Turkey strives for 21st century form of Islam
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Turkey is engaged in a bold and profound attempt to
rewrite the basis for Islamic sharia law while also officially reinterpreting
the Qur’an for the modern
age.
The exercise in reforming Islamic jurisprudence, sponsored by the modernising and mildly Islamic government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is being seen as an iconoclastic campaign to establish a 21st century form of Islam, fusing Muslim beliefs and tradition with European and western philosophical methods and principles.
The result, say experts following the ambitious experiment, could be to diminish Muslim discrimination against women, banish some of the brutal penalties associated with Islamic law, such as stoning and amputation, and redefine Islam as a modern, dynamic force in the large country that pivots between east and west, leaning into the Middle East while aspiring to join the European Union…
Fadi Hakura, a Turkey expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, described the project as an attempt to make Turkish Sunni Islam “fully compatible with contemporary social and moral values.
There are those who say we should leave the Middle Eastern nations to find their own way out of the 6th Century. Perhaps this is one of those attempts.
Or is this nothing more than Islamist politicians hoping to move Turkey backwards from their secular constitution?
The exercise in reforming Islamic jurisprudence, sponsored by the modernising and mildly Islamic government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is being seen as an iconoclastic campaign to establish a 21st century form of Islam, fusing Muslim beliefs and tradition with European and western philosophical methods and principles.
The result, say experts following the ambitious experiment, could be to diminish Muslim discrimination against women, banish some of the brutal penalties associated with Islamic law, such as stoning and amputation, and redefine Islam as a modern, dynamic force in the large country that pivots between east and west, leaning into the Middle East while aspiring to join the European Union…
Fadi Hakura, a Turkey expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, described the project as an attempt to make Turkish Sunni Islam “fully compatible with contemporary social and moral values.
There are those who say we should leave the Middle Eastern nations to find their own way out of the 6th Century. Perhaps this is one of those attempts.
Or is this nothing more than Islamist politicians hoping to move Turkey backwards from their secular constitution?
Posted: Fri - February 29, 2008 at 08:54 AM