Quranism: Difference between revisions

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Quranism is an Islamic denomination that holds the Qur'an to be the only canonical text in Islam. Quranists reject the religious authority of Hadith and often Sunnah, libraries compiled by later scholars who catalogued narratives of what the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said and done, which orthodox Muslims such as Shias and Sunnis consider essential for the Islamic faith.

Quranists may be referred to in various ways, for example Qur'āniyūn / Quraniyoon (Arabic: قرآنيون Qurʾāniyyūn) and ʾAhl al-Qurʾān (أهل القرآن) / Ahle Qur'an, both translating to "Quranites" (which is also used in English), Submitters, and usually by their opponents munkirū al-ḥadīṯ (منكروا الحديث) (i.e. "negators of Hadith" / "hadith rejectors"), or Quranism, or Quran aloners, as well as other terms.^[1] Quranists may deride Sunni and Shia Muslims by referring to them as 'hadithists' and 'hadith-followers'.^[2]

Quranists generally consider themselves to simply be "Muslims", a term directly from the Quran. They do not think of themselves as belonging to a sect, like Sunni or Shia, as they do not accept any of the narratives beside the Qur'an, thereby universally rejecting the authoritative status applied to hadith by orthodox Muslims as encoded in the various Sunnahs of the Sunni, Shia and other hadith-following sects in Islam. The extent to which Quranists reject the authenticity of the Sunnah varies, but the more established groups have thoroughly criticised the authenticity of the hadith and refused it for many reasons, the most prevalent being that hadith is not mentioned in the Quran as a source of Islamic theology and practice, was not recorded in written form until more than two centuries after the death of the prophet Muhammed, its perceived internal errors and contradictions, and repudiate fatwas^{[clarification needed]} on a hadith's authenticity and issues emanating from them.

Because of a lack of authoritative clergy in Quranism, ijtihad (independent reasoning) rather than institutionalised taqleed (imitation) is the most common method in use by Quranists.

Differences in doctrine between Quranists and orthodox Muslims are extant from minor matters to the core of central beliefs such as the five pillars of Islam. Example areas of difference are:

1. The shahada (statement of faith). Quranists say 'lâ ilâha illallâh' rather than the Sunni lâ ilâha illallâh, Muḥammadur rasûlullâh (no god but God, Muhammad is His Prophet) or Shia lâ ilâha illallâh, Muḥammadur rasûlullâh, wa Ali unwali ullah (no god but God, Muhammad is His Prophet, Ali is God's regent).
2. A menstruating Quranist woman may perform salat (prayer), enter a mosque and touch a quran, as the quran only forbids menstruating women from sexual intercourse or marrying a new man within the first three menstrual cycles of leaving her husband, the Quran offering no further mention of menstruation-related prohibitions.
3. Some Quranists combine 5 prayers into 3 prayers like Shias, although some pray 5 times like Sunnis. Quranists also do not pray the Tarawih.
4. The amount of zakat (alms). Hadithists provide 2.5% of their wealth in a prescribed manner and formulas based on secondary-sources, whilst a quranist is free to donate as much or little as they wish. ^[3]
5. Circumcision, either male or female, plays no role in Quranist theology, per ayahs 95:4 and 4:119.
6. Orthodox Muslims are encouraged to dress in the way of the prophet Muhammad or his wives. Clothing rules plays no part in Quranist theology other than that the person dress modestly as surah 24:30–31 says. For example hijabs or beards are not necessary.
7. Quranists do not hold that breastfeeding a non-related adult male will make him mahram, whilst some Sunni Muslim scholars have said it does;^[4] see rada (fiqh)
8. Quranists do not believe in the emergence of the Imam Mahdi or dajjal, since they're not mentioned in the Quran.
9. Quranists can eat food produced by Christians and Jews, as instructed in surah 5:5.
10. Quranists do not touch the black stone of the kaaba.

Major punishments approved and applied by the orthodox Sunni and Shi'a madhabs for over a millennia that Quranists reject include:

• The death penalty for apostates, as this punishment is absent in the Quran; and discouraged in suras such as 2:256 or 18:29.
• Stoning for adultery. Instead, Quranists follow the quran's prescribed punishment of 100 lashings^[5] as the Quran does not differentiate between fornicators or adulterers in this punishment, by use of the word 'Zina' (Arabic: الزنا‎ ) in surah 24:2. The orthodox Shariah law applies lashings only to fornicators as per the Quran, but stoning to adulterers as per Sunnah;
• The requirement that the four witnesses of zina must have seen clear penetration during the coitus (though this stringent requirement is rarely applied in practice), as the Quran only requires four witnesses to zina.
• Death penalty of homosexuals. The Quran mentions no punishment for homosexuality other than in a specific reference to prophet Lut's community, a punishment which God alone administers. Quranists instead tend to view homosexuality as a sin that is punishable by God alone in the afterlife;
• Death penalty for practitioners of witchcraft or sorcerers.

Quranists consider themselves to follow original Islam; whereas Sunni theology developed over time till the 10th century, and Shia theology developed after the killing of Ali's son Husayn in 680.

Liberal movements within Islam include Quranists who interpret Islam as "a belief system committed to the liberal values of a democratic world"^[6] under narrow Hudud (Arabic حدود). Other quranists remain orthodox in their approach to human rights and broader in the application of rules and punishments, supporting punishments such as amputation of the hand for theft,^[7] cruficixion, amputation and execution of enemies^[8]

Most Quranists accept the same Arabic Quran used by other Muslims, with only the minority 'submitter' sect reverting to what they claim is the original Quran by removing ayats 9:128-9 to fit their 'Quran Code 19' theology.

Quranist groups are increasingly translating the Arabic Quran themselves into other languages,^[9] because most translations by orthodox Muslim groups contain perceived innovations and mistranslations to fit the orthodox ideology. Orthodox Qurans are replete with bracketed comments — based on the sunnah — throughout the ayats to lead the reader to interpret the Quran by the way of the translator, even though the bracketed comments are absent from the Arabic Quran, and such bracketed comments appear less frequently — if at all — in Quranist translations.

Some Muslims have suggested that the original prohibition against Hadith led to the Golden Age of Islam, as the Quran was able to stand up to critical thinking and questioning; and Muslims were thus schooled to be inquisitive and seek answers to every quandary. They posit that the increased reliance on Hadith, which was allegedly illogical and required the suspension of disbelief, led to the eventual downfall of scholastic pursuits in the religion.^[11]

Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898) is often considered the founder of the modernist movement within Islam, noted for his application of "rational science" to the Quran and Hadith and his conclusion that the Hadith were not legally binding on Muslims.^[12] His student, Chiragh ‘Ali, went further, suggesting all the hadith were fabrications.^[12]

Ahmed Subhy Mansour is a recognised Islamic scholar and cleric, with expertise in Islamic history, culture, theology, and politics.^[13] He founded a small group of Quranists, but was exiled from Egypt and is now living in the United States as a political refugee.^[14] One of his followers, Egyptian blogger Reda Abdel-Rahman was freed on January 2009 after being detained for a year. Abdel-Rahman was imprisoned for writing blogs that reject the sunnah and hadith, and claimed he was tortured in order to reveal the password to his e-mail. Sheikh Mansour was fired from Al-Azhar University after expressing his hadith rejector views. One of Mansour's fellow Islamic scholars at Al Azhar University Sheik Jamal Tahir took up the same Quran alone stance.^[15]

Edip Yuksel is a Turkish advocate for the Quraniyoon movement and has gained much attention through his books and speeches.^[16][17][18]

Mohammed Shahrour also rejects Hadith and has his own methods of interpreting the Qur'an.

Shabbir Ahmed is the author of “The Qur’an As It Explains Itself”, or QXP, a non-literal translation of the meaning of the Qur'an in plain English. He interprets the meaning of the words and phrases in Quran by comparing them to other instances where they are used elsewhere in the Qur'an.^[19]

The 1986 Malaysian book "Hadith: A Re-evaluation" by Kassim Ahmad was met with controversy and some scholars declared him an apostate from Islam for suggesting that "“the hadith are sectarian, anti-science, anti-reason and anti-women".^[12][11] His students currently run a Quranist magazine.^[20]

As many Quranists have a very individualistic interpretation of the Qur'an, rejecting sectarianism and organised religion as a general rule, it is difficult to gather an accurate estimate of the number of Quranists in the world today by doing a study of the Quranist organisations that exist. Another difficulty in determining their prevalence is the possible fear of persecution due to being regarded as apostates and therefore deserving of the death penalty by many traditional scholars like Yousef Elbadry,^[21] Mahmoud Ashour, Mohammed Ra'fat Othman and Mustafa Al-Shak'a.^[22] The students of Kassim Ahmed

Non-Muslim scholars of Islam, such as Maurice Bucaille, John Esposito, Joseph Schacht and Cyrus Hamlin also criticise Hadith.^[23][24][25]

"Ahle Qur’an" is an organisation formed by Abdullah Chakralawi,^[26][27] rely entirely on the chapters and verses of the Qur’an. Chakralawi's position was that the Qur’an itself was the most perfect source of tradition and could be exclusively followed. According to Chakralawi, Muhammad could receive only one form of revelation (wahy), and that was the Qur'an. He argues that the Qur'an was the only record of divine wisdom, the only source of Muhammad's teachings, and that it superseded the entire corpus of hadith, which came later.^[28] Ahle Quran scholars may use Tafsir when pursuing the interpretations of the Quran.^[29]

Tolu-e-Islam ("Resurgence of Islam") is an organization based in Pakistan, with followers throughout the world.^[30] The movement was initiated by Ghulam Ahmed Pervez, a Qur'anic scholar. In his writings and speeches, he re-interpreted Qur'anic verses with little or no emphasis on hadith.^{[citation needed]} Tolu-e-Islam followers do not reject all hadiths; however, they only accept hadiths which "are in accordance with the Quran or do not stain the character of the Prophet or his companions".^[30] The organization is loosely controlled. The organization publishes and distributes books, pamphlets, and recordings of Pervez's teachings.^[30]

Although different from other Quranists nowadays in many ways, like having faith that Rashad Khalifa was the Messenger of the Covenant mentioned in chapter 3 verse 81 and chapter 33 verse 7 of the Quran, the term Quranists was closely associated with the late Rashad Khalifa, founder of the United Submitters International. The group popularized the phrase: The Qur'an, the whole Qur'an, and nothing but the Qur'an.^[31] After Khalifa declared himself the Messenger of the Covenant, he was rejected by orthodox scholars as an apostate of Islam. Later, he was assassinated in 1990 by a sunni terrorist group. His followers believe that there is a mathematical structure in the Qur'an, based on the number 19.

According to Sunni Orthodoxy, the hadith literature is an integral part of the Muslim faith. The 11th century Andalusian Maliki theologian and scholar Ibn Abd al-Barr wrote in his Jami' Bayan al-'Ilm wa Fadlihi (Compendium Exposing the Nature of Knowledge and Its Immense Merit):

The Sunna is divided into two types. The first is the consensus transmitted from the masses to the masses. This is one of the proofs that leave no excuse for denial and there is no disagreement concerning them. Whoever rejects this consensus has rejected one of Allah's textual stipulations and committed apostasy. The second type of Sunna consists in the reports of established, trustworthy lone narrators with uninterrupted chains. The congregation of the ulamas of the Community have said that this second type makes practice obligatory. Some of them said that it makes both knowledge and practice obligatory.

— Jami' Bayan al-'Ilm (2:33), in Ibn Abd al-Barr

Contemporary scholars such as Gibril Haddad have commented on the apostatic nature of a wholesale denial of the probativeness of the Sunnah according to Sunni Orthodoxy, writing "it cannot be imagined that one reject the entire probativeness of the Sunna and remain a Muslim".^[32] In his essay, "The Probativeness of the Sunna", Haddad explains that the foundation of Islam is the Qur'an, which cannot be described as God's word when one unconditionally rejects the probativeness of the Sunna (since the fact that the Qur'an is God's Word was not established by other than Muhammad's explicit statement that this was God's Word and His Book). As this statement is part of the Sunna/Hadith Literature, to say that the Sunna is no proof is no different than a denial of an integral part of the religion according to Haddad. He also quotes from Yusuf ibn abd al-Barr, Ibn Hazm as well as other renowned early traditional scholars such as al-Shafi'i, al-Nawawi, Qadi Ayyad and Ibn Hajar.

The Grand Mufti of Pakistan Muhammad Rafi Usmani has also criticised Quranists in his lecture Munkareen Hadith (refuters of Hadith); he states:

The Qur’aan, which they claim to follow, denies the faith of the one who refuses to obey the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and does not accept his ruling: “But no, by your Lord, they can have no Faith, until they make you (O Muhammad) judge in all disputes between them, and find in themselves no resistance against your decisions, and accept (them) with full submission.” [al-Nisa’ 4:65 – interpretation of the meaning]

— Al-Mawsoo’ah al-Fiqhiyyah, 1/44, in Mufti Muhammad Rafi Usmani

In response to criticisms such as the above, Qur'anists point out that the judgments of Muhammad were based solely on the Qur'an (verses 5:48 and 4:105) and that it is what distinguishes right from wrong (verse 2:185), arguing that the need for Hadith and Sunnah are redundant because of their possession of the Qur'an.

• Ahmed Subhy Mansour#Quranists
• Edip Yuksel
• Liberal movements within Islam
• Qur'an and Sunnah
• Sola scriptura
• Karaism
• Bibliolatry
• Criticism of Hadith
• Hadith of Umar's ban on hadith