Good news, perhaps, from Turkey: the government has engaged in a big push to modernize Islam. Excerpt:
The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad.
As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.
But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.
It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.
Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion.
Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.
This is good news, but skepticism is in order. How effective can it be when the state tries to effect a top-down reformation of religion? That might have some effect if the state had a monopoly on providing information to the people, such that in a generation or two, or three, the old ways might be forgotten. But today? Good luck to the Turkish authorities, but I find it hard to believe that in this day and age, one can revise sacred texts of Islam or any religion by secular decree.
By the way, yesterday I was in a session with a top foreign-policy expert, whose name I can't use because he spoke on background. He was talking about how optimistic he as about the reformation of Islam (he is a Christian, incidentally). He brought up a few contemporary examples of Muslims making progress to reconcile Islam with modernity, and said that people forget how staunchly opposed to modernity (including democracy) the Roman Catholic Church once was. Read the Syllabus of Errors issued by Piux IX in 1864, which, among other things, condemns the separation of church and state, and freedom of religion. It's a long way from the Syllabus to the Second Vatican Council, and the encylicals of Pope John Paul II, said the expert, but the Catholic Church made the transition. Islam can too, he says.
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"With the coming of Modernity in UK the two historical sides and their conflict have obviously faded substantially. In the parts of the US where Modernity is still greatly resisted, we do see the internal polarity revived- and the Church take its historical position of benign care and time defusing, and ultimately solving, the dispute."
That kind of depends on what you mean by "Modernity".
"As a final thought: in the UK early issues of the Calvinist-Catholic conflict are recapitulated in some ways in the current Islamist-Christian dispute"
I don't think it's helpful to see the current issues as an "Islamist-Christian dispute", for two reasons:
(i) The UK is largely secular, and the dispute is best characterised as either Islamic vs. secular, or Islamic vs. non-Islamic. Christians tend to be some of the people most willing to appease Muslims (in my most paranoid moments I suspect this shows a willingness to sell everyone else out and settle for some sort of Abrahamist state).
(ii) Globally, the conflict is not Islam vs. West, but Islam vs. Rest. Look at the dominant ideologies in places where there are problems with Muslim minorities:
Europe, Russia: Christianity, secularism
Lebanon: Christianity
Israel: Judaism, secularism
Sub-Saharan Africa: Christianity, African trad religion
India: Hinduism, secularism
China: Secularism, traditional beliefs
Thailand: Buddhism
Philippines: Christianity
When a family fights with all its neighbours, and any new neighbours who arrive, you start to think there's something wrong with that family.
Rombald, the Turkish state is strictly secular, but Turkey is governed these days by the AK Party, an modernizing Islamist party that is freaking out Kemalists because they (the AKP) are chipping steadily away against laicite'. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of Turks are practicing Muslims who would like to see their religion more accomodated in public life.
If anybody can modernize Islamic government, the AKP can. If they can't do it, it can't be done.
"Does anyone here know enough about Turkey to make helpful comments? (because I don't). Here are some questions for starters:
"# When the Turkish govt is described as "militantly secular", what does that mean? I can think of at least the following alternatives:
(i) Some sort of separation of mosque and state (a vaguely US model)
(ii) Toleration but open disapproval of religion (the French model)
(iii) Insistence that important politicians are not religious, and harassment of religion (a mild version of the Soviet Bloc model).
DEFINITELY THE FRENCH MODEL--IT WAS WHAT ATATURK SPECIFICALLY HAD IN MIND.
"# I know that Turkey is paranoid about threats to national identity. It thus persecutes even Muslim national groups, such as Kurds. To what extent is persecution of Christians religious, and to what extent is it a nationalist hostility to Greek, Armenian and Assyrian ethnic minorities?
GOOD QUESTION.SORRY, I DON'T KNOW ENOUGH TO HAVE A GOOD ANSWER.
"# What proportion of Turks are in some sense practising Muslims?
WELL INTO THE 90 PERCENTS.
"# How are overt atheists treated in mainstream Turkish life? What about converts to, say, Buddhism or Hare Krishna?"
SEE QUESTION 2.
Militantly secular in that until recently women could not even wear a headscarf to school, and religious parties were quashed with the might of the Turkish army. The army quite literally regulates politics, and if they veer too far off the secular course, it intervenes. Turks understand instinctively that religion and politics can be a dangerous mix. Much as do we Americans. Naturally, the temptation to mix is always present. We see that in both our countries.
Christians are protected from persecution officially. But there are militant groups who have targeted and killed them. Less overt pressure has sent many more fleeing the country. Most Turks are Muslims. I could not tell you how devout they are, I don't know enough about the country. There are plenty of atheists, though that topic is really just not talked about in that part of the world. Converts to Eastern religions? That doesn't seem very likely. Such groups probably would be quashed as being a threat to "Turkish identity," as they are foreign influences.
Not many turks declare themselves as atheist, however practice of religious rituals in daily life is not common at all. as far as I know attending mosque forexample is around %10 in the overall country. AK party aims and tries to make it higher. I lived all my life in Turkey as an atheist and all my friends everyone I know was so. I did not have any problems so far, but in my ID it writes muslim. All the people I know and my self use mosques for the free toilets and drinkin water actually this was like this since my childhood. The people who embeded Ataturkism in Turkey are much less religous than many european habitants as I observe.
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