As big Western financial institutions have teetered one after the other in the crisis of recent weeks, another financial sector is gaining new confidence: Islamic banking.

Proponents of the ancient practice, which looks to sharia law for guidance and bans interest and trading in debt, have been promoting Islamic finance as a cure for the global financial meltdown.

Eighty scholars from 23 Turkish universities are working on a major project to classify and translate the Hadith (the collection of sayings of Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him). “Make no mistake, we are not after modifying or revising the Hadith,” Mehmet Gormez, deputy director of the religious affairs authority Diy and supervisor of the project, told IslamOnline in a phone interview.