By Defending-Islam.com Team

Objection #1: I have read a book by Rashad Khalifa in which he states…  

Objection #1.1: Whatever information is given in the Quran about Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) is enough for the people to recognize him 

Objection #1.2: Allah says in the Quran: -----"And what We have revealed to you (O Messenger) of the Book…

Objection #1.3: Allah's momin goes outside the rules, because these rules are made up by mortals, who have died and become dust in the dust. They stick to Allah's Quran only.

Objection #2: Is the age of responsibility for our sins age 40 according to Holy Quran?

Objection #2.1: The view that Abu Bakr (Radhia Allahu Anhu) is the one referred to by Verse 46:15 is outrageous

Objection #3: Is it true the first hadiths were written 225 years after the Prophet saw?

Objection #4: Hadiths have been historically used by Imams in power of certain regions or countries to support their own political campaigns?

Objection #5: Rejection of Quran means leaving islam and forwarding towards kuffar and hadith is transmitted by many humans which is most possibility errors….

Objection #1: I have read a book by Rashad Khalifa in which he states that most of the hadith's are not reliable sources of information and we should revert back to referring to the Holy Quran as did the muslims in the first 3 centuries prior to the hadiths being written. There is a hadtih that says the Prophet saw mentioned no one should write down anything he said, is this true?

Response: As a first step for all those who wish to delve into the issue of Hadith and their authenticity, we would like to refer our readers to two articles dealing with the issues raised by Hadith Rejecters:

http://www.central-mosque.com/sunnah/antihadfal.htm (The Fallacies of Anti Hadith Arguments)

and

http://www.central-mosque.com/fiqh/asunnah1.htm (The Authority of Sunnah).

After giving this introduction, we can answer the questions as follows:

To begin with, Rashad Khalifa was a very dangerous man. He claimed that two Verses of the Quran had been forged since they did not agree with his numerological claims, in addition to claiming Prophethood. From these two things we already know that he and those who follow him have altogether rejected the authority of mass narrations in establishing the truth of matters... if one asks why this is so, we say that every single Verse of the Quran is a mass transmission from the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) up to our time. It is also the total consensus of the Muslims that there is neither Prophet nor Messenger after Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam), so all claims of Prophethood or Messengership after Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) are rejected outright.

But for the Hadith rejecters, mass transmission and consensus does not constitute a source of knowledge. Thus, we have to ask as to how they came to the conclusion that the Quran (or the "rest of the Quran" if they imagine two Verses to be forgeries) is indeed the revelation of Allah, since for them there is no barrier to all people coming together and forging certain Ayat of the Quran and that this forgery would be transmitted down to us (May Allah save us from such a belief).

As a matter of fact, those people who reject mass transmission as a source of knowledge cannot even establish the truth of great events, such as World Wars, or the existence of places which they have never seen, like say Australia for example, since they live in a paranoid world where everyone may be lying to them and where only their immediate senses may be taken as giving them reliable information[1]. As far as Islam is concerned for such types of people, they cannot even ascertain whether Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) even existed, let alone whether we should follow the Hadith or stick with the Quran only.

With respect to the first 3 generations of Muslims, then it is known through mass narrations from the earliest generations that they would transmit the sayings of the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) and act upon the jurisprudence that he taught to the people. It is important to note that jurisprudence (Fiqh) is a science generally above that of Hadith transmission, but that it was never taken to be only derived directly from the text of the Quran.

As to those who might say that the scholars of our Ummah forged many sayings and rulings of the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) and then the lay Muslims followed them blindly, this is again a sign of being paranoid about the authenticity of mass transmitted knowledge. For if one can say that the scholars of our Ummah forged narrations and rulings and then the entire Muslim community agreed upon this error, then why can't a person come up and say that some people got together and forged the existence of Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) or of the entire Quran, and then the rest of the people around them agreed upon this and that now we are all acting upon lies?

With respect to the matter of the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) ordering Ahadith not to be written from him, here we have a very interesting dilemma for our opponents: They are resorting to the use of a written narration to try and undermine the basis for writing narrations themselves. Thus, they are relying on something which their methodology does not allow them to use, similar to the way that it would be incoherent for an atheist to go to a Masjid to pray while claiming that he is still an atheist. So from this we already know that the methodology of the Hadith rejecters is extremely weak, since they should not resort to any written statements from the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) which are not the Quran, but yet they do this anyway, since they implicitly acknowledge the futility of advancing their cause without making extensive use of the Hadith literature.

Knowing that this is the position of our opponents, the answer from our side is that such a narrative was given by Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) at the beginning of Islam. Mufti Usmani writes: "The actual reason was that in the beginning of the revelation of the Holy Qur’ân, the companions of the Holy Prophet (Sallallaho Alayhi Wa Sallam) were not fully familiar with the Qur’ânic style, nor was the Holy Qur’ân compiled in a separate book form. In those days some companions began to write the ahâdîth along with the Qur’ânic text. Some explanations of the Holy Qur’ân given by the Holy Prophet (Sallallaho Alayhi Wa Sallam) were written by some of them mixed with the Qur’ânic verses without any distinction between the two. It was therefore feared that it would lead to confuse the Qur’ânic text with the ahâdîth." (Taken from the work "Authority of Sunnah" quoted earlier). It should also be noted that in this same narration being brought by our opponents, the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) instructed the Companions to narrate what they heard from him orally, a fact which totally destroys the claims of the Hadith rejecters. And this is something obvious, since they are not attacking the writing of the Ahadith while claiming that the oral transmission is acceptable, but they are attacking the corpus of Ahadith altogether, while the narration brought up by our opponents already establishes the correctness of orally transmitting the non-Quranic sayings of the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam).

In any case, when the situation changed and the Companions knew the difference between the Quranic style and the other speech of the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam), this prohibition was lifted. This is why we mentioned before that the science of jurisprudence is generally above that of Hadith transmission, since only through the study of jurisprudence can we bring together all the different Ahadith and analyze the apparent diverse wording they may seem to have and bring them all in harmony with one another, deriving a decisive ruling for the matter at hand.

Objection #1.1: Whatever information is given in the Quran about Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) is enough for the people to recognize him 

In fact, it is not enough to know who is this Muhammad, because the methodology being followed by the Hadith Rejecters is that all information other than the text of the Qur'an may be false.

And this is a big problem once we see this for the ultra-sophist philosophy it is. To begin with, following the methodology of the Hadith rejecters, once the very first word of the Quran is encountered, they are in confusion.

Why, someone may ask?

Because they will read the Arabic letters for "Bismi" (that is, the read بسم), but they cannot use any outside resources to know what "Bismi" could possibly mean. Even if they say that we should look into other places of the Quran for clarification, they would still be in problems since they cannot know the meaning of any of the words in the Qur'an, so their looking for context totally backfires.

We can say that we can even go further than this, saying that they cannot even know what the "Ba"(ب), the "Sin"(س), and the "Mim"(م) could possibly be, nor what sounds they should make, since they have totally closed their options with respect to gaining any knowledge outside of the Qur'anic text (if they ever figure out what the text is without any consultation from outside sources).

So going back to the issue of who this Muhammad is, for the Muslims this is easy to know, since we trust mass narrations other than the Quran, and these point us to the correct Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam). But for the Hadith Deniers, their own methodology does not allow them to research this matter at all, since they can only stick to the words of the Quran and nothing else, and that too without using any Arabic dictionary or common Arabic usage to know what the words could possibly mean.

If they wish to contest this, then they should tell us why they accept whatever outside rules they do accept, and then our discussion can move on from there.

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Objection #1.2: Allah says in the Quran: -----"And what We have revealed to you (O Messenger) of the Book, it is The Truth, confirming what was before it. Indeed, Allah is All Aware, Seer of His slaves." (Al-Fatir-31). Thus there is no truth after the Quran

There are a number of matters under discussion in here.

First, how do the Quranists know this is the exact translation of the Verse, and that there is no mistranslation or manipulation of this Verse? In this Verse alone, there are a number of key Arabic words, each of which may have different meanings, and the Quran-only approach does not know which of the meanings should be adopted in this case. If we were to open an Arabic-English dictionary to find out what the Arabic words mean, this would be a breach of the Quranists method for finding out the truth. But yet, the Quranist blissfully takes from whatever translation they find either online or in the libraries. For a people who claim to follow nothing other than the text of the Quran, such a careless method for finding out what the Quran says is quite shocking and deplorable, since it is not even a method, but mere playing with the religion in whatever manner it is seen as fit for them.

Secondly, it is a gross misinterpretation to say that this Verse speaks of the Quran being the only Truth "and nothing after It". This is not what the Verse says but only a sloppy interpretation added to the Quranic Verse. The Verse mentions only that the Quran is truth, but does not negate knowledge other than the Quran as being true.

Additionally, we would have a more serious problem, since now the Quranist is saying that any and all information outside of the Quran is not true at all. And this includes information that can be gained by the senses and from information given to us by people, such as the existence of this site, and the existence of countries such as Canada, Australia, etc.

If the Quranist objects, we answer by saying that it is their view that there is the Quranic truth "and nothing after It", so either they have to recant this view or continue propagating their view that the Quran mentions that all sensory data and information gained by reporting is absolutely false.

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Objection #1.3: Allah's momin goes outside the rules, because these rules are made up by mortals, who have died and become dust in the dust. They stick to Allah's Quran only.

These are not rules "made up by men", but these are obvious rules of the sound mind for reaching certain knowledge about matters. The Quran itself was revealed keeping in mind that such rules would be followed for otherwise the whole revelation would be useless. This is so, because in that case people would see the Arabic letters of the Quran and deny that such are indeed letters (or hear the recitation and deny that they were hearing anything), or see the letters coming together to make words (and words making phrases and so on), and deny that such words and phrases have been made to begin with.

And this also extends to the issue of mass narration, since the Quranic text has been transmitted orally by mean of mass transmission from one generation to the next. In the Quranist only philosophy believing in the authenticity of the Quran is impossible, since the system of mass transmission is rejected altogether, and there is nothing in the text of the Quran explicitly mentioning in detail how the text of the Quran has come from Allah to the reader in an authentic way.

One can see the big joke in this regard, as it would require for there to be an "Appendix to the Quran" mentioning how each and every person who lived and will live can be sure that the text of the Quran he read/is reading is indeed the correct text of the Quran. And this is necessary according to the methodology of the Quranist, since he cannot trust that the printing complex from which the copy of the Quran he is holding came from is indeed correctly printing the Quranic text or whether some problems have crept into his copy. As by the admission of the Quranist, getting the assurance from every single Muslim that this is indeed the correct copy is not enough since information through mass transmission is a "rule made up by mortals" according to him.

All in all, such types of discussions can only go forward if the Quranist is willing to discuss how certain knowledge is gained, for otherwise the Quranic is selectively playing with the Islamic religion in order to fulfill his own desires.

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Objection #2: Is the age of responsibility for our sins age 40 according to Holy Quran?

We suppose the objection is with respect to Verse 46:15, where the wording of the Ayah is that when the person reaches maturity and reaches 40 years

وَوَصَّيْنَا الْإِنْسَانَ بِوَالِدَيْهِ إِحْسَانًا ۖ حَمَلَتْهُ أُمُّهُ كُرْهًا وَوَضَعَتْهُ كُرْهًا ۖ وَحَمْلُهُ وَفِصَالُهُ ثَلَاثُونَ شَهْرًا ۚ حَتَّىٰ إِذَا بَلَغَ أَشُدَّهُ وَبَلَغَ أَرْبَعِينَ سَنَةً قَالَ رَبِّ أَوْزِعْنِي أَنْ أَشْكُرَ نِعْمَتَكَ الَّتِي أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيَّ وَعَلَىٰ وَالِدَيَّ وَأَنْ أَعْمَلَ صَالِحًا تَرْضَاهُ وَأَصْلِحْ لِي فِي ذُرِّيَّتِي ۖ إِنِّي تُبْتُ إِلَيْكَ وَإِنِّي مِنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ

And We have enjoined upon man to do good to his parents. His mother carried him with difficulty and delivered him with difficulty. And his carrying and his weaning is (in) thirty months, until when he attains his maturity and reaches forty years, he says, .My Lord, grant me that I offer gratitude for the favour You have bestowed upon me and upon my parents, and that I do righteous deeds that You like. And set righteousness, for my sake, in my progeny. Of course, I repent to you, and truly I am one of those who submit to You.. (Quran 46:15) 

so this is used as an evidence that maturity is at 40 years of age, and not at puberty or 15 years, etc.

Our answer is that there is one mass transmission saying that the maturity is at 40 years (this Quranic Ayah), yet there is another set of mass transmissions saying that those experiencing the signs of adolescence are the ones who have reached maturity, and that they are the ones who are legally responsible.

So there has to be a bringing into harmony of these two sets of mass transmitted narrations and actions, and the way this is done is by saying that the age of puberty is when one reaches the mental state when one is legally responsible for one's actions, while the 40 years refers to the time when the mind of the Muslim becomes more fully aware and complete in its responsibilities towards worship and obedience towards Allah. Some of the narrations found in some Tafsirs (for example, that of Imam ar-Razi)[2] say that the reason for the revelation of this Verse is with reference to Abu Bakr (Radhia Allahu Anhu), since the phrase after it ""My Lord! Grant me the power and ability... (the rest of the Ayah)" is not uttered by every single person, so it is specifically revealed concerning Abu Bakr (Radhia Allahu Anhu), an interpretation which would mean that words such as "Ashudah" are being used in this context specifically for this Companion and are not meant for the generality of mankind or the generality of Muslims.

In here we will not discuss such matters at length (of whether this interpretation is correct or incorrect), but we do need to say that just because the word "Ashudah" appears and after it comes "40 years", we cannot say that for all instances where the Quran and/or the Hadith literature/Islamic rulings mentions "Bulugh" or "Ashudah" then this means that 40 years is what should be taken. Yes, if it had been the case that the action of the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) and of the Muslim community at large was that people were treated as not being responsible for their actions until they reached the age of forty, then we would have accepted such a course of action. But since we know, through mass transmitted actions and sayings, that the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi wa Sallam) and the Muslims did indeed take people to be legally responsible for their deeds way before reaching forty years of age, then we should look for ways to explain all of the definitive actions/narrations in a satisfactory manner.

So for those who reject this explanation, we know that their rejection comes from not being able to acknowledge that the mass transmitted actions of the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) and of the Muslims at large to constitute a decisive proof, and we have already commented on the very weak methodology and position of such people.     

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Objection #2.1: The view that Abu Bakr (Radhia Allahu Anhu) is the one referred to by Verse 46:15 is outrageous

Response:

There are indeed many Verses of the Quran that were revealed for only one person, even if the wording of it was couched in terms of the generality of mankind. The examples of this are numerous and a thorough research would yield dozens of similar Verses. In any case, it is not obligatory to believe that this Verse was revealed only for Abu Bakr (Radhia Allahu Anhu) to the exclusion of all humanity, since a number of interpretations also say that the reason for revelation was him but the application of it does not exclude others.

The problem with this type of people is not about this specific Ayah, but the fact that such people reject all mass transmitted narrations... this extends to the Quran as well, since by their methodology they should never accept anything of the Quranic text, since the text that we read today is basically the writing of the vocalizations we should make when reciting the Quran, and its status as far as "true knowledge" is concerned is the same as that of mass transmitted non-Quranic matters, such as the fact that people are legally responsible for their deeds when they reach puberty or 15 years.

According to the methodology of the Hadith rejecters, since they reject the second one, they should reject the first matter as well (the text of the Quran), since for them mass narrations do not constitute proof.

So we know that the matter about whether this Verse was revealed with respect to Abu Bakr (Radhia Allahu Anhu) is not the main point of contention brought up by the Hadith rejecters. The main contention is that the Verse points to the age of 40 as being the age when people begin to be held legally accountable. We already know that through the mass narrations this issue has been resolved, since the weight of Islamic practice is that people are held accountable for their action at the onset of puberty. We do understand that the age of forty is mentioned in here for some reason, but the reason is a maturity of the mind and body unrelated to the legal status of a person's actions and his accountability.

However, from this Verse itself we see that the term "Balagha Ashudah" cannot possibly refer to legal accountability at the age of forty. And this is because the person making the Dua asks Allah to make his offspring righteous. Thus, the wording of the Verse shows that the person already has offspring by the age of forty, and we know that offspring can only come from marriage and other legal means of consummation.

What the Hadith rejecter is implying then is that in his religion, marriage is conducted and consummated between people who have yet to reach legal maturity. And there is no other for us to look at the matter, since the wording of the Ayah is clear in that offspring do exist for that person at the age of forty.

If he were to say otherwise, that offspring in Islam always came after the age of forty, this is something which even the most seasoned Hadith rejector would know to be false, since no human society exists that has ever practiced such a thing. In addition to this, from a non-religious point of view, it would be suicidal for any society to make its men and women wait until the age of forty to start having legal relationships with each other, so it would be out of the question to say that Allah wanted people to wait until this time for marriage and reproduction to take place. So the options for our Hadith rejecting opponents is either:

a) Accept that the Verse means a maturity other than that related to legal responsibility.

b) Say that in their religion, marriage is allowed between people who have yet to reach legal responsibility.

c) Say that sexual intercourse is allowed outside of the legal means, which is a contradiction of the text of the Qur’an and the methodology our opponents are using

or

c) Say that marriage is after forty, which is totally against all well-known rules of human interaction.

So from this we already know that the only option is (a), and the rest of the options are not even worth considering.

In addition to this we can also wonder that, in the absence of all interpretations and elucidations from Prophetic narrations and the opinions of the Companions (i.e. the road taken by our opponents), what do we take the word "Hatta" to mean in this Verse?

Does it mean that the person makes this Dua up to the time he is forty years of age- which is the meaning we would take from it if we were to do a rote word-for-word translation? If it means that he makes this Dua after forty years of age, then what is the legal status of making this Dua before the age of forty... is it compulsory, merely allowed, or forbidden? There is no way to know either one way or the other based on the methodology of our opponents, since they have thrown out all mass transmitted narrations and practices of Islam and cling only to the apparent text of the Quran.

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Objection #3: Is it true the first hadiths were written 225 years after the Prophet saw?

One of the problems with the Hadith rejecters is that, being a relatively very recent phenomenon, they take a lot of their so-called "scholarship" from the non-Muslim Orientalists. Such Orientalists considered the written form of knowledge to be absolute, and never paid much attention to the information that is passed from teacher to student by oral means, which was the preferred way for such knowledge to be passed down, especially since the first generation of Muslims was not a completely literate society but it still had great potential for memorizing and repeating extremely long texts. Given that Islamic knowledge is basically passed from teacher to student in this manner (orally), this means that the Orientalists and those who followed their ways, such as the Hadith rejecters, have total suspicion about all Islamic knowledge, be it the text of the Quran, Fiqhi rulings, or Hadith transmissions. It is not a matter of when the Ahadith or the text of the Quran was written down, but whether this information has correctly been transmitted from the Prophet (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) down to our own time.

Thus, the one who follows the general ideology of the Orientalists may make a big noise if he were to find a copy of the text of the Quran which has some printing mistakes in it, while the Muslim would see nothing wrong with this, since the preservation of the Quran is primarily an oral matter, with the written text serving to help people achieve proper recitation of the Quran.

We will also mention that in fact there were a number of compilations of written Ahadith in the possession of various Companions. For more information you may refer to the previously mentioned article "Authority of Sunnah" under the sub-heading "The Compilation of Hadîth in the Days of the Holy Prophet (Sallallaho Alaihe Wassallam)" onwards.

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Objection #4: Hadiths have been historically used by Imams in power of certain regions or countries to support their own political campaigns?

There is nothing about Ahadiths that makes them more susceptible than the Quran to being used by certain people to advance their own agendas. The same can be said about certain Verses of the Quran, and it is possible for people to make up their own ideologies based on a twisted interpretation of the Holy Book. If one looks at the various shoddy and incorrect interpretations of certain Verses of the Quran which have been trotted out at various point in the history of Islam, one can see that it would only take a malicious intent in order to make a person try to use such Quranic Verses (when coupled with the incorrect interpretations) to be a basis for evil actions and incorrect "campaigns".

So the same can be said about Ahadith. However, for us to be able to answer such a matter, we would need to know exactly which Ahadith are the basis for confusions and doubts, and then the answers can be given accordingly.

Insha Allah this is enough for those who are asking questions, and we can also answer a few more questions as needed, However, we need to know that those who object have at least read and tried to understand the two articles on our site, so that we know that they have a clear idea about how Islam treats various types of information, and how it all comes together to make the totality of Islamic Aqeedah and Fiqh.

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 Objection #5: Rejection of Quran means leaving islam and forwarding towards kuffar and hadith is transmitted by many humans which is most possibility errors but Quran is promised by Allah no one can change till Qiamah.

If such is the case, how is it known that the knowledge of what the letters and words making up the Quran is not "most possibly errors" as well? After all, this knowledge of letters and words is something transmitted by "many humans" but is outside of the text of the Quran.

Is there a formal thesaurus and a dictionary of terms included in the Quran, along with a chart of phonemes and pictorial guides for the different ways in which the Arabic letters have to be pronounced from our tongues and throats, so that we may know what is the proper pronunciation of the letters, what words the letters make when they are put together, and what is the precise and exact definition of each and every single word of the Quran? It is imperative for us to stress that even an “exact definition” of any word in a dictionary cannot be given except with the help of other words and concepts, and these can come only from the outside knowledge a person has gained about the world before he reads the dictionary.

The answer we need from the Quran-only people is how will they understand what the very first sentence of the Quran is using only the Quran as the source of information. The Quran does not tell us how بسم  is supposed to the pronounced, it does not tell us what letter ب is - or even whether it is a letter or a diacritic mark used to emphasize some characteristic of other letters. All of this possible only through the information given to us by something outside of the Quran.

Even if somehow we get to the correct conclusion of how بسم is supposed to the pronounced, we will have no idea of what it means, since this combination of letters is understood by means of something other than the Qur'an. There is no way around this at all.

If they say that the Prophet (SAW) and the Muslims have pronounced it as "Bismi", then we say that this is the perfect example of a Hadith, the very thing that is anathema to them. If they accept this Hadith, they are extremely dishonest to reject the rest of the Ahadith once the methodology for accepting narrations other than the strict literal text of the Qur'an has been accepted. Yes, there are books discussing the ranks of various Ahadith and scholars can be consulted for this matter, but to accept one Hadith and reject the other Hadith even though the basis is the same is equal to rejecting one Verse of the Quran as being part of the Quran while accepting another Verse as being part of the Quran even though the basis in here is also the same.

Quoting passages of the Qur'an to "prove us wrong" is the height of circular reasoning and incoherence, since there is no way for the Quranist to ascertain what the Arabic symbols of the Quran are meant to represent (or even whether it is in Arabic to begin with), let alone what the proper English translation of the Arabic could approximately be.

So we hope the Quranists will engage us seriously in this discussion, and not start belittling the importance of true knowledge. Since in reality the Quranists do take true knowledge as such from sources outside of the Quran for various matters, we expect consistency from them in the discussion, or otherwise there is nothing to discuss with them, since they have no proper basis to discuss anything other than their whims and desires.

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