A group of theologians at Ankara University is examining early Islamic sources in order to distinguish core elements from the accretions of later history. The process has intellectual significance beyond as well as within Turkey, says Mustafa Akyol.

Turkey made international headlines in the past weekover its military's land operation in northern Iraq and its never-ending tug-of-war over the headscarf. But a less familiar issue provoked more surprised comment outside the country: the scholarly and low-key work carried out by a group of theologians in Ankara, supported by the Diyanet __leri Ba_kanlı_ı (the Turkish republic's official religious body, the presidency of religious affairs), to revise the "hadith" - the words and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed.

The headlines were dramatic enough. "Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts", announced the BBC. "Turkey strives for 21st century form of Islam", observed the Guardian. This was "Turkey's fresh look at Prophet", declared the Financial Times.

Are these comments far-fetched, the standard hyberbole of attention-seeking if also serious media outlets; or does the revision of hadith by Turkey's officially sanctioned Islamic experts suggest that something truly important is happening? The answer can only be found by defining what the hadith really are -and this in turn requires a return to the roots of Islam.


In the beginning, there was the Qur'an.

Most westerners who haven't read this book tend to assume that it must be something like the New Testament - i.e., a book which reports the life and works of the religion's founder. That is not the case at all. The Qur'an hardly speaks about the Prophet Mohammed. It rather speaks to him. The Muslim scripture includes passages that issue orders to Mohammed, warn him or encourage him in the face of difficult circumstances. But it does not tell anything about who he was. A close reading of the Qur'an gives the reader much more knowledge about the life of Moses, Jesus or Abraham than that of Mohammed.

True, the prophet of Islam must have said so many things during his twenty-three-year-long mission; but he insisted, "nothing from me should be written besides the Qur'an". Muslim tradition holds that he said so because he feared that his mortal words could mistakenly have been added to the divine book. And it is true that, immediately after Mohammed's death, the Qur'an was canonised and copied by his closest believers; tradition again holds that the holy book has lasted until today "without even a single letter of it being changed."

Thus, in the first century of Islam, the Qur'an was the only authoritative book Muslims had at hand. When they disputed its meaning, or debated what to do in a specific situation, there were enough people who remembered what the prophet had said or did on such matters. But as time passed, the oral tradition became increasingly vague and doubtful.

Meanwhile, a group of Islamic thinkers emerged who placed emphasis on human reason as a source of knowledge. These thinkers, known as "Mutazilites" - inspired by the wisdom of the ancient Greeks - said that the Qur'an and human reason would be enough to find the truth. "God gave us both textual revelation and personal intelligence", the Mutazilites argued, "so we should use both." They also believed that God was just and merciful by nature, and that He could not have forsaken these principles. (Pope Benedict XVI might find this tradition worthy of considering; in his controversial Regensburg address in September 2006 he referred only to the"voluntarist" line of thinking in Islam, which says that God does whatever He wills and there is no point in questioning it - i.e., the exact opposite of the Mutazilite tradition.)

The rise of the sunna

In those formative decades of Islam, not everybody was as trustful of reason as the Mutazilites. Ahmed ibn Hanbal (780-855 CE) arose as their main intellectual rival. According to Hanbal, reason could lead man astray, so a true believer had to refrain from being too much of a rationalist. The Qur'an would of course remain the true guide, but to understand the Qur'an interpretation was needed,and Hanbal was willing to limit the role of reason in that interpretation process. As an alternative, he emphasised the "sunna", or tradition, of the prophet. In place of the Mutazilites' free thinking on the Qur'an, a good believer had to look at what the prophet said or did on any specific issue.

The followers of Imam Hanbal soon became known as the "people of the tradition" or "ahl-al-sunna" - or, simply, the Sunni. And the source of the "tradition" they decided to follow was nothing but the hadith. But more then a century had passed from the Prophet Mohammed's time and the oral tradition had produced so many hadith that the prophet would have had to be centuries-old to produce them. Moreover, everybody knew that some people had been making up these narratives just to support their ideas or even to bolster their business. (A famous story is that a honey-merchant made up the hadith that "believers should start the day by eating honey.") People were also unconsciously projecting their ideas or practices on the prophet. Toward the end of the second century of Islam, i.e., in the early 9 century after Christ, the "hadith chaos" had become a true problem.

Mustafa Akyol is a writer and a columnist with the Turkish Daily News. His website is here This article was published in slightlydifferent form in the Turkish Daily News on1 March 2008.