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 recorded Islamic traditions, and follow the Qur'an, Islam's sacred text, without any further additions.

Contents

1 Groups of Qur'an-alone Muslims

1.1 Rashad Khalifa and the Submitters
1.2 Dissident Submitters
1.3 Non-organised Qur'anic Muslims

2 Opposing viewpoints
3 See also
4 Further reading
5 External links

5.1 Pro Qur'an Alone
5.2 Against Qur'an Alone

Groups of Qur'an-alone Muslims

Rashad Khalifa and the Submitters

Main articles: Rashad Khalifa, and United Submitters International

The term is closely associated with the late Rashad Khalifa, a Muslim immigrant to the United States. He founded a mosque in Tucson, Arizona, and initially attracted many followers and much interest in Muslim circles. He popularized the phrase: the Qur'an, the whole Qur'an, and nothing but the Qur'an. After he declared himself a Messenger of God, he was rejected as an apostate by all save his followers. He was assassinated in 1990.

Khalifa's followers have organized as the United Submitters International (USI) and usually describe themselves as Qur'an Alone Muslims. They derive their version of salat from a belief in the mathematical preservation since the time of Abraham, based on the number 19 [link].

Dissident Submitters

There are a number of Submitters who feel that the USI has gone astray. That group, they say, are devoting themselves to Rashad Khalifa rather than to God. There is evidence of one petition presented to them [link] by Edip Yuksel. It is not at all clear that there are more than a handful of these dissidents, or that they have formally withdrawn from the USI.

This splinter group, by the evidence of Yuksel's website, has not abandoned any of the USI beliefs, such as the Messengership of Khalifa, the rejection of hadith, and the organization of the Qur'an by the number 19. They object merely to the current emphasis of the group.

Non-organised Qur'anic Muslims

Those are Muslims who accept Khalifa's original arguments regarding hadith, and still believe that hadith are unnecessary, while rejecting Khalifa's later claims to be a Messenger from God and other elements which are specific of the Submitters. These Muslims have a web presence on the Internet which can be found at their Free Minds website [link].

Some of these "disorganized" Qur'an-only Muslims have been criticized by more orthodox Muslims for practices such as conducting the Friday sermon with people sitting at tables instead of lined up on the floor and not enforcing the Islamic dress codes in mosques.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Opposing viewpoints

Sunni and Shi'a Muslims (who together comprise more than 95% of the world's Muslim population) have sometimes called Qur'an Alone Muslims Qur'aniyyin (قرآنيون), loosely translated as Qur'an people or Qur'anites. Sunni and Shi'a 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.

The Qur'an Alone Muslims counter this by saying that the Qur'an doesn't say to obey Allah and Muhammad but to obey Allah and the message of Allah's messenger. There's a clear difference between these two statements according to Qur'an Aloners. They claim that the usage of the term messenger refers to the Message which he delivered i.e. Qur'an. There is no text in the Qur'an which can be translated literally as 'Obey God and Obey Muhammad'. Also it is a rule in Arabic language that after the death of the physical messenger the term messenger applies to the message itself which is logical.
Qur'an alone Muslims contend that Sunni and Shi'a Muslims attribute divine qualities to Muhammad (which is considered by Sunni and Shi'a Muslims as a divine source himself, apart from the Qur'anic texts), which they equalize to shirk.
Moreover, Qur'an Alone Muslims claim that obeying the messenger by no means can refer to the hadith besides Qur'an because those, according to them, were sayings falsely attributed to the Prophet Muhammad by the hypocrites at that time.

Sunni clerics have directed several fatwas [link] [link] against Qur'an Alone Muslims.

External links

Pro Qur'an Alone

Against Qur'an Alone

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