Make sure you're sitting down before you read this surprising article:
Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts...the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.
The argument is that Islamic tradition has been gradually hijacked by various - often conservative - cultures, seeking to use the religion for various forms of social control.
Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the Prophet.
Watch any video or read any article which is anti-Muslim and chances are you'll find it mentioning the negative teachings of the Muslim religion, the ones which show up the inequality, the intolerance, the insanity, of some of the vigorously defended beliefs and practices of Islam. We all talk about how Islam has not changed, and refuses to change, despite the long, gradual shift in all aspects of the world's cultures over the centuries, and how this refusal to adapt is making Islam more and more unacceptable to Western societies, where change is the norm.
And now these words, which I thought I would never see:
"This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation," he says.
Read the whole article and wonder if, finally, some Muslims have woken up and realised that, in reality, their religion
must change if it to stand any chance of ever being seen in a positive light by those who do not follow its teachings. It's a start, at least, but you can't change something as enormous as a major world religion without small steps, and this seems to be one.