Qur'an alone
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Qur'an alone Muslims, Qur'anic Muslims or sometimes, anti-hadith Muslims are those Muslims who reject hadith, or preserved traditions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and follow the Qur'an, a sacred text of Islam, exclusively.
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[edit] Qur'anist / Qur'an Alone groups
[edit] The Ahle Qur'an
"Ahle Qur’an", a group formed by Abdullah Chakralawi, rely entirely on the chapter and verse 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 him, 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 He argues that the Qur'an was the only record of divine wisdom, the only source of Muhammad's teachings, and that it superseded the entire corpus of hadith[1].
[edit] Bazm-e-Tolu-e-Islam
(English: Resurgence of Islam) is a Pakistani based organization whose followers can be found throughout the world. The movement was initiated by Ghulam Ahmed Pervez, a Qur'anic scholar. Focusing on Qur'anic teachings, he was willing to re-interpret Qur'anic verses and place little or no emphasis on hadiths. Unlike some other groups, Tolu-e-Islam followers do not reject all hadiths; however, they only accept hadiths which "are in accordance with the Holy Qur'an" and "do not blemish the personality of [Muhammad] and/or his companions." The organization is loosely controlled. It publishes books, pamphlets, and recordings of Pervez's speeches.
[edit] United Submitters International
The term is closely associated with the late Rashad Khalifa, founder of the United Submitters International. While the USI do not refer to themselves as "Muslim" or claim to be "Islamic," they follow the Qur'an alone. The group popularized the phrase: the Qur'an, the whole Qur'an, and nothing but the Qur'an. After Khalifa declared himself a messenger of God, he was rejected as an apostate of Islam. He was assassinated in 1990. Beside following the Qur'an only philosophy they also believe that there is a mathematical structure in the Qur'an based on the number 19 [1].
[edit] Dissident Submitters
Edip Yuksel left the USI in the early 1990s and later presented a petition claiming that the Submitters had lost devotion to God [2], although he still believes that there is a mathematical structure of code 19 in the Qur'an.
[edit] Non-organised Qur'anic Muslims
Those are Muslims who believe that hadiths are irrelevant in approaching a study to, or an interpretation of the Qur'an, and most of them do not believe in other new messengers. One such group of Muslims can be found at the Free Minds website [3]. The majority of these groups place the emphasis on the Qur'an assuming that it has no abrogations and has no relation to Hadith whatsoever. Certain groups or individuals (particularly those influenced by Tolu-e-Islam) do accept Hadiths to a certain level, i.e. as long as they do not contradict the Qur'an.
[edit] Opposing viewpoints
Shi'as, and some groups in the Sunni sect, have sometimes called Qur'an Alone Muslims Qur'aniyyun (قرآنيون), loosely translated as Qur'an people or Qur'anites. Most Sunnis and Shi'as agree that hadith are an integral part of understanding and implementing Islamic teachings. They argue that the Qur'an itself says that both Allah and the messenger (Muhammad) are to be obeyed, as no less than a dozen verses in the Qur'an stress obedience to Allah and the messenger.
Qur'an Alone Muslims respond by claiming that there is no verse in the Qur'an obliging obedience to Muhammad, but only his message. Even if obedience to Muhammad was substantiated, they argue that the hadith are not a suitable means through which this can occur due to its alleged forgery. Their claim comes from the notice that nowhere in the Qur'an it is said "Obey God and obey Muhammad", but always, what is stated is "Obey God and obey the messenger".
Some Sunni clerics have directed several fatwas [4] [5] against Qur'an Alone Muslims.
[edit] See also
- Liberal movements within Islam
- Qur'an and Sunnah
- United Submitters International
- Karaite Judaism
- Sola scriptura
[edit] References
- ^ Ahmad, Aziz, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan 1857-1964, Oxford University Press, 1967, pp 120-121
[edit] Further reading
- Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought ISBN 0-521-65394-0
