Bringing religion up to date

I finally got back to reading the last bits of an issue of Newsweek from June. It came while I was on my Alaska cruise and I turned to it because the Newsweek print edition took a week off (that they chose to do that during the first week of the Olympics is annoying). The reason for mentioning it at all is an article by Christopher Dickey titled The New Face of Islam about scholars discrediting the theology that bin Laden used to justify his Jihad.

While that is great news I found something even more wonderful. Similar to the Jewish Talmud, Muslims have Hadith sayings which explain the Quran and actually contain the rules for daily life. A team at the University of Ankara in Turkey say that each Hadith saying has a context and it is time to set each one in that context. Some sayings, such as the rule that women should not travel alone (the reason why Saudi Arabia forbids female drivers), were for a specific time and place when it wasn't safe for women to travel alone. Something practical, not religious. Modern life, with values such as democracy and human rights, is quite different from the 7th century when Islam got its start. Once that context is restored it becomes possible to determine if the saying applies to the modern world. It is important the work is being done in Ankara because it and Turkey have the respect of the rest of the Muslim world. This has the potential of profoundly affecting how Islam coexists with the modern world and relates to the other major religions.

Christians don't have a second document held in as high regard as the Talmud or Hadith. However, we do include the Jewish Testament, which some people insist must also be obeyed by Christians even though the Christian Testament says we should not. We also have the letters of Paul and other early Christians with no sorting out when Paul was referring to something of his own time and place or was referring to something for all time. I'd dearly love to see a team review the Christian Bible the way the Hadith is being reviewed but I doubt there is anyone that a sufficient number of Christians would respect. No matter what they did some branch of Christianity would dismiss it as not applying to them. Then there is my own personal view (also supported in the Christian Testament), which is that Christians are not bound by any religious laws, but should be guided by the Holy Spirit.