Wednesday 18 July 2012

Summary of Qur'an alone Islam.

What is Qur'an alone?
Qur'an alone Islam, Quranism or Quraniyoon is Islam following just the Qur'an, based off only the Qur'an and nothing more. In normal Islam, Sunni, Shia, there are two sources used. The Qur'an, and the Hadith (Sometimes called Sunnah but the Sunnah is actually incorporated in the hadith). Hadith means story or tale or note, Qur'an means revelation.  The Qur'an is believed to be the holy word of God revealed to Prophet Muhammad over 23 years in Arabia, from 610-623AD. It was revealed in revelations and written down and compiled after Muhammads death. The hadith, are the reported sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad. Qur'anists reject these hadith and follow just the Qur'an.

About the Hadith.
In the time of Muhammad, there was a culture of orally preserving tradition, mainly because most people were illiterate. Long after Muhammad's death people were passing down by oral tradition what Muhammad said and did, around 200 years later a Persian man named Burkhari decided he would try and write down all these traditions, he spent half his life going around the Islamic world, he ended up with around 600,000 statements about what Muhammad did and said, from this he decided that only around 7000 were reliable and accurate to what Muhammad said, he did this by judging the character of those who told him the hadith, and by how many times the same hadith came up from different people. Burkhari's book is considered the most authentic hadith book, in the following decades and centuries 4 more hadith books were compiled by different men. These hadith books make up the second source of law for Orthodox Islam, Sunni and Shia have some different books and some the same. Orthodox Muslims are confident that the hadith are accurate and have confidence in their called, "hadith science". To western audiences, the hadith are generally considered accurate enough for a frame work of Muhammads life, given the culture of orally preserving stories, but not accurate to the standard Muslims put them at. For Islam, the hadith create thousands of extra laws and add massively to Islamic jurisprudence, there are so many hadith it has not entirely been put into proper law, and the way Muslims use them varies greatly.

In Qur'an only Islam, hadith are rejected as a source of law and guidance, for the following summarised reasons.
- The Qur'an says it contains all the detail you will need (6:114, 16:89, 12:111, 41:3, 10:37, 39:23, 7:52)
- The Qur'an says you dont need hadith or Scholars to explain it (16:89, 41:3, 75:16-19)
- The Qur'an condems hadith, by name. (45:6, 7:185, 31:6, 77:50)
- Muhammad was forbidden from creating laws (66:1)
- Muhammad was forbidden from Explaining the qur'an, God will do that with the Quran itself. (69:44-48, 10:15)
- The Qur'an says it is a sin to follow any religious laws which are not in the Qur'an. (16:105, 3:94, 5:87, 6:119, 6:140, 7:32, 5:103, 6:144, 16:116)
- The Qur'an says Muhammads only duty was to deliver "The message" (5:99, 5:92, 24:54)
- There was no written hadith for the first 200 years of Islam, if we were meant to follow hadith, God would have surely made a book of hadith too.
- The hadith are unreliable (Biography of words spoken made 200 years after his death passed down by oral transition)
- Burkhari claimed to have collected 600,000 Hadith and he decided 7000 were "Authentic". This doesn't even begin to go into the mechanics of how a man collects 700,000 statements from different individuals, writes them all down, and then reads them all again and decides. For example, if each one took one hour to collect, write, read and judge, then it would take 701916 hours, or 80 years.
- The thousands of hadith statements create a massive complexity of law with hundreds of contradictions and with the issue of authenticity even a problem for Sunnis it creates a vague area of what is and isn't law.
- The hadith often outright contradict the Qur'an
- Some hadith are outright insulting to God, the Qur'an, and even Muhammad.

Rejecting the hadith does come with doctrine changes to Islam. The following is an incomplete list of doctrine changes.
- Generally the statement to profess your faith becomes, "There is no God but God", instead of, "There is no God but God and Muhammad is his messenger". On the basis that the Qur'an says all messengers are equal, and that is the Shahada in the Qur'an
- Most Quranists only pray 3 times a day, on the basis that the Qur'an only mentions 3 prayers. Despite Orthodox Muslims claiming the Qur'an doesnt teach one how to pray, it does, however the Quranist prayer is shorter than the Sunni prayer.
- In Quranism the rate of charity is the excess that you can afford to donate, as stated in the Qur'an, whereas Orthodox give 2.5% of their wealth as stated in the hadith.
- Circumcision is completely absent from Quranism as it is not in the Qur'an. In fact the Qur'an says those who mutilate their bodies are being tricked by Satan.
- Clothing requirments in Quranism are limited to covering the breasts, and dressing modestly for the society you are in. No burqas or headscarfs.
- Quranists can eat food made by Jews and Christians
- Many Quranists, but not all, believe the name of God must be pronounced over food you are about to eat, not animals just before slaughter, this frees Quranists to eat meat not slaughtered in the orthodox halal method.
- Quranists may or may not believe the black rock on the Kaaba is sacred, but either way it holds no importants for performing the Hajj unlike for Orthodox.
- A Quranist can perform Hajj during any time of the four sacred months as mentioned in the Qur'an, not during the first 10 days according to the hadith.
- A woman can pray while mensturating, the hadith forbids it, not the Qur'an.
- Although not all Orthodox believe this, Quranist Muslims completely disagree with the death penalty for apostasy.
- The Punishment for adultery is never stoning in Quranism, it is lashing as prescribed by the Qur'an.
- No death penalty for being homosexual in Quranism, homosexual adultery would be treated as normal adultery with lashing.


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