Why Should the Muslims Not Reject the Ahadith?

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Why Should the Muslims Not Reject the Ahadith?
Reply #90 - May 23, 2014, 06:18 PM

^ I get your point, but I mostly agree with your conclusion, I don't see this doing anything for a Muslim. The Quran is from God, and that's that. Religious individuals tend to have very low standards for what constitutes as evidence of the accuracy of their religion.
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Reply #91 - May 23, 2014, 06:29 PM

Quote from: lua on May 23, 2014, 06:14 PM
^ I guess we really must have run into totally different kinds of Muslims. The Sunni ones I know consider the claims in the hadith to be completely solid and factual, perhaps about worldly matters but rightfully applicable to worldly matters; otherwise, what's the point of integrating them into your life and law?

The value of the hadith for these people doesn't come from it just being cool things Mohammed had an opinion about, but rather the assumption that Mohammed was guided and infallible and that the hadith contain wisdom about how to live your life, conduct your law, and practice Islam.

The hadith about killing homosexuals isn't perceived to be a result of Mohammed really not liking the gays on a personal level, but something that is a true and appropriate thing that he as a prophet with his wisdom and intimate relationship with God would know is correct, and therefore it's worked into the practice. If the same guy is saying that the urine of a female contains flesh while the urine of a male is cleaner, or if his views on conception or embryology are proven false, it threatens the integrity of everything else he said in the same collection, even if the more religious points are inherently unfalsifiable.

Well, this is where it gets a little confusing. You see, the only reason why I claimed (and how many Sunni scholars claimed) that Mohammed does not have to be correct with worldly matters is because this is written in another Sahih Hadith itself! Al-Nawawi, for example, writes, "They have said that his opinions regarding the practical questions of life and his thoughts on such matters are the same as those of others. Therefore, situations like this one are not impossible". So if the Sunnis accept that Mohammed can be wrong when giving medicinal advice, they would actually be following the Sunnah.

As for your other point, yes, laws are applicable on worldly matters, and this is why distinctions to be made. For example, dealing with business transactions (despite being a worldy matter itself) in whatever way you want could produce religious consequences if not handled properly since there are specific sanctions placed within this field in Islamic law. Hence, this indirectly becomes a religious matter. However, the Prophet giving advice to someone about their gardening practices would be a different topic altogether since there is no Islamic consequence if he turns out to be wrong since he is giving the advice with the best of intentions.

"If the same guy is saying that the urine of a female contains flesh while the urine of a male is cleaner, or if his views on conception or embryology are proven false, it threatens the integrity of everything else he said in the same collection, even if the more religious points are inherently unfalsifiable. " This I would agree with.
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Reply #92 - May 23, 2014, 06:32 PM

I do concede, however, that giving advice and stating something as fact (such as the narrations pertaining to embryology) are two different things.
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Reply #93 - May 23, 2014, 06:52 PM

Well for one thing the rituals of ablution and prayers differ in the two books.
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Reply #94 - May 23, 2014, 09:45 PM

Hocuspocus-

I understand what you mean about the lack of severity surrounding failed practical advice versus not incorporating religious advice into law, but I think the issue here is less about how it is sorted by scholars and more about how it is perceived by modern Muslims, and where Islam is going to go in the future...I've never really noticed Sunnis actively making distinctions between hadith that contain law/religious matters and hadith that contain medicinal/scientific claims. They are all figured to be true by the simple merit that the infallible prophet said them.

It is assumed that his religious views are tied to his relationship with God, but it is also widely assumed that his views on embryology/conception/whatever these things that he was advising his people on at the time was knowledge granted to him by God (wasn't there even a hadith where someone came to town, like some Christian doctors or something, and quizzed Mohammed on some medical knowledge, and, once the doctors confirmed that his answer was correct, Mohammed said he had no idea about this until God just told him? Or am I totally making stuff up?).

Even if there is a disagreement among scholars on how to handle one sort or the other, I think for the average Muslim who believes that one set is true on the merit of it being a reliable transmission of something Mohammed said, finding out that another handful of the hadith are demonstrably false (especially when there's not an opportunity to refute the others) will create doubt in the entire collection. This was not an issue in the past in classic jurisprudence, of course. And this was not an issue because they did not have the luxury of modern science.

I think this is why you are starting to see more Quranists, especially among Western-educated Muslims or converts, or at least those who are more likely to doubt the hadith than before...This was the case for me as a Quranist, and the case for many others that I knew, and I do think that eventually Muslims will have to retreat to this territory.
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Reply #95 - May 23, 2014, 10:31 PM

Anyone who has read the koran knows you can't really ignore the hadith.

The koran as a whole is generally pretty vague on most matters we'd consider important.
So we as Muslim have to pray? Ok... how many? when? how?... all that is in the hadith and not the koran.
Zakat? Okay... how much?
...
Heck, even something as elementary is the 5 pillars of Islam is in the hadith and not the koran.

The koran for whatever reason is very specific about some things like inheritance, adultery and things like that.
You don't 'escape' the bad parts of Islam via the hadith.
The koran was written at the time all these 'bad' things were happening.
The hadith are more like a historical record of what was going on. The things in hadith aren't 'surprising' to anyone who reads how any culture back then behaved.

The koran talks all about slaves, concubines, war booty, sexual repression, jizya, eternal war onto non-believers, homosexuals...

Yes, the hadith might be more detailed or whatnot, but it contains largely the same kind of content you'd expect. So why would a Muslim throw out the hadith?

If they're going to 'ignore' the bad parts of the koran, they're going to be likely to ignore the bad parts of the hadith, which are less important than the koran itself.

Now many more modern Muslims claim to throw out the hadith and it gives them more room for interpretation with respect to the koran, but they're still engaging in the same ignoring of the koranic versus.
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Reply #96 - May 23, 2014, 11:29 PM

Quote
Now many more modern Muslims claim to throw out the hadith and it gives them more room for interpretation with respect to the koran, but they're still engaging in the same ignoring of the koranic versus.

Like I said somewhere earlier on this thread, I think, Quranists tend to take the Quran on its word as being complete and perfect, and the lack of really specific instructions are regarded as a purposeful omission. Pray, yes, give charity, yes, and the important thing is that this is done in some way to the best of your ability and means. The fact that you're not going through these very particular rituals (and mind you, some Sunnis won't even agree on the details of these things, anyway) is not viewed as a detraction.

Ignoring the parts of the Quran, whether you're a Quranist or a Sunni, is something that I generally do not find people doing unless they are extremely casual and removed from the religion, like Muslims who mostly practice their faith on Eid. Other than that, I would not say it is ignoring the parts of the Quran as much as it is employing your best apologist arguments against the damning interpretations of the verse in question, and trying to make what is ostensibly morally reprehensible either justified or watered down or metaphorical.

As for what you said in the beginning, it's interesting. My husband is now proudly a Quranist, and he points to the most completely absurd, evil, or false hadith as reasons why one should not believe in the hadith at all when he discusses this with other Saudis. In all conversations that he's told me of or that I was a personal witness to, the others were completely unwilling to criticize even the most flawed hadith, even if it was saying something that was just so transparently untrue, like yellow fluid in the female body determining the sex of a child if it is "stronger" than the fluid from the man. It's the same sort of resistance you're going to see when there is something problematic in the Quran: I think most people, Muslims or not, who are knowledgeable about the subject recognize that it is very likely an all-or-nothing game. You have to accept all of the Quran, or none of it. You have to accept all of the reputable hadith as eligible for law, or none of them.

It just so happens that many of the most glaring and obvious inaccuracies, as well as some of the most truly evil shit, comes right from the hadith. I would bet you anything that modernity will eventually see most Muslims trying to divorce the problematic hadith from Islam. We were discussing earlier in the thread whether or not that would ideally be the case, and I do not think so, of course. I would rather see those capable of accepting scientific evidence, not to mention those who have some actual decency and sense of morality, abandoning the religion all together, rather than hiding in the Quranist interpretation. However, for those who do see that the hadith collection contain actual scientific inaccuracies that they cannot justify, there is little choice but to reevaluate your faith in their worth.

Personally, now that I am no longer a Muslim, I do believe that the hadith are an accurate representation of what the religion was meant to be. I sometimes ask my husband where he thinks all these accounts come from if they had no basis in the truth to try to prompt him to really think about the problems of Islam, but he simply says that he is unsure. Maybe mistakes, maybe purposeful misdirection. I wish I had made him see the raw picture of Mohammad and Islam as painted by the hadith and Quran in conjunction before I brought it to his attention that there was a viable way to abandon the hadith entirely.
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Reply #97 - May 24, 2014, 05:54 AM

Quote from: scamper_22 on May 23, 2014, 10:31 PM
Anyone who has read the koran knows you can't really ignore the hadith.

The koran as a whole is generally pretty vague on most matters we'd consider important.
So we as Muslim have to pray? Ok... how many? when? how?... all that is in the hadith and not the koran.
Zakat? Okay... how much?
...
Heck, even something as elementary is the 5 pillars of Islam is in the hadith and not the koran.

The koran for whatever reason is very specific about some things like inheritance, adultery and things like that.
You don't 'escape' the bad parts of Islam via the hadith.
The koran was written at the time all these 'bad' things were happening.
The hadith are more like a historical record of what was going on. The things in hadith aren't 'surprising' to anyone who reads how any culture back then behaved.

The koran talks all about slaves, concubines, war booty, sexual repression, jizya, eternal war onto non-believers, homosexuals...

Yes, the hadith might be more detailed or whatnot, but it contains largely the same kind of content you'd expect. So why would a Muslim throw out the hadith?

If they're going to 'ignore' the bad parts of the koran, they're going to be likely to ignore the bad parts of the hadith, which are less important than the koran itself.

Now many more modern Muslims claim to throw out the hadith and it gives them more room for interpretation with respect to the koran, but they're still engaging in the same ignoring of the koranic versus.

Scamper, I have given a link in my very first post. Please take the pains to check it out. It will answer many, if not all of your questions. Let me give you one right here- http://www.quran-islam.org/main_topics/pillars_%28P1188%29.html.
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Reply #98 - May 24, 2014, 06:34 PM

@Rubaya
5 pillars of Islam. Nowhere in the koran will you see anything called the 5 pillars as the website says.

So why even entertain the 5 pillars as per Quran Only Muslim?
Why is pilgramage any more important than waging eternal warfare to subjugate non muslims?

Islam in any modern form without the hadith won't be recognizable as anything.
And like I said, the koran contains all the bad things that are in the hadith as well.

But yes, it is a good midway to modernize Islam and take advantage of vagueness.
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Reply #99 - May 24, 2014, 06:46 PM

^ I would say that the hadith go a little bit above and beyond the Quran as far as the "bad" things go. Or at least they are stated without as much ambiguity. I understand that the seeds for one are in the other either way, but if you take them as separate entities, which Quranists do, there's a ton of value in trimming off the hadith as far as removing yourself from the overtly deplorable instructions.

As for your questions to Rubaya, I think the webpage she sent you, although I don't think it's a very excellent one in general, does sort of address it. It acknowledges that there is no direct verse to attribute the five pillar things to. But nevertheless, the things that are recognized as the five pillars of Islam is still in effect as a Quranist, because independent verses exist that establish these as Quranic law. Clicking on the hyperlink for each pillar will show you the collection of verses they use to justify these "pillars" as necessary. Their disclaimer repeats what I said somewhere up there: the fact that it is not loaded with the kind of detailed rituals that would give my OCD-suffering childhood self a run for her money is not an issue in the Quranist perspective.
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Reply #100 - May 25, 2014, 04:27 AM

Quote from: scamper_22 on May 24, 2014, 06:34 PM
@Rubaya
5 pillars of Islam. Nowhere in the koran will you see anything called the 5 pillars as the website says.

So why even entertain the 5 pillars as per Quran Only Muslim?
Why is pilgramage any more important than waging eternal warfare to subjugate non muslims?

Islam in any modern form without the hadith won't be recognizable as anything.
And like I said, the koran contains all the bad things that are in the hadith as well.

But yes, it is a good midway to modernize Islam and take advantage of vagueness.

I never said that Islam will be perfect if we just accept the Quran. But your logic why calling them five pillars doesn't get into my head. Call them five pillars or five fards whatever you want. But that site has shown how to follow those. Yes the majority of the Muslims edit and add to those rituals from the Ahadith. But I find the Quranist's point of more logical. Several years of early Islam had gone on without the Ahadith. If at that time I were Muslim outside Saudi Arabia and only prayed from the Quran, I don't think so Muhammad's followers would have bothered because they knew it was right. Besides, I have no access to Muhammad's sayings and actions because I live so far away, or at least the correct version of it. I hope you got my point which I had presented messily. And sorry for that.
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Reply #101 - May 25, 2014, 04:29 AM

Quote from: lua on May 24, 2014, 06:46 PM
^ I would say that the hadith go a little bit above and beyond the Quran as far as the "bad" things go. Or at least they are stated without as much ambiguity. I understand that the seeds for one are in the other either way, but if you take them as separate entities, which Quranists do, there's a ton of value in trimming off the hadith as far as removing yourself from the overtly deplorable instructions.

As for your questions to Rubaya, I think the webpage she sent you, although I don't think it's a very excellent one in general, does sort of address it. It acknowledges that there is no direct verse to attribute the five pillar things to. But nevertheless, the things that are recognized as the five pillars of Islam is still in effect as a Quranist, because independent verses exist that establish these as Quranic law. Clicking on the hyperlink for each pillar will show you the collection of verses they use to justify these "pillars" as necessary. Their disclaimer repeats what I said somewhere up there: the fact that it is not loaded with the kind of detailed rituals that would give my OCD-suffering childhood self a run for her money is not an issue in the Quranist perspective.

This is one of the reasons I would have been a Quranist if I were a Muslim. Their ways are far simpler.
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Reply #102 - May 25, 2014, 06:27 AM

Quote from: lua on May 23, 2014, 11:29 PM
My husband is now proudly a Quranist, and he points to the most completely absurd, evil, or false hadith as reasons why one should not believe in the hadith at all when he discusses this with other Saudis.

I think this summarizes and defines Qur'anism, or the majority of Qur'anists, very well. It seems to me that people are simply too bothered by the morally and scientifically dubious claims in the Hadith, so instead of trying to pick out inaccuracies in the actual methodology of collecting Hadith, they just reject it as a whole. At the end of the day, the process of collecting Hadith and the process of collecting the Qur'aan are very similar, and this is exactly the kind of dishonesty/hypocrisy that makes me feel uncomfortable about Qur'anists and Qur'anism in general.
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Reply #103 - May 25, 2014, 06:45 AM

You should remember that Muslims have extra bias towards the Quran because it is "God's words". So even if they find inaccuracies in it they will somehow 'make' themselves believe that it is not the case. It may be mistranslation, wrong interpretation or science still doesn't have the correct idea about it's theories (which will later be found). Compared to the Quran the Ahadith is more inaccurate, immoral and ridiculous and has many clashes with Quran, "the divine book". So I can't blame the Quranists.
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Reply #104 - May 25, 2014, 12:42 PM

Quote from: hocuspocus on May 25, 2014, 06:27 AM
At the end of the day, the process of collecting Hadith and the process of collecting the Qur'aan are very similar, and this is exactly the kind of dishonesty/hypocrisy that makes me feel uncomfortable about Qur'anists and Qur'anism in general.

You and I can probably agree on this. I think I also said it somewhere in this thread, but I would agree that Quranists are not being completely intellectually honest or fair...but it's not because they reject the hadith. To me, this is a fairly logical choice, and, in fact, one that has a ton of sympathy from people who were never Muslim but who are educated on the history of Islam in my experience, as they never had this initial emotional resistance that I found was the bulk of most Sunni arguments.

I would say the dishonesty is from not holding the Quran to the same standard and not using that same skepticism and doubt on the Quran. It's from staying with Islam and touting the Quran as indisputably true. These individuals should be capable of going that extra step.
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Reply #105 - May 25, 2014, 02:52 PM

I never became a full-fledged Quranist but I was a kind of quasi-Quranist who mostly dismissed the hadith (I'd read one too many crazy, unjustifiable ones) but I couldn't let go of it entirely because what is Sunni Islam without hadith How do you pray, give zakat, etc. I realised that most of mainstream Islam is from the hadith, and the Quran is an unintelligible, contradictory mess without the context the hadith gives it.
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Reply #106 - May 25, 2014, 03:34 PM

^ You didn't feel that the hadith were also an unintelligible, contradictory mess? To me, both parts are a total clusterfuck, and combining them did little to change that.
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Reply #107 - May 25, 2014, 03:37 PM

Yeah but at least the quran rhymes.
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Reply #108 - May 25, 2014, 03:40 PM

So does Justin Beeber.

Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
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Reply #109 - May 25, 2014, 03:45 PM

And both have their adoring groupies.
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Reply #110 - May 25, 2014, 03:46 PM

That's right. Some people say that the Quran so easy to learn and that is a great miracle of it . Then the 'Twinkle, twinkle little star' rhyme is greater miracle!
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Reply #111 - May 25, 2014, 03:48 PM

But Justin Beeber actually shows up to gigs. Sometimes.

Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
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Reply #112 - May 25, 2014, 04:08 PM

The Quran really is just essentially Muhammad's epic battle rap against the pagans gone terribly too far. When Kendrick Lamar says "Damn, I got b*tches. Wifey, girlfriend, and mistress," and Muhammad says, " O Prophet, indeed We have made lawful to you your wives to whom you have given
compensation and those your right hand possesses from what Allah has returned to you [of captives] and the daughters of your paternal uncles and the daughters of your paternal aunts and the daughters of your maternal uncles and the daughters of your maternal aunts who emigrated with you and a believing woman if she gives herself to the Prophet [and] if the Prophet wishes to marry her, [this is] only for you, excluding the [other] believers," they are both essentially saying the same thing. Kendrick just never claimed his rhymes came from God. And Kendrick has a better flow.
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Reply #113 - May 25, 2014, 04:13 PM

Yeah, Mohammed is more of a Gary Glitter than a Kendrick Lamar.

Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
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Reply #114 - May 25, 2014, 04:31 PM

Quote from: lua on May 25, 2014, 03:34 PM
^ You didn't feel that the hadith were also an unintelligible, contradictory mess? To me, both parts are a total clusterfuck, and combining them did little to change that.

There are hadith that state to be good to women and condemn men beating their wives, this kind of takes the "bang" out of 4:34 and allows Muslims to come up with erroneous, revisionist "alternative" translations for وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ. Of course there are hadith where Umar urges Mo to allow wife-beating and hadith were Mo ignores a woman who is black and blue from her husband's beatings, but the great thing about hadith is you can toss them out willy nilly. "Heaven lies at the feet of your mother" "Women are inferior in intelligence"

I'm just using women's issues as an example but this is basically how "moderate" Sunni Islam is formed. You take the "good" hadith, discard the crazy ones, and interpret the Quran with the lense that it is supposed to be tolerant and peaceful...as demonstrated by the "good" hadith.

Also, a lot of the verses that call for eternal, offensive jihad are explained away by hadith which limit them to specific battles and contexts. How do Quranists explain the infamous ayat-al-sayf, for example?
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Reply #115 - May 25, 2014, 10:47 PM

^ I understand what you're saying about picking and choosing the hadith, but I'm sure you can see why this appears to totally defy logic, especially if someone presses you about it and asks you to defend choosing one sahih hadith over the other. Not that keeping the Quran doesn't also defy logic, but one has more ambiguity to hide in, so this is the problem that led many people to make the decision to be Quranists.

I knew a spectrum of them, and some had hadith that they liked and followed, some they doubted, or maybe they even liked most or all of them, but the defining, uniting quality of a Quranist is to reject the authority of a hadith to become a law with a punishment, particularly capital punishment. You can get Quranists who pick and choose hadith to believe in and guide them, but it is considered optional. When I was a Quranist, I was nearly indistinguishable from a Sunni, unless you got me talking about whether or not I thought it was appropriate to execute people in a sharia state for crimes not mentioned in the Quran as capital offenses. My interpretation was totally recognizable as typical Islam besides that key point.

As for verses like the verse of the sword, you can get some differing opinions. Some Quranists (and even some Sunni apologists) will try to tell you that this was a verse describing a historical period of time, just as much of the Quran contains stories or "historical" events. I personally believed verses like these described a particular set of circumstances where it would become incumbent upon the Muslims to fight/defend themselves, and we typically assumed this circumstance to be some sort of persecution.
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Reply #116 - May 26, 2014, 07:13 AM

^But how do they assume that without hadith and sira? Many scholars back in the day interpreted the Quran as calling for eternal jihad against the kuffar and it was used to justify Islamic imperialism. But then again, considering no one seriously believes that anymore, that's more a testament to how religion is in the eyes of the beholder and -- as much as Muslims would beg to differ -- a product of the times than anything else.

Anyway, at the end of the day, hadith or no hadith, Islam can be molded into whatever any individual Muslim wants. Clearly, you've got more knowledge and experience with Quranism than me, and you know more about the subdivisions. I thought Quranists rejected all hadith, not just ones related to shari'ah, so it raised questions like "how do these people pray?", "how do they say du'as?", etc.

I'd encountered Quranists online who prayed three times a day in a different manner to Sunnis and Shi'as, who fasted ten days in Ramadan or something, even some who believed drinking in moderation outside of prayer times was okay ( it became apparent that Quranism is the gateway to apostasy and a way to justify typically haram stuff). So it appeared to me that their Islam was significantly different from the mainstream and I rejected Quranism on the basis that the ummah couldn't have all been this deluded for this long, which, ironically, is based on a hadith that says the ummah will never be united in error and to not deviate too far from the majority. The logical conclusion of Quranism, to me, was that everyone throughout Islamic history got it terribly wrong and I wasn't willing to accept that.
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Reply #117 - May 26, 2014, 07:41 AM

Also, a lot of the verses that call for eternal, offensive jihad are explained away by hadith which limit them to specific battles and contexts. How do Quranists explain the infamous ayat-al-sayf, for example?

I think both the books called for jihad against disbelievers no matter what the cause.
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Reply #118 - May 26, 2014, 12:24 PM

Quote from: Al-Alethia on May 26, 2014, 07:13 AM
So it appeared to me that their Islam was significantly different from the mainstream and I rejected Quranism on the basis that the ummah couldn't have all been this deluded for this long, which, ironically, is based on a hadith that says the ummah will never be united in error and to not deviate too far from the majority. The logical conclusion of Quranism, to me, was that everyone throughout Islamic history got it terribly wrong and I wasn't willing to accept that.

This is super long and I'm sorry!

Well, there is of course a perception that since the collection of the hadith every sharia state has been one mistake after another. And, again, if you are looking at this from the vantage point where you think Islam is correct and you at least "know" the Quran is correct, you're going to be looking at sharia states like Saudi Arabia or even Islamic groups like our heroes in Nigeria, and you're going to probably not agree that either of them represents true Islam (even if I can agree with you now that Islam is problematic and will lend to these interpretations no matter what). Even a lot of Sunni Saudis that I know are critical of the government's decisions, even if in no other way than how they support America. You're going to be looking at how influential historical figures/movements have been in shaping modern Islam, like ibn Wahhab. You're especially going to have a hard time believing that people have been getting it right when there's so many different versions of Sharia, so many different types of Muslims/Sunnis, so many different schools of thought/tafsiirs and you believe that there should only be one of each.

So I'm not going to try to make it seem like Quranists don't generally believe that people have been buying into a huge mistake and injecting error/culture/what have you into their brand of Islam. Almost all of them do believe that. But how much they trust or believe in the hadith will be something that definitely varies from one individual to the next. Your experience with the Quranists who drink and only pray three times a day isn't an outlier; praying three times a day is typically considered the bare minimum, and some, like I, would just do it five times, anyway. Some would drink, since it was not explicitly prohibited in the Quran, but any real reading of the Quran (minus that one verse where God is bragging about the cool intoxicants you get from fruits) will show that alcohol is at least discouraged, so many others do not.

I mean, we get (got?) questions like that all the time. How do we know how to pray? How do we give zakat? How do you know how to wash your body? How are you going to know when the end is extremely fucking nigh? And it was surprisingly hard to communicate to Sunnis, particularly if they're from a very conservative region, that we still did these things, but to the best of our ability, in the ways that made sense to us or fit into our circumstances. It wasn't, in our perspective, about stepping into the bathroom with the right foot, or giving exactly 2.5% (many of us gave more if we could swing it, or just made charitable practices a habit), it wasn't about hitting all the yoga positions when you prayed; it was about honoring the Quran as it is and claims to be, about your faith and your goodness of character, about your relationship and mindfulness and love of God. The rituals just were not an issue. They were, at best, tangential.

The way the Quran is regarded by most Quranists isn't at all the same way as most Sunnis. Every verse in Sunni Islam, despite the fact that the Quran itself says that you're not going to be able to understand certain parts of me with clarity, is totally dissected and given rulings over, and the hadith are brought to fill in every perceived crack and gap in instruction. To Quranists, any omission is regarded as purposeful, as a mercy; if women's faces were going to be burning in hell if they didn't wear the burka (like some Sunnis say), that shit would've been in the Quran. God wouldn't have forgotten that. But if a woman wants to go ahead and totally cover herself, surely her devotion to God would be appreciated by him. But it was just not a defining characteristic of a good Muslim woman, not a requirement to be a good person.

Verses like the verse of the sword are interpreted in different ways by Quranists, and even by Muslims in general; so as for how we could know for sure that our interpretation is correct, we did our best, and always with a sense of humility, always with the best of intentions, and we were careful not to overstep the lessons of the Quran, especially when the worldly consequences could be devastating. Best to trust that there are some punishments that will be handed down by God in the hereafter, rather than execute a person who should not have been executed.

If you could get through it, did any of that make sense?
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Why Should the Muslims Not Reject the Ahadith?
Reply #119 - May 26, 2014, 02:12 PM

Let's face it lua. Given no context, no detail, and no detailed descriptions attached to events described in the Qur'aan, anyone can interpret anything. Let's take the drinking example : "O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination, Of Satan’s handiwork: Eschew such (abomination) that ye may prosper". To any reasonable person, this is a clear-cut prohibition of drinking in Islam. However, if one is ignorant of the entire backstory to the events that led up to the prohibition of alcohol in the Ahadith, one could point to other verses that state that drinking contains some profit, or talk about how the actual word for prohibition in Arabic is not used. They would totally miss the point of the prohibition of drinking being a progressive event due to abrogations of the previous verses.

I have heard many Muslims claim that ex-Muslims leave the religion to pursue their desires and stay within their comfort zones. If they said the same to Qur'aanists, I would actually think they have a point.
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