Turkey's big Islamic reform: Never mind

They must not want their own fatwa from al-qaeda.

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

"No Muslim in the right mind would dare delete any hadith or tamper with the Prophet's heritage.

So it is halal to re-catagorize and re-classify,
but haram to delete or tamper. I doubt Allah knows the difference. Especially about the word 'tamper'...

"We are neither fashioning a new Islam nor dare to alter the fixtures maxims of Islam," Gormez said emphatically.

After the excitement in the infadel world, they decided they would rather keep their heads.

"No Muslim in the right mind would dare delete any hadith or tamper with the Prophet's heritage."

No one in their right mind would bother with it.

I was expecting this announcement

"Gormless also refuted claims they would and edit out some hadiths, especially about women".

Well,they don't really count, do they.

"We have also taken into account the unauthentic ones or those attributed falsely to the Prophet because to understand the true Hadith, you really need to (understand) the unauthentic sayings."

IMHO- that would be all of them- there is no way whatsoever to prove mohammed said any of the hadiths. It's all hearsay.

I think there are some logical inconsistencies in the statements given by Mr Gormless (PHD)

"We have compiled all hadiths and read them to reclassify them anew," he explained.

"We have also taken into account the unauthentic ones or those attributed falsely to the Prophet because to understand the true Hadith, you really need to (understand) the unauthentic sayings."

They say it is impossible to understand the Qur'an without reference to Hadith because the Qur'an is the message and the Hadith is the explanation of the message by the Messenger himself.

"No Muslim in the right mind would dare delete any hadith or tamper with the Prophet's heritage."

Never mind I am just a stupid Kuffar.

"No Muslim in the right mind would dare delete any hadith or tamper with the Prophet's heritage."

This is all I need to know.

Remember this sentence.

Religious Reformations in History:

The Protestant Reformation 1517-1648

The English (Anglican) Reformation c.1520-1566

The Islamic Reformation Feb 27th-Feb 29th 2008 (both dates inclusive)

The Islamic Reformation Feb.27th-Feb.29th
Matamoros

And that included lunch and breaks...

#1 what founder of a major religion executed prisoners of war?
a. Buddha
b. Jesus
c. Mohammad
d. All of the above
e. Non of the above

#2 what founder of a major religion took prisoners of war?
a. Buddha
b. Jesus
c. Mohammad
d. All of the above
e. Non of the above

#3 what founder of a major religion mandated war on non believers?
a. Buddha
b. Jesus
c. Mohammad
d. All of the above
e. Non of the above

"The Western media have read what are doing from a Christian perspective and understood it in line with their Christian and Western cultures."

That is the problem, Western critique is now limited to perceptions rather than reality. Everything is relative there are no absolutes! The 'new religion' of the West is based on fantasy and a philosophical self contradiction. When will this bubble of self delusion burst?

Heart warming sayings of the religion of peace.

Infidels are your sworn enemies (Sura 4:101).
Be ruthless to the infidels (Sura 48:29).
Make war on the infidels who dwell around you (Sura 9:123, 66:9).
Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day (Sura 9:29).
Strike off the heads of infidels in battle (Sura 47:4).
If someone stops believing in Allah, kill him (al-Bukhari 9:84:57).
Take neither the Jews nor the Christians for your friends (Sura 5:51, 60:13).
Never be a helper to the disbelievers (Sura 28:86).
Kill the disbelievers wherever we find them (Sura 2:191).
No Muslim should be killed for killing an infidel (al-Bukhari 1:3:111).

Nice

The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land (Sura 5:33).

The initial report about the Turkish "reforms" made clear that the project had nothing to do with the Qur'an and Sira. As for the Hadith, they were not going to be added to, or substracted from, but rather, it sounded as if those involved in this project would attempt to re-consider levels of putative "authenticity" assigned to the Hadith, so as -- one supposed -- to possibly downgrade in level of likely autheniticity some of the disturbing Hadith, and possibly to upgrade those that were less dangerous. That would require, one assumes, study of the same isnad-chains that the most authoritative -- "sahih" -- muhaddithin, had already studied, but possibly with greater historical sophistication.

And the other suggestion was that the doctrine of "naskh" or "abrogation" would be criticised, and an attempt made to challenge its validity.

But both a re-assigning of "rank of autheniticity" to the Hadith, and a challege to "abrogtatoin" would do little if the Turks involved in such reform could not convince more than a billion Believers to accept their authority, to prefer what they do to Bukhari, to Muslim, to other Islamic scholars of the hallowed past.

And how likely is that?

Hugh,

don't ask me.

Ask Gormless.

That is the problem, Western critique is now limited to perceptions rather than reality. Everything is relative there are no absolutes! The 'new religion' of the West is based on fantasy and a philosophical self contradiction. When will this bubble of self delusion burst?

Temporal and Spiritual, constantly shifting between the two.

This contradiction is what allowed us to go beyond religion, whilst acknowledging its inherent influence upon us our laws and freedoms.

We, in the west were the first to understand and control our own destinies - and to question the role of religion in our lives and to be able to choose between the two or amalgamate them.

This never happened in islam and never will as it is a photocopy, a religion in reverse. Everything we have, they hate, but at the same time want.

The delusion is not ours; it is theirs.

who's the woman in the picture? Am I missing something?

johndoe:

You have to be an old relic like me, I guess.

Here is a reasonably accurate summary from, of all places, Wikipedia:

Emily Litella was an elderly woman with a hearing problem seen on the op-ed Weekend Update segment [on Saturday Night Live] in the late 1970s. Frumpily attired in a dress and a sweater, "Emily Litella" was introduced with professional dignity by the news anchor, who could sometimes be seen cringing slightly in anticipation of the faux pas which they knew would follow. She was succeeded by Gilda Radner's other character Roseanne Roseannadanna.

Radner's character peered through her glasses and read a prepared editorial addressing some public issue, becoming increasingly agitated as her statement progressed, only to discover in the middle of her report that she had misheard what the issue was. A typical example:

"What is all this fuss I hear about the Supreme Court decision on a "deaf" penalty? It's terrible! Deaf people have enough problems as it is!"

When the on-air reporter interrupted to point out her error (death vs. deaf), she would crinkle her nose, usually say, "Oh, that's very different...", and then humbly say to the audience, "Never mind."

Cordially
Robert Spencer

What's this complaining I hear about all the violins in Islam? We should stop disrespecting Muslims for always wanting to play their violins. What's wrong with violins, anyway? I think thay sound beautiful.

they

Oy, vay!

hi all,

this is indeed a project by turkish reformed minded muslims.all the professors from the project got their Phd's from england or germany.
They present a special theological school
of Turkish sunni islam which is modernist!

the overall supervisor and consultant is the german catholic jesuit priest dr. felix koerner sj ,who made his Phd in modern Turkish Modernist
Quran interpretation!

see his excelent book:

Revisonist Koran Hermenutics in Contemporary
Turkish University Theology:Rethinking Islam
Ergon Verlag 2005 Germany

"who's the woman in the picture? Am I missing something?"

Why it's a picture of Hillary Clinton from her old college debate team days - duh!

Let me get this straight.The Prophet needed to correct what Allah said?

She is Emily Litella ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afi2xeM5ZSI&feature=related

Thanks for the info Robert. I remember her now....I'm not exactly a spring chicken either.

Gilda Radner...married Gene Wilder and died at 42 of ovarian cancer.

I wondered who would ask who Emily Litella was...
Back when Saturday Night Live was good.

I knew they wouldn't change anything concerned with islam, the religion that produces believers who kill people over cartoons and lash old men who walk dogs.

In short, Islam is perfectly okay the way it is. It's everyone else that not okay.

Gilda was wonderful, lol.

OT
Any thoughts on the ricin in Vegas??? Quite unsettling, and being ignored by MSM.

Since you asked: thought on Ricin in Vegas ...

http://freemendo.typepad.com/

I wondered who would ask who Emily Litella was...
Back when Saturday Night Live was good.

I knew they wouldn't change anything concerned with islam, the religion that produces believers who kill people over cartoons and lash old men who walk dogs.

Just to review from the original BBC article who it was that led us astray:

Felix Koerner

An adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, says some of the sayings - also known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of contemporary society. "Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says. "You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."

Mehmet Gormez

Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example. "There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or more without their husband's permission and they are genuine. "But this isn't a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet's time it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary ban for safety reasons." Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said "he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone".

Hulya Koc

As part of its aggressive programme of renewal, Turkey has given theological training to 450 women, and appointed them as senior imams called "vaizes". One of the women, Hulya Koc, looked out over a sea of headscarves at a town meeting in central Turkey and told the women of the equality, justice and human rights guaranteed by an accurate interpretation of the Koran - one guided and confirmed by the revised Hadith. She says that, at the moment, Islam is being widely used to justify the violent suppression of women. "There are honour killings," she explains. "We hear that some women are being killed when they marry the wrong person or run away with someone they love. "There's also violence against women within families, including sexual harassment by uncles and others. This does not exist in Islam... we have to explain that to them."

Fadi Hakura

According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey from Chatham House in London, Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy. He says that to achieve it, the state is fashioning a new Islam. "This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation," he says. "Not exactly the same, but if you think, it's changing the theological foundations of [the] religion. " Fadi Hakura believes that until now secularist Turkey has been intent on creating a new politics for Islam. Now, he says, "they are trying to fashion a new Islam." "You have to see them as a whole," says Fadi Hakura. "You can't say, for example, that the verses of violence override the verses of peace. This is used a lot in the Middle East, this kind of ideology.

Is this taqiyya or reverse-taqiyya?

"We are neither fashioning a new Islam nor dare to alter the fixtures maxims of Islam"....from headline.

"Nor dare to alter"....for fear of creating a Bigger Monster? Too late.

"the Prophet's heritage." Oh."

Newsflash: Mo is not a prophet. He is a human flim-flam man. And his con is still working. Probably because a huge number of Mohammedans are too ashamed to say "Oops..."

"the Prophet's heritage." Oh."

Newsflash: Mo is not a prophet. He is a human flim-flam man. And his con is still working. Probably because a huge number of Mohammedans are too ashamed to say "Oops..."

Ataturk had the right idea in suppressing Islam as a necessary precondition for modernizing Turkey. His efforts have led Turkay to develop genuine democratic institutions. Ironically, that very democracy has empowered the Muslim masses who have now elected Islamists, and Turkey is regressing.
Turkey's experiences provide some valuable lessons for us. First, it is the only Islamic country to have had sustained success with reform, thanks to de-Islamization. Second, the fact that Turkey's progress is being threatened by an Islamic resurgence is further proof of the pernicious role of Islam when it comes to building a free and peaceful society.
Our War on Terror seeks to spread democracy without suppressing Islam first. As a result, we have a chaotic mess in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iraq is weak in the face of Iran, if not an outright ally, further strengthening radical forces in the region. We have helped bring Hamas into power in Gaza via an election, and we have endangered Musharraf in Pakistan by pushing elections, thereby boosting political parties which are far less interested in confronting extremism.
Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing.

!BINGO!

rational won the quiz.

In short, Islam is perfectly okay the way it is. It's everyone else that not okay.

You can't fix what is perfect. Reason and logic have nothing to do with the belief system. I would not be surprise if miraculous writing on the wall would not convince them.

It would be nice to call fire down from heaven though just to prove a point. So we can all blame it on the MSM for looking and making blood on the street statements to sell news.

NeveR miIInd (as Gilda would say in her squeaky little voice)

posted

No Muslim in the right mind would dare delete any hadith or tamper with the Prophet's heritage."

Are you sure thats your final answer ???

The past 24 hours were a dizzying whirlwind of hope. Ahh, the air was fragrant with the smell of spring and the long-awaited-and-never-seen Islamic Reformation. A day later, spring may be just beginning, but the Islamic Reformation is dead as a doorknob. It didn't go very far and didn't last very long, did it?

flowerknife_us said:

"Let me get this straight.The Prophet needed to correct what Allah said?"

You'd think allah, dictating to the "seal of the prophets", would make himself crystal clear, but nothing about islam is what it's proclaimed to be, so why should we be surprised?

Here's wishing Lisa Loopner and her friend Todd were around to give Mohammad a noogie and 99 lashes with a wet noodle.

"The Western media have read what are doing from a Christian perspective and understood it in line with their Christian and Western cultures."

The dopes at the BBC,Guardian and others, who wrote and hyped this up never tire of this sort of thing. SAme again as that 91 million jihadist story run the other day. They're going out of their way to do everything possible to manipulate any scraps thrown at them by Team Ummah and then printing and reporting misinformation on a large scale doing everything possible to exempt Islam from being linked to terrorism.

It was amusing hearing them say that Muslims can get justifications to doing horrible things from ahadith.

damn.

The arab quran wasn't put in print - almost certainly in Aramic - until 2 decades after Muhammad ended his pollution of the earth. Both the koran and hadith are pure hearsay, except that references to actual persons and historical events are of some veracity. However, Bukhari's biographer admits that his authentic collection (sahih) was whittled down from 600,000 to 8,000. Further, Muslims identify the ibn Majah and Tirmidhi collections as uncertified (sunan). In fact, internet versions of Tirmidhi intentionally omit the "72 virgin" heavenly reward sections. The Shiite' flagellants and child abusers are free with their polemic against sunni fabricators. Please download the following, in that regard.

http://www.tebyan.net/index.aspx?pid=31159&BookID=20791&Language=3

Frankly, all religious documents are BS. The Hindu Mahabarata has been edited to include later tribes, as if they were original. Why would they do that? To sanction current status. In my opinion, prophet and con-man are absolute synonyms, as are church member and pigeon.

Christians and Jews: cease cowering when someone reminds you that Abraham the fraud, was a Chaldean. There is considerable data on Chaldean magic. Consider tossing the Bible, Torah and quran in the newsprint hopper; they are good for toilet paper.

If the above offends you then apologize to me for the offense of your being offended, without rational cause. When you can tell me why a nominal deity would suspend light waves in creating the universe, then I might listen to your dogma with less condescension. In my estimate, you are clones of serial parasites who set back humanity by thousands of years. There are no gods; only self-deceivers and frauds. Start writing your apologies; I'm waiting.

"No Muslim in the right mind would dare delete any hadith or tamper with the Prophet's heritage."

The solution presents itself! The world needs more left minded Muslims! They might not mind ditching the whole stinking Islamo enterprise if presented with the "right" arguments.

Speaking of the Prophet's heritage, infidels and others so inclined might not have been aware that:

"Farting is problematic in Islam. During prayer, a worshipper must not fart. Sahih Bukhari (1.4.137) writes that Allah will not accept a Muslim's prayer if he/she passes wind during the ritual. The exception occurs if the worshipper farts silently, or the fart does not smell. In such a case, he/she may continue with the prayer (ibid, 1.4.139). Sunaan Nasai (1.162) writes that if you fart during a prayer you must redo ablution."

From: http://www.scribd.com/doc/1503931/Prayer-Recitation-of-Quran-and-Ablution-or-Bath

In my estimate, you are clones of serial parasites who set back humanity by thousands of years. - Supercargo

So are you too good to make common cause with us "serial parasites" against the global jihad?

I consider your line of discourse above to be in the same category as proselytizing; this is not the place for it.

"We are neither fashioning a new Islam nor dare to alter the fixtures maxims of Islam" --Mehmet Gormez

"I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."
-- Bill Clinton

Sometimes the strongest denials veil difficult truths.

Alexon-- somehow, your comment reminded me of something re:

We are neither fashioning a new Islam nor dare to alter the fixtures maxims of Islam

Then...

"What would you say... you do here?" - Office Space

Oops, to be completely accurate, the Clinton quote should say "sexual relations" not "sex".

"Allah will not accept a Muslim's prayer if he/she passes wind during the ritual. The exception occurs if the worshipper farts silently, or the fart does not smell."

That still doesn't clarify whether SBDs are halal or not. Oh nevermind.

From above: The exception occurs if the worshipper farts silently, or the fart does not smell.

No smell huh, must be that falafel diet.
What does muslims passing gas got to do with jihad? Unless it is a lesser known form of jihad. I suppose that is possible. Taqiyya is a lot like that.
I could tell you stories about gas attacks, but that would be way off topic...

Marisol, what is the reference to Office Space? I'm not connecting the dots.

”They say it is impossible to understand the Qur'an without reference to Hadith because the Qur'an is the message and the Hadith is the explanation of the message by the Messenger himself.”

Well if that is the case than Islam surely is as violent, intolerant and oppressive a cult as its harshest critics say it is, with its brutal assassinate-my-critics warlord “prophet” proclaimed the perfect model of behavior. This then is truly no religion of peace and so how can there be true Muslims that are “moderate”?

Ah yes, duh swami, falafal. I like falafal as much as the next infidel, but there are repercussions.

Alexon-- the "what would you say you do here?" quote from the efficiency consultants.

If they're not going to address the various problems of violence and unequal rights, the consultants could pose the same question to them.

oh, ok, Marisol, thanks. That's what I thought you were getting at but I've never encountered efficiency consultants before (thankfully). I prefer creative inefficiency ;-)

@supercargo

Lets not throw the baby out with the bath water on you comments. The thread is the Koran which I agree with you but maybe not for the same reason.

I don't want to start a OT discussion about different beliefs source literature. But you are wrong concerning the Bible.

That is all I will say and hope you will honor the thread by not making wholesale conclusions about everything and everyone. That is what happens when the subject of Islam comes up. I/we are accused of hate or attacking Muslims. Were I never mention them at all. I only was discussing the Koran and its teachings.

I wonder if the prayer would count with Allah if you made the fart a burnt offering?

Sorry, couldn't help it. It's the infidel in me :^)

Christians and Jews: cease cowering when someone reminds you that Abraham the fraud, was a Chaldean. There is considerable data on Chaldean magic. Consider tossing the Bible, Torah and quran in the newsprint hopper; they are good for toilet paper. If the above offends you then apologize to me for the offense of your being offended, without rational cause. When you can tell me why a nominal deity would suspend light waves in creating the universe, then I might listen to your dogma with less condescension. In my estimate, you are clones of serial parasites who set back humanity by thousands of years. There are no gods; only self-deceivers and frauds. Start writing your apologies; I'm waiting.

Ah, the aromatic stench of the agent provocateur, reveling in his own indiscreet and inelegant self-adulation. How perfect must be the microcosmic universe inside his microcephalic synostotic cranium.

Echoing: What is it would you say YOU do here? What purpose do you serve? (This is a rhetorical question, the answer is self-evident to every one except yourself).

Jewdog

As to your post about Attaturk and your take on the situation presently in Turkey..I'm in and resonates with me...'couda been interesting but very over..enjoy your posts from mostly a lurker...

As Emily once said:

"What's all the fuss about Russian jewelry? I don't get it!? What's so special about Russian jewelry? What?!?
Huh?!? Russian what? Oh... "Jewry". Um... never mind."

OT
Here is some info on Gadahn.
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/191494.php

supercargo said.....

".....There are no gods; only self-deceivers and frauds. Start writing your apologies; I'm waiting....."

I might just as well say.....
"There are no good scientists; only self-deceivers and frauds. Start writing your apologies; I'm waiting."

supercargo, i don't believe in [have no 'faith' in] 'career' scientists.
Many of them are in it for the *money* / career.
They have too mush to lose by telling PC inconvenient truths.
Many scientists today, behave like politicians, with evidence and facts.

In my estimation, much of modern science is PC [anti creation] hockus pocus.

e.g.

In June of 1992, Dr Austin collected a 7-kg (15-lb) block of dacite from high on the lava dome. A portion of this sample was crushed and milled into a fine powder. Another piece was crushed and the various mineral crystals were carefully separated out.3 The ‘whole rock’ rock powder and four mineral concentrates were submitted for potassium-argon analysis to Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, MA—a high-quality, professional radioisotope-dating laboratory. The only information provided to the laboratory was that the samples came from dacite and that ‘low argon’ should be expected. The laboratory was not told that the specimen came from the lava dome at Mount St Helens and was only 10 years old.
The results of this analysis are shown in Table 1. What do we see? First and foremost that they are wrong. A correct answer would have been ‘zero argon’ indicating that the sample was too young to date by this method. Instead, the results ranged from 340,000 to 2.8 million years! Why? Obviously, the assumptions were wrong, and this invalidates the ‘dating’ method. Probably some argon-40 was incorporated into the rock initially, giving the appearance of great age. Note also that the results from the different samples of the same rock disagree with each other.
It is clear that radioisotope dating is not the ‘gold standard’ of dating methods, or ‘proof’ for millions of years of Earth history. When the method is tested on rocks of known age, it fails miserably.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i3/radiodating.asp

Maybe i cannot prove a God to you.
But you certainly, cannot disprove his existance.

Some Zen monasteries used to place Zen scriptures in the community outhouse for use as toilet paper. I wish every religion would adopt a similar attitude towards scripture.

"If you see the Buddha, kill him." ~a Zen koan

Jerry Falwell frequently claimed,

“The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.”

Nonsense. To say that about any book is to commit an act of idolatry with that book. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, or “Valley of the Dolls”.

I don’t need a Book to see Christ in the eye of a beggar

Some Zen monasteries used to place Zen scriptures in the community outhouse for use as toilet paper. I wish every religion would adopt a similar attitude towards scripture.

"If you see the Buddha, kill him." ~a Zen koan

Jerry Falwell frequently claimed,

“The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.”

Nonsense. To say that about any book is to commit an act of idolatry with that book. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, or “Valley of the Dolls”.

I don’t need a Book to see Christ in the eye of a beggar

@skevin

This is the second thread and fourth post with the exact same words. Clever, cut and paste. Lets try being a little more original.

Like, if you don't see Christ in the Bible then your seeing the wrong Christ. And, I have removed the beam from my eye before noting your blindness. No offense.

Just like the Muslims get their hate from the Koran. Christ's virtue is best see in the Bible.

Jerry Falwell frequently claimed, “The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.” Nonsense."

Falwell is dead, and can't def3end what he meant. Similar statements often mean the wooden literal reception of the exact translated, transliterated, dynamic or formal equivolence renderings of the rather dead language as they appear on the copyrighted English text page. If so, I agree. But if you mean one cannot receive a sense of the plenary inspiration of the original through the various linguistic filters, then I must disagree.

Some of it, I'm not sure is inspired, e.g.
2 Timothy 4:20-21 Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus. Do your best to get here before winter. Eubulus greets you, and so do Pudens, Linus, Claudia and all the brothers.

Much of it, definitely inspired:
Hebrews 12:14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

You read it, you get a sense of the voice speaking. It becomes a familiar voice. You try to hear it more clearly.

Or, you don't, and whatever. It's your "choice" (a whole 'nuther discussion). The real question is why is there so much Christian and Bible bashing on a thread about reassessing the ahadith? Do you not understand the significance?

Concerned Citizen said.....

about the Bible.....

"......You read it, you get a sense of the voice speaking. It becomes a familiar voice. You try to hear it more clearly......"

Well said.

Get to know it well, and 'living waters' flow from it.

I'm not surprised these guys would want to avoid controversy and distance themselves from some of the descriptions of their work emanating from the West. You can't really expect them to admit to engaging in wholesale revision of the Hadiths, knowing that it would most likely trigger an adverse, even violent, reaction from the conservative Islamic world. Let's just keep a hopeful watch on this ongoing effort. Something useful may actually come out of it yet.

"Some of it, I'm not sure is inspired, e.g.
2 Timothy 4:20-21 Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus. Do your best to get here before winter. Eubulus greets you, and so do Pudens, Linus, Claudia and all the brothers."

Posted by: Concerned Citizen

OT to the thread, but related to this comment...

The History Channel is every bit as reliable as Wikipedia, which is to say, not very reliable at all.

Still, I saw an interesting program once about Paul's Epistles. One of the experts asserted that sometimes, when individuals were named, as in the above quote, it was a matter of the scribes taking liberties, using the letter to send their own greetings to friends and fellow scribes.

My brain is a vast storehouse of questionable trivia.

On Topic:

It makes me wonder, this emphasis on "understanding" of inauthentic ahadith, if someone found some things he would like to make "authentic".

Hebrews 12:14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

- Mentioned by Concerned Citizen.

While I regard much of the Old T as unworthy as toilet paper, there are strikingly impressive passages here and there. Now the first part: “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy”, might not take divine inspiration to come up with since any man of good will can believe this. It’s the second part that’s really interesting, implying as it does that the ultimate goal or good is seeing the Lord.

Contrast that with the Islamic analogue, which can be expressed something like, “Accept total submission and jihad and you’ll get to fuck your brains out forever with lots of little dark-eyed virgins”.

Not that I find the idea of sex orgies totally unappealing but I think it most remarkable that Jewish and especially Christian theology would have, as the big attraction for love of God and good works, a heavenly reward which high point is an eternal “Beatific Vision”. Wow, what a difference.

Unfortunately, even Prof. Yasar Nuri Ozturk, Turkey's leading "liberal"/"modern" theologian has objected to the use of the word "reform" with regard to Islam, arguing that "since Islam hasn't become 'deformed', it doesn't need to be 'reformed'."

Concerning the hadith...

After having read Robert, Trifkovic, Pipes, Gabriel, Bostom and more, I found that the most incriminating book about Islam is this one:

Al-Tabari volumes 6 through 9.

I read those. I don't recall if I wept, I might have. In several places I had this acute sensation, even in light of having read so much before:

"I never realized Islam was *this* bad."

This original Islamic text, along with its older cousin Ibn Ishaq, is utterly revolting. Tariq Ramadan knows this, and published a book of excuses for the vile behaviour of Muhammad - I think it's "In the Footsteps of the Prophet". Ramadan doesn't reject the autenticity of Al-Tabari in general, he merely tries to justify the behaviour depicted therein.

I don't think Islam deserves the friendly designation 'religion'.

FM,

Do take note--Hebrews 12:14 is, of course, in the New Testament.