A story receiving much comment is the three year project commissioned by Turkey’s Department of Religious Affairs to revise Islamic hadith, aiming to bring the country’s interpretation of Islam in line with modern realities. Jeb over at FP Watch has an excellent summary of the story and significant reactions, as always.

Read the BBC story first, which paints the project in a very promising light, before reading Ali Eteraz’s compelling response. I’m siding with Eteraz on this one, as the role of the state in religious affairs is much more of a pertinent issue than any Islamic “reformation” resulting from this project.

While some may be tempted to see this as a form of progress favorable to more liberal societies (and strengthening Turkey’s unlikely bid to join the EU), I view this as a dangerous precedent set if it were to be followed by other Middle Eastern governments. When Egypt’s top religious leaders had to publicly denounce the act of female genital mutilation last year, they sought to illegitimize the act with religious reasons. I believe, in a superficial sense perhaps, that this sort of action is akin to what is happening in Turkey, albeit on a smaller scale. The issue of FGM and the public’s perceptions towards the act may be altered in a favorable fashion, however the issue of the individual’s reliance on state-guided religious justifications for the act is only worsened. These efforts should be adopted by private groups and institutions in order to establish a precedent of a seperation of the state and religious affairs.

I’ll concede that this view concerning the Middle East is rather idealistic, however it is unfortunate, as Eteraz’s piece suggests, that Turkey is not being judged in the same way that the U.S government would be if they were to undertake similar actions. Secular states should be judged in the same way, no matter what religion dominates society.

(Karim Assir blogs over at Outsider On The Inside)