Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs argues that its project to re-evaluate hadiths is not a “radical revision of Islamic texts” as the BBC put it (see my previous blog post) or a “reformation” or “radical modernization” of Islam. The Directorate’s deputy director says he was misunderstood and misquoted by the BBC. (For the article, [...]
Turkey’s Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a group of theologians at Ankara University School of Theology to reinterpret and modernize the 1400-year-old Hadith, a collection of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and the most important basis for Islamic law next to the Qur’an. Hadiths are used to interpret the meaning of the [...]
From the Chronicle of Higher Education blog site:
February 27, 2008
Reversal of Head-Scarf Ban in Turkey Faces Legal Challenge
Turkey’s main opposition party filed an appeal today with the country’s constitutional court, seeking to overturn two amendments, approved this month by parliament, that eased a ban on the wearing of head scarves at universities by observant Muslim [...]
My hairdresser in Nisantasi is right behind the Tesvikiye Mosque, a neo-baroque edifice with tall white columns completed in 1854. The mosque yard is the only oasis of serenity in the entire district, which bustles with well-heeled shoppers and is threaded through with bumper-to-bumper traffic. When Kamil’s sister Feride lived there in the 1880s, Nisantasi [...]
When guards refused to let Sule Gökçek inside the gates of Ondokuz Mayis University in Samsun, she put a wig on top of her headscarf and entered the campus. Meanwhile her father, who had accompanied her, got into an argument with the guards that turned into a fistfight.
Radikal 2/27/08
President Gul has signed into law the constitutional changes lifting the scarf ban, but only some universities are obeying the new law by letting covered students on campus. Radikal newspaper reported that of 118 universities, 18 allowed covered students to enter campus. Others allowed entry before noon, but, after a meeting of deans, banned it [...]
A review of The AbyssinianProof in The Scotsman (click here)
The Turkish columnist Sahin Alpay examines alternative outcomes to the Turkish incursion into Iraq. If the operation succeeds in destroying the PKK infrastructure, this should be followed by amnesty for rank-and-file militants and a full raft of cultural, linguistic and economic reforms. Ideally, there would be cooperation among Ankara, Washington, Baghdad and Arbil and [...]
The Turkish military is attacking PKK bases in northern Iraq. With a virtual news blackout it is impossible to know what is happening on the ground in Iraq. However, the war might be coming closer, much closer. The PKK reportedly has asked its youthful supporters “to make [Turkey’s] cities uninhabitable”. There has already been a [...]
The beauty of jetlag is that it opens up a space in your life that is normally closed. It is 5 am (yesterday it was 4:30 am when I awoke, the day before 4 am). Dogs are barking in the distance. The Bosphorus outside my window is a band of deeper black except where the [...]