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Khutbah June 2008: The Quran AND The Sunnah

Khutbah June 2008: The Quran AND the Sunnah

Abu Muadh

All praise be to Allah and peace and blessing be on his messenger and his companions.

Allah (STW) says in the Quran, ( وأنزلنا إليك الذكر لتبين للناس مانزل إليهم) “We have sent down unto you (also) the Message; that you may explain clearly to men what is sent for them, and that they may give thought”. Allah SWT did not leave the task of understanding the Quran to everyone even if he or she is a native speaker of Arabic let alone speakers of other languages who might not be well-versed in the linguistic aspects of Arabic. Things become worse when some non-Arabic speakers claim to understand the Quran without any reference to the Sunnah (Prophetic traditions).

The companions of the Prophet never claimed to have fully understood the Quran. But they used to ask the Prophet (pbuh) whenever they come across issues that were not comprehensible. Ibn Masoud reported that when this verse: (الذين آمنوا ولم يلبسوا إيمانهم بظلم …) “Those who believe and obscure not their belief by wrongdoing “ was revealed, the companions found it difficult as they thought it means the wrongdoing that is aimed at oneself, their household, and friends and everybody is prone to such wrongdoing. They went and asked the Prophet and said that we all commit such wrongdoing. The prophet (pbuh) said that it is the Major Shirk and recited: (وإذ قال لقمان لابنه وهو يعظه يابني لاتشرك بالله إن الشرك لظلم عظيم).

“And (remember) when Luqman said unto his son, when he was exhorting him: O my dear son! Ascribe no partners unto Allah. To ascribe partners (unto Him) is a tremendous wronging”.

The Prophet’s companions and those who came after them from the Ummahs’ scholars never claimed to fully understand the Quran exclusively without resorting to the Sunnah. The Prophet (pbuh) said” I left among you, two things; you will not be misguided provided that you stick to them: Allah’s book and my Sunnah”. This means that anyone who only takes the Quran without the Sunnah will possibly be misguided. Likewise, anyone who only takes the Sunnah and leaves away the Quran will be misguided.

From time to time there shows up some people who call themselves “The Qurannyon”. They claim that the Sunnah is not a source of legislation. They say that their only guide is the Quran; we take what is permissible or otherwise from the Quran only. And they claim that the Sunnah has undergone lots of distortions and includes fake traditions. The Prophet (pbuh) has told us about this type of people when he said “It is about to come that when a person is told about a Hadith, he would say: I only acknowledge the Quran and I take what is permissible or otherwise from the Quran only. The Prophet then said” what the Prophet makes unlawful is indeed like what Allah (SWT) makes unlawful”.

Those are not “Quranyon” as the Quran makes it clear that obeying the Prophet is obligatory in around a hundred times in the Quran. The Quran considers obeying the Prophet is part and parcel of obeying Allah (SWT). It is the same Quran, which they claim they follow, that nullifies the Iman of any person who refuses to obey the Prophet:

( فلا وربك لا يؤمنون حتى يحكموك فيما شجر بينهم ثم لا يجدوافي أنفسهم حرجا مما قضيت ويسلموا تسليما).

“But no, by thy Lord, they can have no (real) Faith, until they make thee judge in all disputes between them, and find in their souls no resistance against thy decisions, but accept them with the fullest conviction”.

And their claim that the Sunnah has undergone lots of distortions and includes fake traditions is easily rejected due to the fact that the scholars have meticulously verified and cross-checked the Sunnah. The process they followed required that having suspicion about the truthfulness of a narrator or the possibility of him saying things by mistake is enough a reason to reject his Hadith. Even those who reject Islam as a whole admit that the Sunnah was carefully dealt with in terms of filtering out what is originally not part of it.

To follow a Hadith, it is enough to verify it is a sound hadith. The Prohpet (pbuh) would send one companion to send across his message as when he sent Muath to Yemen. This is an indication that having one narrator is enough to accept the Hadith.

It is interesting to see what those people say about where in the Quran it says how we would perform the prayer or how many prayers a day or the details of zakah or the details of Hajj and many other things that the Sunnah explained and clarified.

May Allah guide us to the right path.

June 25, 2008 Posted by Abu-Tayeb Khairdeen | Knowledge Based Articles | friday, islam, khutbah, quran, sunnah | Leave a Comment