Post of Haris30432

Dear Sister,

With all due respect,i do not wish to learn about any of the messengers of God than what is beyond the Quran.The Quran is perfect, complete and fully detailed.All the details that is required for our salvation is there in the Quran.Anything beyond that, is not necessary for our salvation.It would be hypocritical of me to say that i believe the Quran is sufficient and go to other sources for any kind of guidance.I know Prophet Muhamed was a great prophet like all others before him and that GOD gave him a wonderful character.Now all that knowledge about him in the Quran is sufficient for me.If it wasnt, Quran would have given more details.This is what i believe.I fear idolizing anyone beside GOD and i mean anyone becoz THE ONLY and i mean THE ONLY UNFORGIVABLE SIN  if maintained till death is idol worship or assigning partners to GOD.I would like to bring this to your attention that the only one worthy of your full devotion and love is GOD and nobody else.There is no one after ,there is no one before.

                               OBEY GOD AND OBEY THE MESSENGER?

Its Suras, verses, words, letters, numbers, the order of revelation, the order of writing
of the Quran, the unique spelling of some words, the choice of verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
nouns, the beginning and end of any specific verse or sura, the length of the individual
verses and suras, their naming, the names of people mentioned in the Quran, e.g. Mary,
Muhammed, Noah...etc. Everything that has to do with the Quran is deliberately done by
God Almighty.

The student of the Quran will always learn as permitted by the Most Gracious, as only He
is the Teacher of the Quran, See 55:1-2.

Obey God and Obey Muhammed.

Any student of the Quran will object right away to this expression that he/she never heard
before. We always hear, "Obey God and obey the messenger..." but never "Obey God and
Obey Muhammed ." What is the difference , if any.?

Let us find out first if God mentioned Muhammed by name in the Quran. We know, He did,
actually four times. In 3:144, 33:40, 47:2 and 48:29. How many times did God tell us to "Obey
the messenger" ? There are more

than 25 times in the Quran, where God ordered us to obey the messenger. Not a
single time did God say "Obey Muhammed"

Is this a co-incidnce or a deliberate order?

Only true believers know that everything in God's world is deliberate, nothing is a co-incidence.
Let us find out what God is teaching us about Muhammed.

"Say, (O Muhammed) "I am no more than a human being like you...." 18:110

God Almighty knowing that the Prophet Muhammed is a human being like us, will live his life and run his business like any human being would. He would make mistakes, get angry, have fears, ...etc. Muhammed the human being was the messenger only because of the message given to him, the QURAN.

Muhammed without the Quran is just another human being like us. God wants it to be very
clear to obey the person that has the message, the Quran, for what he has not for who he is.

Obey the messenger is conditional on having the message, the Quran. Obey the messenger because of the message he has, the QURAN. Obey the messenger means to follow his message that is given to him, the QURAN.

Muhammed without the message is just a regular human being, he frowned and turned away when the blind poor man came to him, (See 80:1-11), he feared the people when he was supposed to fear only God, (See 33:37), and he prohibited what he should not prohibit, (See 66:1)

That is why there has never been a single order in the Quran from God,the Most Cognizant to "Obey Muhammed." If we were to obey Muhammed the human being,(not the messenger), we were to frown at the poor, fear the people instead of God and prohibit what God did not. We are required to obey the messenger, because it is the message (QURAN) that made the obedience a requirement, not the person, Muhammed, that made it a requirement.

Those who know Arabic well know that the word (Rasool) in Arabic means both the messenger and the message. So, when God says , obey the (Rasool) , He means both the messenger and the message (QURAN). Both are inseparable. When the messenger, the human being is dead, the true messenger among us becomes the message itself, in this case, the QURAN. God Almighty has called the Quran (Rasool) on many occasions, e.g., 5:15, 11:1-3, 14:1, 27:2, 32:3, 34:6, 42:52, & 65:11.

One great example of the distinction between obeying the messenger (For what he has)
(the Quran) and obeying the human being, is what God told Muhammed's wives; in Sura 33,

"O wives of the prophet, if any of you commits gross sin, the
retribution will be doubled for her. This is easy for God to do.
Any one of you who obeys GOD and His MESSENGER, and
leads a righteous life, we will grant her double the recompense,
and we have prepared for her a generous provision." 33:30-31

Notice the order here for the prophet's wives to obey the Messenger, not their husband
or Muhammed. If God would have said to them to obey their husband, the unconditional
obedience of the wife to her husband would have been decreed.

If God would have said, obey Muhammed, it would have made the unconditional
obedience of Muhammed a decree. God wants them and wants us to obey the messenger
(for the message he has, the QURAN).

Muhammed the human being was given the great honor of being chosen the final prophet
of God to deliver the final message, the QURAN, and was described as "blessed with a great
moral character" in 68:4.

We, however have to remember not to make any distinction between him and the rest of
God's messengers, See 2:285. We are to make the distinction between obeying him by
following his message and obeying him by following allegation of what he did as a human
being in his own personal life.

YES, we should obey the messenger. Those who accept the Quran accept the order from
God to "obey the messenger" by following his message, the Quran ALONE. When the prophet
Muhammed died, he left for us ONLY one book, the Quran.

When God told Muhammed in the Quran, "Today I completed your religion for you",
Muhammed had only one book at that time, the Quran. Muhammed gave us one kind of
Islam, that we can find in the book of God, the Quran. He did not leave for us the other
sects of Sunni, Shiite, Ahmaddya, Ismailis�etc. These sects were created when the Muslims
looked for the books of hadiths and sunna to supplement the book
of God. In doing so, they willingly or unwillingly declared that they do not trust God in His
own book. The book that God described as complete, perfect, fully detailed and having
details of everything. See 12:111By doing so, all these sects left God�s kingdom and joined
the same groups who previously corrupted the other religions of God, Judaism and Christianity.

It is very interesting to know that God gave us this prophecy in the Quran and told us the messe
nger will complain to Him on the Last Day that "My people have deserted this Quran." 25:30

"...this is not a fabricated Hadith, this (QURAN) confirms all previous scriptures,
provides the details of everything, and is a beacon and mercy for those
who believe." 12:111

Peace!

يم
 اللهم صلي على نبينا محمد و على آله و صحبه و سلم
 
   "Anyone who disobey Allah and His Messenger has wandered off into manifest error." Suratul Ahzaab 33:36

"He who obeys Allah and His Messenger has already achieved a splendid triumph." Suratul Ahzaab 33:71

   For the past fourteen centuries Quran and Sunnah have been the twin undisputed sources of Guidance for Muslims. In every
generation, Muslims devoted the best of their minds and talents to their study. They learnt both the words and meanings of the Quran through the Prophet s.a.s and made an unprecedented effort in preserving them for the next generation. The
result: the development of the marvelous � and unparalleled � science of Hadith, one of the brightest aspects of Muslim
history.

   Then something happened. During the colonial period, when most of the Muslim world came under the subjugation of the
West, some "scholars" arose in places like Egypt (Taha Hussein), India (Abdullah Chakralwi and Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz)
and Turkey (Zia Gokalp), who began questioning the authenticity and relevance of Hadith. It was not that some genius had
found flaws in the Hadith study that had eluded the entire Ummah for thirteen centuries. It was simply that the pressures
from the dominant Western civilization to conform were to strong for them to withstand. They buckled. Prophetic teachings
and life examples � Hadith � was the obstacle in this process and so it became the target.

   Another factor helped them. Today most Muslims, including the vast majority of the Western educated Muslims, have meager knowledge of Hadith, having spent no time in studying even the fundamentals of this vast subject. How many know
the difference between sahih and hassan, or between maudu and daif? The certification process used in hadith transmission? Names of any hadith book produced in the first century Hijrah, or the number of such books? A majority would probably not be able to name even the six principle Hadith books (Sihah Sittah) or know anything about the history of their compilation. Obviously such atmosphere provides a fertile ground for sowing suspicions and doubts.

  They sometimes call themselves Ahle Quran or Quranists. This is misleading. For their distinction is not in affirming the Quran, but in rejecting the Hadith. The ideas of munkareen-e-hadith evolve into three mutually contradictory strains.

 The first holds that the job of the Prophet s.a.s was only to deliver the Quran. We are to follow only the Quran and nothing else, as were the companions. Further, Hadith is not needed to understand the Quran, which is sufficient for providing guidance.

 The second group holds that the Companions were required to follow the Prophet s.a.s but we are not.

 The third holds that, in theory, we also have to follow Hadith but we did not receive Hadith through authentic sources and therefore we have to reject all Hadith collections!

Internal contradictions are a hallmark of false ideologies.

  How can anyone hold the first position yet profess belief in the Quran while it says:
"And We have sent down unto You the Message so that you may explain clearly to mankind what was sent down to them, and so that they may give thought." Suratan Nahl 16:44
And this:

"Allah did confer a great favor on the Believers when He sent among them a Messenger from among themselves, who rehearses unto them the Signs of Allah, purifies them, instructs them in Scripture, and teaches them Wisdom, whereas previously they had been in plain error." Surah Al-e-Imran 3:164

  How can anyone hold the second position (limiting the Prophet hood to 23 years) yet profess belief in the Quran, while it
says:

  "We did not send you except as Mercy for everybody in the universe." Suratul Anbiya 21:107
And,

  "And We have not sent you (O Mohammad) except as a giver of glad tidings and a warner to all mankind."
Suratus Saba 34:28

   The third position seems to have avoided obvious pitfalls, yet in reality it is no different. It agrees that we need Hadith, but then goes on to claim that Allah did not provide what we need for our guidance.
The following are some of the statements normally made by Hadith rejectors.

The Reliability of Sources:
"We accept Allah's Word that He has protected the Quran from corruption, but why should we accept the words of the
Hadith collectors? Are they as infallible as Allah s.w.t?"

  This makes you wonder whether the Hadith rejectors realize how we received the Quran. For we have received both the Quran and the Hadith through exactly the same channels. The same people transmitted this as the Word of Allah s.w.t and that as the word of the Prophet s.a.s. Even the verse claiming that the Quran will be protected came to us through the same people. Through what logic can anyone declare that the channels are reliable for the Quran and unreliable for Hadith? On the contrary the Quranic promise of protection must apply to Hadith as well for there is no point in protecting the words but not the meanings of the Quran.

  Were Ahadith Written Down For The First Time In The Third Century Of The Hijra?

  The very existence of a huge library of Hadith, the only one of its kind among the religious of the world, assures us that our
expectation that Hadith � the embodiment of Prophetic explanation of the Quran � must have been protected is not in vain.
To dismiss all that as later day fabrication requires lots of guts � and equal parts ignorance.
Were ahadith written down for the first time in the third century of Hijra? Not at all. Actually hadith recording and collection
started at the time of the Prophet s.a.s.
Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al 'As r.a sought and was given the permission to write everything he heard from the Prophet s.a.s:
Sayyidina Abdullah ibn Amr s.a.s reports: "I used to write everything I heard from the Messenger s.a.s as I wanted to
preserve it. The Quraish forbade me, saying: 'Do you write everything that you hear [from him] and the Messenger is a
human being who sometimes speaks in anger and joy?' [i.e. he may say something under the influence of emotions that
may not be worth writing.] So I stopped. Then I mentioned this to the Messenger s.a.s. He pointed with his fingers to his
mouth and said: "Write! By the One in Whose Hands is my life! Nothing proceeds from here except the truth." � Abu Dawood, 3161

    He produced Sahifa Sadiqa, which contained more than six thousand ahadith.

Anas ibn Malik r.a, who spent ten years in Prophet's household, not only recorded the ahadith but also presented them to the
Prophet s.a.s and got corrections. Abu Hurairah r.a. had many volumes of his collections and even produced smaller compilations for his students. Prominent Hadith scholar Dr. Mustafa Azami has shown in his doctoral thesis that in the first century of Hijra many hundred booklets of hadith were in circulation. By the end of the second century, "by the most conservative estimates there were many thousands."
Off course most of these books do not exist today. They were simply absorbed into the encyclopedic collections that
emerged in the third century. One manuscript from the first century was discovered in this century and published by Dr.Hamidullah. It is Sahifa Hammam ibn Munabbah, who was a disciple of Abu Hurairah r.a. It contains 138 ahadith.

   Muhaditheen knew that the ahadith of this Sahifa had been absorbed into Musnad Ahmed and Muslim collections., which
have been published continuously since their third century debut. After the discovery of the original manuscript it was  naturally compared with the ahadith in Muslim and Musnad Ahmed that were thought to have come from that Sahifa. And what did they find? There was not an iota of difference between the two. Similarly Mussanaf of Abd Al Razzaq is extant and has been published. As has been Mu'ammar ibn Rashid's al-Jami. The recent appearance of these original manuscripts should bring the most skeptical into the fold of believers.
Salat And Hadith Rejectors
"The Messenger s.a.s may have elaborated on items like mode of salat. Such hadith is probably from the Messenger s.a.s and should be obeyed. But we cannot believe the rest of the ahadith."

The Hadith rejecters have a particularly difficult time explaining how to offer salat if we are to throw away the Hadith.. So
they offer concessions like the one quoted above. But we don't need a favor for Hadith about salat (coming from the same
books and the same narrators who are declared as unreliable). We need an answer to this question.: If the Quran is the only authentic source of Guidance, why did it never explain how to offer salat, although it repeatdly talks about its importance, associating it with eternal success and failure? What would we think of a communication that repeatedly emphasizes a certain act but never explains how to perform it? There are only two possibilities. Either it is a terrible omission (and in that case it cannot be from God) or another source for the how-to information is provided and it is a
terrible mistake for any recipient to ignore that.

   Some Hadith rejectors have realized the difficulty of their position on Salat. But they have made a claim that is even more ludicrous, namely that the Quran gives details on how to offer salat. "A Careful reading of the Quran reveals that we are to get our salat from the Masjid al Haram [the continuous practice at Makkah since the time of Abraham]," says one proponent, "specifically the place of Abraham (Muqam-e-Ibrahim)." Let us leave aside all those practical questions about such a fluid answer. Whose salat? When? Are we to follow anyone and everyone we find praying at Maqam-e-Ibrahim. How are those offering salat there to determine the proper way of offering it? How do you resolve their differences? In his enthusiasm in proposing this innovative solution, this proponent even forgot that the Quran says the following about the
salat of mushrikeen (polytheists) at the Masjid al Haram:
"Their prayer at the House of Allah is nothing but whistling and clapping. (its only answer can be) "Taste  chastisement because you blasphemed." Suratul Anfal 8:35
The Sahih And The Gospels

"Hadith is the same as the Gospels of Christianity. Indeed the time span between the death of the Messenger and the compilation of the Sahihs was almost the same as that between the departure of Jesus a.s and the compilation of the Bible. How can Muslims accept one and reject the other?"

  Regarding the comparison of the Sahih with the Gospels, let's listen to Dr. Hamidullah.
"The compilation of the Gospels, their preservation and transmission from one generation to the other, has not taken place
in the way which governed the books of hadith� We do not know who wrote them, who translated them, and who transmitted them. How were they transferred from the original Aramaic to Greek? Did the scribes make arrangements for a faithful reproduction of the original? The four Gospels are mentioned, for the first time, three hundred years after Christ.
Should we rely on such an unauthentic book in preference to that of Bukhari who prefaces every statement of two lines with
three to nine references?"
"Allah s.w.t has protected only the Quran � not Islam � from corruption."

To say that Allah s.w.t. promised to protect only the Quran but not Islam is being as ridiculous as one can get. Let's ignore the obvious question regarding the point of this Heavenly act. The question is if Islam has been corrupted and its true  teachings have been lost, how can anyone claim to be its follower?

   Moreover the quran says:
"Anyone who desires something other than Islam as a religion will never have it accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will among the losers." Surah al-eImran 3:85

How are we to follow the religion acceptable to Allah s.w.t if it was not to be protected?

The Commnts Of Dr. Maurice Bucaille
"Dr. Maurice bucaille finds that Sahih bukhari is as unscientific as the bible"
Dr. Maurice Bucaille earned the admiration of many Muslims because of his study of some scientific phenomena mentioned in
the Quran and his testimony based on that study the Quran must be the book of Allah. However he is not a Hadith scholar
and it is unfair to drag him into this discussion. His account of history of hadith compilation contains many errors, for
example the claim that the first gathering of hadith was performed roughly forty years after Hijra or that no instructions were given regarding hadith collection. He questions about a dozen or so entries in Bukhari that he thinks deal with scientific matters. Even if that criticism were valid, would it be sufficient ground to throw away the 9082 toital entires (2602 unique ahadith) in Bukhari? He himself does not think so for he writes. "

  The truth of hadith from a religious point of view, is beyond question."

The Hadith Regarding The Sun But even his criticism is of questionable value. Consider the hadith about the sun: "At sunset the sun protrates itself underneath the Throne and takes permission to rise again, and it is permitted and then a time will come when it be about to prostrate itself�it will seek permission to go on its course� it will be ordered to return whence it has come and so it will rise in the West." His criticism: This implies a notion of a course the sun runs in relation to the earth." Bucaille fails to
understand the real message of this hadith. It was not meant to teach astronomy. It's clear message is that the sun is the slave of Allah, moving always through His Will. The Hadith brings out that message very powerfully so that even the most illiterate bedouin can understand it fully.
Even today astronomers, when calculating the time of sunrise and sunset, use a mathematical model in which the sun revolves around the earth. If that is acceptable for scientific work as it makes calculations easier, why is it questionable when it makes communication easier?

   Also there are other ahadith which clearly demonstrate a scientific fact beyond the knowledge of the times but Bucaille has
failed to take notice. For example the hadith about solar eclipse:
"The sun and moon are two signs from the Signs of Allah. They are not eclipsed on account of anyone's death or on account of anyone's birth, but Allah sends them to strike fear in hearts of His servants." Bukhari 990
The eclipse had coincided with the death of the Prophet's s.a.s son. A false prophet would have tried to exploit the occasion.
A fabricated hadith would require scientific knowledge on part of the fabricator that did not exist then.
To reject the Hadith is to reject the Quran for all practical purposes. The idea was concocted as a means of undermining the Quran while on the surface affirming faith in it.

    It is time those who were misled by it out ignorance threw away this of our colonial past into the trash bin of history where it belongs.

Salams all,

This is very interesting.
And I have to say I agree with Haris.
Muhammed (pbuh) was a messenger. He had the authority from Allah, as did all prophets from Adam, to spread the truth. No other human being after Muhammed has that authority. So hadiths and sunnahs are, as far as I am concerned, only words of man, not Allah. This is the big difference between Muhammed(pbuh) and scholars etc.

It is not necessary to know what Muhammed's life was like at all. This was not his purpose. We know very little, other than through scriptures, what any of the prophets were like. As messengers it is not necessary. THe fact that they are messengers of Allah is sufficient for us to accept that they are chosen men of Allah. If we cannot accept them on this alone then we show we have little faith in Allah, and that we doubt His word.

TBH any muslim who needs to rely on a hadith spoken of by many conflicting sources shows that they do not trust the Qur'an is perfect and complete. Again I say, Islam does not need to contain a biography of the Prophet(pbuh) THe Qur'an is enough...and I have often said so.

Well done Brother Haris. I commend you for your openness on these matters discussed here.

So sorry FOH, Haris, Uri and myself do not feel we need to repent on the grounds that we follow all messengers, and Allah's word before Muhammed and ending with him when the Qur'an was revealed. We are not being mislead. We follow the Qur'an... it is all that Allah needs us to do.

(scholars are not chosen to be messengers. They are just human like you and me, and they all vary on their ideas.)