Returning to the Holy Quran Unites Muslims

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Preliminary note: there are those who will flee from discussing this subject, and will hurl accusations right away, saying first that the author denies the Sunna. This is a wicked lie, and this constant flight from putting matters on the table for discussion has caused Muslims a great deal of discord, backwardness, and moral hemorrhage.

Muslims live a real and great historical problem that deepens and branches out with the days: the problem of fragmentation and disintegration, caused by the multiplicity of Islamic groups, factions, and parties, and the escalating mutual vilification among them, and between them and non-Islamic factions and parties. There is a real danger surrounding Muslims that may lead to bloody fighting in numerous Islamic regions, whose consequences would bring calamity and destruction upon all Islamic societies. Of course, Islamic blood is being spilled right now by Islamic hands, particularly in Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria, on the basis of religious justifications for which God has sent down no authority whatsoever.

What is happening now, in the form of bombings, mass killing, and internecine fighting, does great and grave harm to Islam and Muslims, and threatens to tear apart the ranks of Muslims, and to drive millions of Muslims to despair and to turn their backs on the nation in search of security, peace of mind, and respect among other nations. There is great criminality being carried out in the name of Islam, and there are terrifying religious rulings being issued without knowledge or understanding, rulings that spread backwardness, hatred, malice, and rancor, and that end up dissolving societies and setting their members against one another.

This tearing, bloody, and backward trend pursued by some Islamic factions has affected the image of Islam among many nations, and has entrenched a poor stereotypical view that has historically crystallized against Muslims. What some Muslims do is in total contradiction with the Islamic call, whether their acts are bloody or ignorant and benighted, and it presents a hideous image of Islam that repels people from joining the Islamic idea. There are Muslims fully aware of Islam’s message who try to give a good image of Islam, but their efforts are lost in the face of backward religious rulings that contradict Islam, and in the face of mass killing that strikes mosques, markets, schools, and gathering places. Likewise the preoccupation with social and behavioral matters that do not befit the Islamic idea and its respect for the human being.

The problem is that Muslims, to a great though not absolute extent, have drifted away from the Holy Quran and from whatever agrees with it among what has been reported in the books concerning the Prophetic Sunna, and have taken instead to clinging to sayings surrounded by doubt and contradicting the Holy Quran and prophetic morals, and have taken a path that achieves neither elevation, nor loftiness, nor progress, nor contribution to human civilization, and have stripped themselves of the spirit of initiative and of enthusiasm for knowledge, discovery, and invention. What follows may shed light on the problem with a view to addressing it:

Second note: the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, is a model, and his deeds and words affirm this model. Muslims have grown accustomed to using the word “Sunna,” and it is assumed that the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, is an example for Muslims, but there are factors relating to scientific methodology, and to personal, partisan, and factional whims, that lead us to call for verifying what is reported on the tongue of the Messenger of God, in word or deed, and referring it back to the Holy Quran to test its compatibility, so that we do not fall into error.

A Problem in the Transmission of Hadith

He, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “…and I have left among you that which, if you hold fast to it, you will never go astray after it: the Book of God…” (Sahih Muslim, and something similar in Abu Dawud and Musnad Ahmad). There are those who do not adhere to this saying, and instead go to what Malik reported: “I have left among you two things; you will never go astray as long as you hold fast to them: the Book of God and the Sunna of His Prophet” (Malik). Others prefer the following text: “I have left among you that which, if you hold fast to it, you will never go astray: the Book of God and my kindred, the people of my household” (al-Tirmidhi, in two different texts and chains of transmission, and Musnad Ahmad). A hadith of this kind is reported at the Farewell Pilgrimage, and it is assumed to be a mutawatir (mass-transmitted) hadith, since the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, delivered the sermon at the Kaaba before an assembly of Muslims. And yet we find seven versions of this saying, some of which happen to suit the positions of particular Islamic sects — a fact that should make us wary of relying on some of what are said to be hadiths in determining Islamic legislation. The subject addressed by the versions above is exceedingly important and grave, given its bearing on the origins and foundations of legislation in Islam. The first version focuses on the Holy Quran as the foundation for legislation, thought, and guidance, without ruling out the possibility of Muslims seeking other sources; the second version places the Sunna side by side with the Quran as a source of legislation, thought, and guidance; the third brings in the “People of the House” alongside the Quran. The seven versions differ among themselves in their wording, so that the reader does not know the precise version that was uttered on the Prophet’s tongue, peace and blessings be upon him. So what is a Muslim to choose, and how is he to ward off the strife that feeds on conflicting reports?

The Completion of the Islamic Religion

God, exalted is He, said: “This day I have perfected for you your religion, and completed My favor upon you, and have approved for you Islam as religion.” This statement is in harmony with the first version of the hadith cited above, which affirms that the Quran is the foundation of guidance and of avoiding error. As for him, peace and blessings be upon him, he said: “Do not write down anything from me other than the Quran, and whoever has written down anything from me other than the Quran, let him erase it, and whoever attributes a deliberate lie to me, let him take his seat in the Fire.” Jurists acknowledge this hadith but say that the Messenger, peace be upon him, said it because he feared the Sunna would become mixed up with the Quran, causing confusion for Muslims. If by “mixing” they mean a textual mixing, this is not possible, since God, exalted is He, has pledged to preserve the Reminder in His saying: “Indeed, it is We who sent down the Reminder, and indeed, We will be its guardian.” But if they mean Muslims’ reliance on reports rather than on the Quran, then this is true, given the possibility of fabrication attributed to the tongue of the Messenger of God, and Muslims’ subsequent turn to books other than the Holy Quran. And this is what we have seen over the centuries, as Muslims turned away from the Holy Quran to a great degree, relying heavily and intensively instead on what they call prophetic hadiths.

From my own study of the hadith books, I am convinced of the authenticity of many hadiths, particularly those concerning noble character and the manner of performing religious rites, but it appears that many hadiths contradict the Holy Quran, and it is not reasonable that they issued from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. For example, it is not possible that the Prophet said “There is no good in a nation whose reciters are many,” or “Woman was created from a crooked rib,” when “Read” is the first verse revealed in the Quran, and God has said: “It is He who created you from one soul and made from it its mate that he might find tranquility in her.” Nor is it possible that he linked the fast of Ashura to a date taken from the Jews, when the Holy Quran is entirely clear in reproaching them, and Muslims are clear in considering the book in the Jews’ hands to be corrupted and untrustworthy.

While I was in the prison of the [Palestinian] Authority, I counted the legislative verses in the Holy Quran and found them to number close to 400 rulings, between commands and prohibitions, including repeated legislations such as the command to perform prayer — yet I now find more than 400 non-Quranic rulings concerning a woman’s appearance and dress. I found a single verse about ablution, yet I now find entire books about ablution, and one who follows the instructions on ablution will find no confidence that his prayer is even valid. I did not find a single verse in the Holy Quran about the torment of the grave; nor did I find a single verse about the appearance of the Mahdi, yet books about his return are among the most popular of books.

Most of the legislative verses in the Holy Quran come in a broad form that leaves room for Muslims’ free interpretive reasoning across time and place. There are verses that are definitive in text and meaning, but most verses open a field before Muslims for thought and deliberation, so that their thinking is not paralyzed nor their minds disabled. For example, God, exalted is He, commanded consultation (shura), but did not specify how this consultation is to take place: is it through a council formed by the ruler, or an elected council? Are the decisions of the consultative council, if one exists, binding or non-binding? And so on. Muslim jurists went to great lengths of juristic detail until they placed the religion at a high level of complication.

Fabrication Attributed to the Tongue of the Messenger of God

Whoever follows the satellite channels and religious lessons, the tales of jinn and demons, the interpretation of dreams, and the “secrets of femininity and women,” hears a great many sayings attributed to the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, which add no progressive impetus to the Muslim, and which distance him from the worship of God in favor of supernatural matters that fall outside the spirit of the Islamic idea. Where do all these details, rulings, and legislations that reach our ears, particularly on television screens and over the airwaves, come from? A large part of them rests on no juristic foundation at all, but rather on subjective whims and psychological complexes, and another large part comes through fabrication attributed to the tongue of the Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him. This is entirely clear in the enormous numbers of hadith handled by many who call themselves jurists. There are such vast numbers of hadiths that they overshadow the Holy Quran itself, and drive the Muslim to question the verse on the completion of the Islamic religion found in the Holy Quran. How can God, exalted is He, tell us that He has completed the religion for us and completed His favor upon us, when there are, as we see on the ground, so very many matters He did not teach us about? Is there a text in the Holy Quran regarding the existence of divine commissioners or agents who complete the religion for Muslims?

Through my studies, I found a great deal of fabrication attributed to the tongue of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, particularly on matters relating to juristic complication and to supernatural matters such as the torment of the grave and the topography of Paradise and Hellfire, and this fabrication concentrates on two subjects:

[The next section is damaged in the original, and the surviving text begins mid-sentence:] …the sect accepted by God, exalted is He, and that it alone is the one going to Paradise. A saying has become widespread on this point, stating that the Muslim nation will split into seventy-three sects, of which only one will go to Paradise. The scent of sectarianism becomes clear in the versions referenced above regarding guidance and error. This fabrication is what has institutionalized the Muslims’ historical disputes and lent them a sanctity that keeps them present across time, stirring up conflicts.

The other matter is paralyzing Islamic thought by complicating Islamic jurisprudence, so that the Muslim remains obsessed with supernatural matters and terrified of thinking, so that the masters and the holders of authority remain seated on the thrones of dominion. Whoever goes to an Islamic library finds thousands of books on Islamic jurisprudence, and a scant few books of independent thought, and will find that the Muslim nation is the weakest nation in producing intellectual analysis, even though God, exalted is He, has repeatedly commanded reflection and reasoning; he will also find that the Muslim nation is the second nation, after the Jews, to have worked hardest at complicating its own religion. The Islamic religion is exceedingly easy, and spurs the Muslim toward activity, giving, and building, but the jurisprudence of Muslims now turns the Muslim into someone obsessed with ritual purity, terrified of the torment of the grave and the horrors of the Day of Judgment, and into an intellectual, scientific, and civilizational cripple who receives progress and creativity from those described as people of disbelief, and depends on them for his security and his food.

Between “Religiosity” and Faith

It is clear from most of the activities carried out by most of those who dominate religious instruction that “religiosity” is the subject, not faith, which turns the Islamic religion into rituals largely devoid of the work that must accompany faith. What confirms this is that the Muslim nation has not yet risen in the fields of production, scientific progress, technological development, moral advancement, and administrative professionalism. Rituals differ from the rites that remind a person of God’s teachings, exalted is He, and thereby spur him toward work, knowledge, and striving; instead, they are a form of monastic renunciation that leads to submission, surrender, and the loss of an interactive bond with the earth, whereas faith is always paired with work, and Paradise is for those who believe and do righteous deeds. I have found that a large number of jurists reinforce the following matters in their lectures, seminars, and sermons — and of course what I say below does not apply to every jurist, but describes the dominant general juristic current:

Turning the Islamic religion into a mass of juristic commands and prohibitions at the expense of thought and reason, so that the Muslim becomes a mere servant devoid of personality and of analytical, creative, and critical thinking, and so that his “religiosity” rests on fear of the unknown rather than on faith in God paired with righteous deeds.

Turning the Islamic religion into a religion of submissive priesthood rather than a practical religion built on tranquility and trust in God, exalted and glorified is He, so that rites, supplications, rituals, and visits to holy places, shrines, and saints remain the chief preoccupation of Muslims. This is a clear tendency toward focusing on the supernatural and on hadiths about the grave, Paradise, and Hellfire, and lectures on ritual purity and the expansion of what is forbidden.

Ascending to the rank of divine commissioners who can admit people to Paradise or Hellfire by swift decree, such that someone like myself feels that the very idea of monotheism no longer holds, given the sheer multitude of worldly deities who act as deputies for the Divine Self in classifying people and passing judgment on their deeds and words, sending them to Paradise or to Hellfire.

Fleeing from work, knowledge, and striving in favor of religious pretension and toying with people’s minds, distracting them with tales, stories, and legends that cannot be subjected to any scientific standard or logical argument. This is why most jurists try to distance themselves from the obligations of knowledge, work, and striving, without which no nation can rise or stand, focusing instead to a high degree on accumulating ritual merits to reach Paradise.

Entrenching servitude and the domination of the unjust ruler under the banner “strife is worse than killing.” This despite the fact that the strife caused by the ruler is worse than killing, because such strife leads only to bloody conflict among the people, whereas ridding oneself swiftly of the unjust ruler preserves Muslim blood. Many jurists twist the arm of religion to please rulers who do not know God and do not uphold the religion He approved for people. Islam is a religion of freedom, construction, movement, giving, cooperation, and interaction, yet many of our jurists prefer humiliation and submission through religious instructions that contradict Islamic thought and jurisprudence.

The continuous work of burying women alive by stripping them of their humanity and turning them into mere instruments under Islamic slogans. The age of ignorance (Jahiliyya) saw the burial of infant girls, but the burial now extends to all females because of the flood of rulings on a woman’s appearance, her participation in public life, her education, her dress, and so on. Jurisprudence has reached the point of prohibiting a woman whose face is covered from walking in the street alongside her own handsome son, lest anyone imagine her beauty through him.

The Abandonment of the Holy Quran

Relying on the Holy Quran and on whatever agrees with it among what has been reported concerning the Prophetic Sunna does not satisfy the whims, desires, and wishes of many people, and so there is an inevitable flight toward whatever can be turned into something sacred, thereby achieving backwardness, fragmentation, and weakness for the benefit of hollow religious authorities that will save those devoted to them neither in this world nor the next. It is stated in the Holy Quran: “And the Messenger has said: O my Lord, indeed my people have taken this Quran as [a thing] abandoned.” I do not claim that the Holy Quran is entirely abandoned, but the assumption that it does not constitute, for many who claim jurisprudence, the absolute intellectual and juristic foundation, is true to a great extent.

The abandonment of the Holy Quran has led to frightening consequences, foremost among them:

A weakened capacity to address other nations with argument and evidence and with gracious, conciliatory language — a fact that has aggravated the hostility of states and peoples toward Islam and negatively affected the presentation of Islamic morals.

A negative effect on social cohesion, with most callers to Islam clustering into competing, closed Islamic parties incapable of dealing with the broader society.

A widening rift between Islamic sects, particularly between the Shia and the Sunni, leading to a process of sectarian incitement that has resulted in the mass killing of people, the demolition of mosques, and the stirring up of rancor and hatred that becomes entrenched in the souls of generations.

Returning to the Holy Quran

Returning to the Holy Quran constitutes the optimal and sole solution for achieving the unity of Muslims and propelling them toward creativity and development. It is the duty of Muslims to return to the Holy Quran and to whatever agrees with it among what has been reported of the Sunna, if they have any seriousness about work, construction, scientific development, and ridding themselves of humiliation, degradation, and strife. Luther called upon Christians, at the start of the fifteenth century, to return to the Gospel, but they refused, and so they fragmented; those who care about Islam should expect a revolt against the Islamic idea if many jurists continue in this approach that transgresses against the Holy Quran and the Prophetic Sunna, and they should expect bloody internal fighting that destroys crops and progeny alike.

Muslims are in urgent need of Islamic thinkers, not jurists. We have enormous numbers of jurists — anyone who grows a beard appoints himself a jurist — yet we have only a small number of thinkers and scholars who occupy themselves with questions of truth and falsehood, with the universal scientific principles of the cosmos and the earth, who lift the nation out of its state of weakness, degradation, and scientific and moral backwardness, and who raise it up through work, perseverance, patience, and insistence on achieving accomplishments. In the Holy Quran there are two verses about a woman’s dress, yet there are hundreds of verses about reflection, contemplation, reasoning, observation, knowledge, and scholars — and Muslims are preoccupied with women’s dresses and skirts rather than with building universities that produce scholars who build the nation.

The texts of the Quran are fixed, and no disputes will arise among Muslims on this score, but scientific, logical, and analogical interpretive efforts may well emerge in interpreting the ethical and legislative verses, and those relating to the foundations of faith and the bases for distinguishing truth from falsehood, and the principles of the permitted and the forbidden. Such interpretive efforts do not form grounds for dividing Muslims and splintering them into sects, because they do not involve whims and personal inclinations, but rest instead on scientific foundations for understanding intellectual questions related to truth and falsehood, and on the circumstances of time and place in matters of the permitted and the forbidden — interpretive efforts open to change according to the expansion of humanity’s scientific and epistemic horizons, and the changing conditions of time and place. For this reason, the Holy Quran remains the first heading and the fundamental reference for achieving the unity of Muslims, without, however, neglecting the Prophetic Sunna that is in agreement with the Holy Quran. And the further Muslims drift from the Holy Quran and from whatever of the Sunna agrees with it, the wider their disputes grow and the more their conditions deteriorate, and the more they sink into the nonsense of strife, drifting away from knowledge and achievement.

The Quran is not for recitation alone, but for reading — that is, for careful examination and the continuous extraction of lessons, morals, and counsel. God, exalted is He, has said: “Then do they not reflect upon the Quran, or are there locks upon [their] hearts?” The Quran is for reflection until the Day of Judgment, and reflection means investigation, scrutiny, and examination at both the individual and collective level, so that the Muslim continues to develop his understanding of the Holy Quran and to rise in his Quranic knowledge, which propels him upward to become a moral, scientific, humane, and practical example. The Muslim must focus on studying Islamic thought, which specializes in the study of the signs of God (the cosmic laws and ordinances by which the universe is ordered), opening horizons before him instead of continuing to complicate Islamic jurisprudence.

And the matter is simple: no Muslim can find, in the Holy Quran, any justification for shedding blood and walking the path of strife, or for growing comfortable with the path of backwardness, dependency, and defeat, or for accepting the unjust ruler, or for depriving woman of the right to proceed in building the nation.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “العودة إلى القرآن الكريم توحد المسلمين” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.