That George W. is roundly condemned for alienating other countries (no matter that France & Germany both elected strongly pro-American governments in the past couple of years), while Democratic front-runner Barack Obama is campaigning on breaking treaties with America’s two biggest trading partners. And then saying that he was just kidding, and then lying about the saying that he was just kidding.
Interesting news from Turkey: a team of scholars has been revising and re-interpreting the Hadith — collections of sayings of Mohammed that have quasi-sacred status in Islam — in light of the assumption that they were intended to interact with the culture of the day, and that they must be re-interpreted in light of today’s culture:
Some sayings accepted as being genuinely spoken by Muhammad have been altered and reinterpreted.
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.”
The project justifies such bold interference in the 1,400-year-old content of the Hadith by rigorous academic research.
Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said “he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone”.
So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet’s goal was.
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