A Muslim Aggiornamento?

Religious leaders in Turkey are about to release a groundbreaking document that will offer alternative interpretations of the Koran and the Hadith. Many are hoping that this initiative will stimulate further discussion among Muslim leaders about the compatibility of Islam with modernity. From the BBC:

Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion. Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

This news from Turkey reminds me of something George Weigel discussed in his thought-provoking book, Faith, Reason and the War Against Jihadism. In it, he suggests that Muslims, in order to move forward, must reach back in their collective memory and resurrect an appreciation for culture that antedates the radicalism touted by the jihadists. He rejects the notion that what Islam needs is a "Muslim Martin Luther". Rather, he advocates a Muslim equivalent to Leo XIII. As pope, Leo XIII strove mightily to bring the Church up to date with modern currents, not by sacrificing the integrity of the Church's teaching, but by showing how trends in modernity could be reconciled with the Church's ancient (yet developed) tradition.

Pope Leo XIII was not the father of the modern social doctrine of the Catholic Church because he fostered a rupture with tradition (pace Luther or Calvin). Rather, Leo understood that the highly politicized idea of "tradition" that prevailed in much of nineteenth-century Catholicism was not, in fact, traditional, and that the political arrangements it favored-such as the use of state power and authority to enforce the truth claims of the Church-were not the only possible conclusion to be drawn from core Catholic theological premises. Leo XIII's retrieval of authentic Thomistic philosophy as a tool of social analysis led to a remarkable, evolutionary development of social doctrine in the Catholic Church...That process of retrieval and development, as distinct from rupture and revolution, is a model that can be recommended to genuine Islamic reformers today. - George Weigel

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7264903.stm