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Qur'an alone Muslims, Qur'anic Muslims or sometimes, anti-hadith are those Muslims who reject hadith, sunnah and abrogation of Qur'anic verses, or recorded Islamic traditions, and follow the Qur'an, Islam's sacred text, without any further additions.

Absolutist rejection of hadith and sunnah

Quran Alone Muslims reject the alleged hadith and sunnah of the prophet Muhammad in accordance with the Quran's teaching that the sole duty of Muhammad was to the deliver the Quran, as per:

42:48 "You (Muhammad) have NO duty EXCEPT DELIVERING the message."

13:40 "(Muhammad) Your ONLY duty is delivering, we (God and the angels) will call them (the people) to account."

5:99 "The messenger (Muhammad) has NO function EXCEPT delivery of the message."

Furthermore, they observe Muhammad's only message as the Quran, as per:

21:10 "We (God and the angels) have sent down to you a scripture containing YOUR MESSAGE. Do you not understand?"

69:44-46 "Had he (Muhammad) uttered any other teachings. We would have punished him. We would have stopped the revelations to him."

Quran Alone Muslims uphold only one hadith (narration) and only one sunnah (system); the Quran.

Groups of Qur'an-alone Muslims

Rashad Khalifa and the Submitters

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 Quran, the whole Quran, and nothing but the Quran. 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 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 .

Dissident Submitters

There are a number of Submitters who feel that the Submitter group has gone astray. The Submitters, they say, are devoting themselves to Rashad Khalifa rather than to God. There is evidence of one petition presented to the Submitters and one website maintained by Edip Yuksel, either formerly or currently a member of the Submitters . It is not at all clear that there are more than a handful of these dissidents, or that they have formally withdrawn from the Submitters.

This splinter group, by the evidence of Yuksel's website, has not abandoned any of the Submitter 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 . Closely related to them are the Progressive Muslims website , and the Muslims Against Stoning website , an action committee from Muslims who reject the shariah punishment of rajam (stoning) as contradictory to the Qur'an. Sunni and Shi'a opponents call them as Quraniyyin, loosely translated as Qur'an people or Qur'anites. Sunni clerics have directed several fatwas against them.

Some of these "disorganized" Quran-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.

Qur'an only Islam in history

The Quran alone movement is not a recent phenomenon. In fact, the anti-hadith movement is as old as Hadith itself, e.g. the Mutazilites accepted only hadith which were mass-transmitted and shared many viewpoints with the contemporary Qur'an only Muslims, e.g. their emphasis on rationality and scientific methods. Hadith adherents credit Imam Shafi for defeating these groups around the 8th centrury AD. From his writings, one can see his stance against the anti-hadith groups at that time.

Another early group which rejected hadiths were the Kharijites (also known as the "Khawarij"). They argued that it was impossible to know whether a statement had actually issued from the Prophet or not, even if it was mass-transmitted. A more moderate branch of the Kharijites which still survives today are the Ibadis, who do accept some hadiths.

Opposing viewpoints

• Most Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims (who combined form more than 95% of the world's Muslim population) are in agreement that hadith are an integral part of understanding and implementing Islamic teachings. They point out the fact that the Qur'an itself stresses the fact 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 Quran 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 Quran Aloners. They claim that the usage of the term messenger refers to the Message which he delivered i.e. Quran. 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, Quran Alone Muslims claim that obeying the messenger by no means can refer to the hadith besides Quran because those, according to them, were sayings falsely attributed to the Prophet Muhammad by the hypocrites at that time.

See also

• United Submitters International
• Sakkakiyah (an early sect which denied Sunna and Ijtihad, and "held that the legal system is to be derived from Quran only")
• Similarities between the Bible and the Qur'an

Further reading

Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought ISBN 0521653940

External links

• MANIFESTO FOR ISLAMIC REFORM

Groups and communities of Qur'an-alone Muslims

• Pencerahan dalam bahasa Indonesia
• Pencerahan dalam bahasa Melayu
• Freeminds website of non-Submitter Qur'anic Muslims
• Progressive Muslims website
• 19.org
• Muslims Against Stoning
• Forum at www.19.org
• Edip Yuksel's personal website
• www.Submission.org

Qur'anic resources

• Submission.org's article "Abrogation, the biggest lie against the Quran"
• Is Quran enough? What does The Quran say?
• Downloadable source-based translation of the Qur'an
• Analogies between Hadith and the Bible
• List of Hadiths believed by mainstream Muslims, from www.y19.net
• History of hadith & sunna in Islam
• The word hadith in The Quran

• Islam