Interview: Turan Kışlakçı / TIMETURK

The Presidency of the Religious Affairs of Turkey, after the administrative changes, went further than being a chair of representation and outstood with such a good mission. The Presidency of the Religious Affairs drew attention with the various projects they went on simultaneously. 

Recently, as BBC made news on Religious Affairs’ hadith study, the world was shaken. The news by BBC’s Religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott  reflected Religious Affairs’ this study as “ a reform study in the religion”

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Gormez, Vice President of Presidency of Religious Affairs of Turkey, who was interviewed by Pigott personally making a very severe explanation said “to interpret this study as a reform in the religion” is with the softest definition a “disrespectfulness”.

There can be no reform in Islam! As Gormez was underlining this certain and severe truth, said that BBC by twisting his words added imaginary interpretations on this matter.

Well, what was the hadith study of the Religious Affairs actually? As the Turkish media by taking some extracts from BBC that wrote that the Religious Affairs was eliminating the hadith and interpreted again and was working on a peculiar hadith collection, the truth became more blur.

In order to find answers for the questions in the minds, Timeturk interviewed the person leading this project of the Religious Affairs, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Gormez, Vice President of Presidency of Religious Affairs of Turkey.

It is certain that your explanations on the adaptation of the hadiths to today, that had a big echo especially in Turkey and in the entire world, are misunderstood. What is the truth about this issue? 

In BBC’s news after talking to me there are three big mistakes. First; it considered my explanations with the words of its own world as reformation,radical revision and rearrangement of the Islamic sources.Second; my explanations were reflected as related with politics. I mean this was evaluated as a study of AKP. Actually the government was not informed about this study. So how could the government have it done. This study was completely the own study of the Religious Affairs. Third; they gave a foreign name in the news. That is completely a lie. I mean the interpretation of the Christians with their own words caused many mistakes.

 Well, what is the study of the Religious Affairs?

We started this study two years ago. The basic of our study was the absence of a hadith book that the families in Turkey could read to their children and imams could give lessons from in the mosques. Of course in our hands there are the translations of the hadith books as Riyazu’s Salihin and Tac, but they need to be interpreted and explained. That is why we thought that a new collection was needed with the interpretations and annotations. But as we started this study, we did not want it to be a kind of ordinary translation. Initially we decided to review all our hadith inheritage. We formed a high council of seven people and talked to thirty five hadith teachers, we came together with almost eighty writers and we made a project for this study. There are various steps in our project. First by loading all the hadith collections on the computers, we formed a database that now in addition to Kutub-i Sitte, together with Abdurrezzak’s Musannef, Ebi Şeybe’s Musannef, İmam-ı Malik’s Muvattâs, Ahmed bin Hanbel’s Müsned there are hundred and sixty thousands of narratives. By reading the content of these narratives, according to their meaning we rearranged and loaded them on the computer.

Did you use Buhari’s system here?

No, here we completely did the opposite of the Buhari’s system. Because Buhari first gives the titles and then puts the hadiths. For this reason there is no hadith under some titles. By reading the text of the hadith we gave titles. We did not limit ourselves only with the old classification. Thinking of today’s issues as well, we determined the titles. Then those titles were gathered. Five to six thousands of titles were prepared. Then we thought on how to minimize these titles.

By taking the topics as faith, prayer, morality,individual life, social life basic, we reduced these titles till six hundred. About each title we formed an electronic bag. After forming this electronic bag, we determined our principals to interpret the hadith with other hadiths.

So you developed a new style.

Our style is; if under a title there are directly or indirectly a hundred hadiths, when we send them to the writer, we want him to choose three the most accurate,contented and easily memorizable hadiths and translate and put them under that title, we want him to prepare a five- page sımmary of the other ninety-seven hadiths.

So it at an annotation?

This will be the annotation of the three hadiths and the other ninety seven hadiths will be explained by the deep notes or a sentence or a word or a name if necessary. But we don’t use this study directly. After the writer sends us his study, we send it to the experts of the related department as fiqh, philosophy, sociology or whichever branch it is related with for the redaction. After this step, if there is an interpretation of the writer that we do not like, we want the writer to rearrange that interpretation and send us back. The last step is the literary redaction that we adapt the study to Turkish and make it ready. So we will be interpreting whatever our Prophet ( p.b.u.h) says to the people of today.

THE BOOKS OF THE RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS PUBLISHED IN MANY LANGUAGES

What part of your study is completed till now?

Now 70 % of it is over. If Allah wills we are planning to publish it in six volumes at the end of 2008. We could not succeed the topical Quran Interpretation (Tafseer), I hope we will succeed the topical hadith.We made use of all the previous scholars.

Are you planning to translate this study into different languages?

After the first edition, we are planning to translate it into Arabic, English and Russian. Already, as the Presidency of the Religious Affairs we have  translated our recent studies into ten languages as Uighur,Chinese, Georgian,Albanian, Russian and German.

What is the ultimate aim of this study?

Today there are many hadith books with their annotations. But these studies are mostly the scientific studies. If you try to read these books in your family or among the people with a normal education, you have difficulties. Even the language of the preachers in the mosques are not addressing to the hearts and turned into a meaningless language. We started this study by thinking of these of course by taking care of its actual aim.

THE GREATEST REVOLUTION OF QUR’AN IS THE “LANGUAGE REVOLUTION”

One of the biggest issues of today is the concepts. I mean the essance of the concepts are emptied or the meaning is changed. Will you make a study as the presidency of the religious affairs about this?

After we make this study, a tremendous work that can be named as the Prophet’s World of Concepts can be published. Also we are thinking of taking concepts from there and publishing a book. Because every Arabic word is limited in the borders of Arabia. Our Prophet had inserted the whole world into those words. For example the word “dalalah” means “the loss of a caravan’s its way in a desert”. “Hidayah” is finding its way. Our Prophet inserted all the virtues, faith and reality inside this word.

All the concepts of Islam are in this way. He took the words that did not pass beyond the borders of the desert and made them universal. The greatest revolution of  Qur’an is the “language revolution”. Because a new meaning is inserted into each utterance. 

Do you have a different study after this?

Of course we do. Our next projects are topical Quran Interpretation (Tafseer), daily life of Our Prophet, (siyer) a detailed things of what Prophet did day by day or perhaps a book on fiqh.