Turkey to revise Islamic texts

  28th February 2008

Turkey’s Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara to revise the Islamic texts known as hadith. The hadith, which are thousands in number, are considered to be the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and second in importance to the Qur’an, especially as a source for Islamic law (sharia). As such, any revision is bound to be controversial. Having said that, Islam historically has developed a ‘science of hadith’ in an attempt to determine which are genuine, although it is considered by many scholars that a number of dubious hadith have slipped through the net. Many women scholars, especially, consider a number of hadith that could be used to suppress women were invented and are not, in fact, the original words uttered by Muhammad.