here? Why don't we think?

Re: freethinker #25

I thought you wanted government to stay away from religion!

what islam needs is a committee review process...sort of like the JCP..get inputs from the people of the world who have to bear the crazy shit that muslims do...then issue new specifications..

to start with, can we get this feature included:

1. No going bat shit over cartoons in obscure papers in far away countries..

Pakistanis demand end to Denmark ties over cartoon

Imtiaz Shah
Reuters North American News Service

Feb 29, 2008 07:41 EST

KARACHI, Feb 29 (Reuters) - Protesters in Pakistan called on Friday for ties with Denmark to be severed over the republication of one of several cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that led to violence in Muslim countries two years ago.

Rallies were held in Karachi, Quetta, Multan, Hyderbabad, and the capital, Islamabad, where protesters shouted slogans against Denmark and burned U.S. and Danish flags.

"The Danish ambassador should be expelled and Pakistan should immediately end diplomatic ties with that country," Abdul Gafoor Nadeem, an activist of a militant group, told a gathering of about 700 people in Karachi.

Re: # 25 Mohammad:

I am quite surprised at some of your sweeping statements. You say,”… . In a way, the Muslim world seems to be intellectually frozen in the seventh century AD while rest of the world has completely changed in every respect…”. That is incorrect.

Islamic civilization has been for a long time a world civilization like many other great civilizations. Early Islam absorbed many things from earlier civilizations -India, Persia, Jewish and Greek etc. and contributed its own. Medieval Islam in the first half of its millenium achieved many splendid things in all walks of life: in architecture, science, law, medicine etc. etc. Serious scholars and historians believe that it went to a state of slumber from which it never recovered like a stroke victim save in places like in Saffavid Persia and Moghul India.(even though Moghul India is a fusion of Islamic and Hindu cultures; Never mind for the idiotic objections by Hindu fascists or loony Indian nationalists! The rise of the West finished it off.

Now my own feelings are that Hadiths and their contents have to be understood and reinterpreted in the proper spirit of inquiry and scholasticism. It is pretty stupid that interpretation be initiated by some state machinery. Only Muslim societry can initiate such a change. Otherwise great deal of harm will be inflicted upon its followers by ill read Islamists and ignorant Muslims who like to resort to literalism.

Islam is no different than say other world religions. These faiths carry with them good many value systems ( some could even be utterly inhuman and barbaric customs) and cultural baggage of the society in which they originated.

In my opinion, Islamic world is very complex and diverse with its share of agnostics and closet athiests. So I think Islam is bound change since it has come into head-on collision with rest of the world of ideas.

You are right. “You simply can not go back in time.”

Kamath

lo kar lo baat...gaand me dum nahi, hum kisi se kum nahi

hellfires whacking pakis on paki soil...fine.
motoons in some obscure danish newspaper, allah-o-akbar!! jihad!!!

The Foreign Office further said that the publication of the cartoons was against the efforts of countries and people who wished to build bridges amongst civilizations. Since hurting sentiments of other religions was not responsible behaviour, the Danish Government was obliged as a responsible government to stop the publication of the cartoons.

To this protest, the Danish Charge d' Affaires replied that the Danish Government did not have any hand in the publication of the cartoons and that he would convey the sentiments of the Government of Pakistan to his government.

The overall Danish position remains that of distancing itself from the cartoons and saying that the government cannot intervene in what the media publishes.

These cartoons were first published in late Sept 2005, and the world over protests started taking place in December and reached their climax in Feb and March, 2006. The cartoons were reprinted in many European and Australian papers during that time. International efforts were initiated to resolve the issue such as the Government of Pakistan talking about introduction of an international law to ban such an activity but nothing much happened.

In fact, in Feb, 2006, two young men were killed and 20 suffered injuries when angry mobs turned violent in Lahore. The protesters also ransacked and set on fire a number of buildings, including the Punjab Assembly, and hundreds of cars and motorcycles.

Re: # 25 ["... Prostitution is haram yet ... government should ... make peace by ... interpretation..."]

Gill sahib

The institution of Mutah should be strengthened in light of Hazrat Imam Hassan's tradition and we could be successful in totally abolishing prostitution from the world of Islam. Now that would be real reform. We don't even have to do any major re-interpretation.

Mohammad Hamid Re: bacon and ham

We here in Islamabad don't seem to be much worse off than you and your Jewish and Hindu friends. Last Sunday at brunch I had the best crisp bacon you've ever tasted. It just tastes that much better in this country. Next time you're in town, you're welcome to join me for Sunday brunch at the Canadian Club. My wife like your Hindu friend's, unfortunately, is also a vegetarian.

arjun-Nth

Alleged Hijacker Booked On Post-9/11 Flights
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/february2008/022808_alleged_hijacker.ht m

Re: # 13

Hi, I hope you guys don't mind me butting in! O hello there Zeemax, G'day mate!

Hamidm, I was having a chat with a bunch of pigs yesterday and they were very fond of the judeo-islamic dietary laws, to them they made a lot of sense; I couldn't think of a reason why!

On your reformation proposal; How about scrapping the whole thing like the "older message to Bani Israel - needing revival by Mohammed" concept, find us someone else with temporal lobe epilepsy and start again!