The Turkish High court has ruled that the request by chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, Osman Paksut, to ban the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) from political activity, could be tried in court. What a blow for the Turkish Islamists! The spokesman for EU Enlargement, Olli Rehn, appears to be worried that his dream for Turkish admission into the EU, is being harpooned right before his very eyes.
ANSA: “Olli Rehn: We take note of the decision, but we expect more information before commenting it,” “before commenting this new development the Commission needs more information on the exact decision of the Court“.
The article goes on further to add: “Just a few weeks ago Rehn appealed to the Turkish authorities reminding that the principle of separation of the powers is one of the pivots of the law of the European countries. The decision of the Turkish court could add problems and delays to the already difficult EU-Turkey accession talks.”
What a disaster for the EU that the Islamists are facing a potential ban from further participation in Turkey’s political arena! One would think that the EU would be supportive of a secular Turkish court seeking to secure the continuance of a secular Turkish state? If it means that Turkish admission into the EU is to be put on hold for an indefinite time period, so be it.
There is just too much uncertainty surrounding Turkey’s supposed movement towards a modern European secular state, and that inconvenient reality has to be admitted by the EU elites. Even the much ballyhooed project by eighty scholars from 23 Turkish universities to classify and translate the Hadith, has turned out to be something of a dud.
Mehmet Gormez: “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.” […] “We have compiled all Hadiths and read them to reclassify them anew,” he explained”
There is no major push from the Turkish Islamic community to rid from the Hadiths -that explain the Qur’an- of the highly problematic/violent/racist/anti-modern texts. Finnish Helsinki University lecturer in Islamic Studies, Sylvia Akar, stated in yesterday’s Helsingin Sanomat (31.03.08), “The Window to Islam Was Already Open” her understanding of the Turkish project;
“pyrkimys editoida tekstit uudelleen ja muokata niiden tulkintoja, jos se on tarpeen. / the intention is to edit the texts once more and to modify their interpretation, if it’s necessary“
But that’s not true, the chief director of the project makes it entirely clear that they have no such intention of doing any such thing. They are not editing any texts, which means adding or subtracting words from the original texts of the Hadiths, nor would they dare to do so.
“He (Gormez) shrugged off media suggestions that Turkey was re-writing the Hadith and creating a new Islam. “They made too much fuss and took the project out of its real context. “We are neither fashioning a new Islam nor dare to alter the fixtures maxims of Islam,” Gormez said emphatically.”
Perhaps just classifying the Hadiths into a new order and suggesting the interpretations of them is the main goal, but it falls way short of what needs to be done. To be fair to Finnish academic, she does state that they are not trying to create a new Islam, but she does insist that what the Turks are presently doing, has taken place repeatedly throughout Islamic history.
But if so -that subtle changes has indeed occurred throughout Islamic history, in how the Hadiths should be interpreted- what has it actually achieved or accomplished? Why then, has the overwhelming majority of the Islamic world been unaffected by these …subtle changes, whatever they may be? I dare say that there has been little done to change the anti-modern version of Islam, and that what is being currently touted as “ground breaking” is nothing more than…too little too late… window dressing. More here. *L* KGS
H/T Baron Bodissey
