the relative status of hadith and sunna

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Chapter 10

The Relative Status of Ḥ ad ī th and

Sunna as Sources of Legal Authorityvis-à-vis the Qurʾā n in Muslim

Modernist Thought

Adis Duderija

The discussions and the debates on the nature of the concept of sunna andits conceptual, epistemological, and hermeneutical relationship with theconcept of a sound hadith and the Qur’an continue to take place in modernIslamic studies. Indeed, what is striking, as will hopefully become evidentin the course of reading of this chapter, is the level of continuity that thesediscussions in the modern context have with those of the classical periodof Islam discussed in the previous chapters. In this chapter, I examine theviews of several prominent modernist Muslim scholars who have developedsome innovative conceptual, methodological, and hermeneutical argumentsand ideas regarding the question of the relative status of the Sunna and

ḥ adīth as sources of legal authority vis-à-vis the Qurʾān and their norma-tive role in Qurʾānic interpretation. They include Javed Ghāmidī, FazrulRahman, Muḥ ammad Shahrūr, and Ghulām Parwez. I also include a briefdiscussion of my own understanding of the concept of Sunna as based onpreviously published work. Given that this is the only chapter that focuseson the modern period, the discussion is aimed more at breadth rather thandepth.

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Javed Ghāmid ī

Javed Ghāmidī (b.1951), a strong critic of traditional Pakistani religiousthought, was born in 1951 in a village of Sahiwal, a district of the Punjabprovince in Pakistan. In terms of his early education, it included both mod-ern (Matriculation from Islamia High School, Pakpattan in 1967), as wellas traditional forms (Arabic and Persian languages, and the Qur ʾān withMawlawi Nur Ahmad of Nang Pal).1 He came to Lahore in 1967 and residedthere until recently, when he had to leave Pakistan due to death threatsissued against him by the Taliban. He currently resides in Kuala Lumpur,

Malaysia. He did his BA honors in English Literature and Philosophy fromthe Government College, Lahore, in 1972, and studied Islamic disciplinesin the traditional manner from various teachers and scholars throughouthis early years. In 1973, he came under the tutelage of Amīn Islāhī (d.1997),2 an accomplished Pakistani/Indian scholar, who had a deep impacton Ghāmidī’s thought. Ghāmidī, like Islāhī, was associated with the famousscholar and revivalist Mawdūdī (d. 1979) for nine years, but the differencesin opinion between the two about nature and role of religion in society leadto Ghāmidī’s expulsion from Jamaat Islamī (JI) in 1977.3 Ghāmidī, unlikeMawdūdī, considered that the establishment of religion in society is nota matter of state enforcement, but that its essential function is to purify

the soul and to motivate people to serve God.4

As part of this view of thenature and function of religion, Ghāmidī redefined many of the classicalconcepts in Islamic law such as sunna , ḥ adīth , tawātur , ijmā ʿ , jihād , to namebut a few.5 He taught Islamic studies at the Civil Services Academy formore than a decade, from 1979 to 1991. Ghāmidī is the founder-presidentof Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences6 and is the chief editor of theUrdu Monthly “Ishraq”7 and the English Monthly “Renaissance.”8 He isalso the founder of the Musab School System,9 which aims “to producegood Pakistani Muslims, with sound moral values and excellent education,knowledge of religions and scholarship’.”10 Ghāmidī appears regularly onvarious TV channels to discuss Islam and contemporary issues as a part of

his campaign to educate people about Islam. This exposure made him aprominent media personality.11 Since 2006, he has been a member of theCouncil of Islamic Ideology, government of Pakistan.

Although Ghāmidī’s thought has been significantly influenced by hispredecessors Farahī and Islahī,12 many of his contributions to Islamicthought are original. This is evident, for example, in his major work, Mizan, in which he explains the foundational principles of understand-ing Islam. These principles are based on the understanding that the spe-cific nature of the Qurʾān and ḥ adīth is such that it requires systematic



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The Relative Status of Ḥad ī th and Sunna 217

interpretational models in order for their teachings to be understoodcorrectly.

In Mizan , it is evident that Ghāmidī follows and further elaborates onIslahī’s views, especially on his conceptual, epistemological, and method-ological delineation between Sunna and ḥ adīth bodies of knowledge. LikeIslahī, Ghāmidī equates the concept of Sunna with that of millet Ibrahim , by which he refers to the religious traditions of the faith of Prophet Abraham(who in the Qurʿān13 is described as a ḥ anī f, a person who follows truemonotheism) that Prophet Muḥ ammad revived, reformed, and added to.He argues that these religious practices have reached us through in actu (bodily perpetuations of numerous individuals) based sources of knowledge

and not written or oral based, such as the ḥ adīth .14 Therefore, the Sunna’sepistemological value is same as that of the Qurʾān, and much higher thanthat of ḥ adīth , few of which, if any, Ghāmidī considers as having such epis-temological value.15 This concept of sunna is understood as being based onperpetuation of religious practices only through ijmā ʿ of Prophet’s compan-ions and successors, by means of what he refers to as “ ʾ amali tawātur. ”

Importantly, Ghāmidī has identified the precise content and nature ofsunan , the individual components of sunna , which form the complete con-tent of religion. He categorizes them into the following:

1. Worship Rituals (i.e. the ṣalāt ; zakāt and ṣ adaqat of ‘Id al-Fiṭ r ; sawm

and I‘tiqā f ; Ḥ ajj and ʾ Umra ; Animal Sacrifice at end of Ḥ ajj );2. Social Sphere (Marriage and Divorce and their relevant details; absten-

tion from coitus during the menstrual and the puerperal period);3. Dietary Sphere (Prohibition of pork, blood, meat of dead animals,

and animals slaughtered in the name of someone other than Allah;slaughtering in the prescribed manner of tadkhiya by pronouncing Allah’s name);

4. Customs and Etiquette (Remembering Allah’s name before eatingor drinking and using the right hand for the same; Greeting oneanother with as-Salāmu ʾ alaikum (peace be to you) and respond-ing with Wa ʾ alaikum as-salām (and peace be to you); Saying

al-ḥ amdulillah (praise be to Allah) after sneezing and responding toit by saying yarḥ amukallah (may Allah have mercy on you); keep-ing the moustaches trimmed; shaving pubic hair; removing thehairs under the armpits; paring fingernails; circumcising the maleoffspring; cleaning the nose, the mouth and the teeth; cleaning thebody after excretion and urination; bathing after the menstrual andthe puerperal periods; bathing the dead before burial; enshroudinga dead body and preparing it for burial; burying the dead; ‘Id al-Fiṭ r and ‘Id al-Adha .16



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Corollary to his efforts in specifying the content of sunna , Ghāmidī hasdeveloped several methodological criteria for determining scope and natureof sunna too. These include the following:

1. sunna pertains only to things that are religious in nature and to prac-tical affairs of life;

2. Belief, ideology, history, and occasions of revelation do not fall underthe aegis of the concept of sunna ;

3. practices initiated by the Qurʾān and implemented by the Prophet(e.g. amputating the hands of thieves; flogging criminals and adulter-ers) are not sunna ;

4. a new sunna cannot be “made” on the basis of observing an optionalsunna (e.g. optional night prayer in the month of fasting (tarāwī ḥ );non obligatory fasts;

5. only aspects of human nature that the prophets of God have made anessential part of religion constitute sunna ;

6. things that Prophet(s.) never wanted to constitute as part of sunna (e.g. wording of supplications);

7. sunna , like the Qurʾān, is not validated through an isolated report(khabar-i wā ḥ id) , and, in addition to the Qurʾān, is one of the onlytwo independent source of religion in Islam.17

As evident from the examples given above, this definition of sunna leadshim to argue for a somewhat novel definition of sunna compared to thosefrom the pre-modern period. For example, the directives emanating fromthe Qurʾān are not sunna , but only his explanation or clarification of themare (e.g. Qurʾānic punishment of lashing for fornication is not sunna ); prac-tices adopted or modified by the Prophet from the Abrahamic religioustradition and later sanctioned by the Qurʾān (e.g. prayer rituals) also con-stitute sunna ; Prophet Muḥ ammad’s moral excellence (uswa ḥ asana ) is notsunna but a model behavior (e.g. Prophet’s manner of performing ablution);general guidance, even of religious nature, if it is not intended to form partof rituals or practice is also not sunna (e.g. wording of different prayers in

different situations); like the Qurʾān, sunna is not established on the basisof isolated (aḥ ad ) ḥ adīth- based evidence, but only through tawātur ;18 and,finally, that the epistemological basis of sunna rests on the ijmā ʿ and tawātur of the Prophet’s companions.

In addition to putting into place principles of delineating the contents,the nature, and the scope of sunna , Ghāmidī has elaborated on the princi-ples in understanding ḥ adīth . He defines ḥ adīth as “narratives which recordthe words, deeds, and tacit approvals of the Prophet Muḥ ammad.” Ghāmidīargues that they are mostly akhbar-i aḥ ad (isolated reports) and do not add



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to the contents of religion, which is in its entirety found in the Qurʾān andsunna . Ghāmidī, however, readily acknowledges that ḥ adīth literature is “thelargest and most important source which records the biography, historyand the exemplary life of the Prophet Muḥ ammad as well as his invaluableexplanations of various issues of religion.”

The first criteria in understanding ḥ adīth that pertains to the examina-tion of the chain (isnād ) of ḥ adīth involves examination of any hiddenflaws in the chain of narration of a ḥ adīth (ʾ ilāl ), the probity of the nar-rators (ʾadl ), their grasp and memory (ḍ abṭ ), and their contemporaneous-ness (ittisāl ). In relation to the establishing the authenticity of the text ofthe ḥ adīth , Ghāmidī argues that nothing in the text should be against the

Qurʾān and sunna and the established facts derived from “knowledge andreason.” Another criterion pertains to the language of the ḥ adīth , which,for Ghāmidī, like that of the Qurʾān, is high literary Arabic. In this con-text, Ghāmidī argues that only after an extensive period of learning andtraining can those “conversant with the delicacies of the Arabic languageand its various styles and constructions” be capable of detecting problems with the language in a ḥ adīth , based on which that particular ḥ adīth canbe rejected. An additional principle that needs to be employed in under-standing ḥ adīth pertains to the Qurʾān’s self-description of being mizān (the “Scale of Truth”) and furqān (the “Distinguisher” between truth andfalsehood). Because of this nature of the Qur ʾān, it is like “a guardian of

every religious concept and it has been revealed as a barometer to judgebetween what is right and what is wrong.” Therefore, the Qurʾān is notdependent on the ḥ adīth for its explanation including for the purposesof its specification. On the contrary, the ḥ adīth need to be interpreted inthe light of the Qur ʾān and cannot change or modify the Qur ʾān in any way. Therefore, in Ghāmidī’s thought, the role and the scope of ḥ adīth issolely confined to explaining and elucidating religion or in delineating theexemplar of the Prophet. Ghāmidī also tells us that a correct understand-ing of ḥ adīth entails discerning the question who its original addressees were. Hence, they must be understood with reference to the instance andoccasion of the topic it records.19 Another criterion Ghāmidī considers

necessary for having a correct understanding of ḥ adīth is the idea that allthe variant texts of a ḥ adīth must be studied before making any judgmentregarding its soundness.20 Finally, since revelation and reason can neverexist in a contradictory relationship, any ḥ adīth , if found to be contraryto reason, is to be rejected.21 Following Islahī, and based on the aboveoutlined considerations, Ghāmidī considers that ḥ adīth can be acceptedas sources of legal authority only if the basis for such a ḥ adīth exists inthe Qurʾān, sunna , or the established principles of human nature andintellect.22



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To sum up, Ghāmidī has developed a very specific and systematic theorypertaining to the definition of sunna that is both epistemologically andmethodologically independent of ḥ adīth . He considers sunna as an inde-pendent source of legal authority in relation to religious practices only. Theḥ adīth are not an independent source of legal authority in Islam and, itscontent can be accepted only if it is in accordance with several criteria dis-cussed above.

Faẓ rul Rahman

Faẓ rul Rahman (d.1988), was born in the Hazara area of what is todayPakistan. His father was a well-known scholar of the time who had stud-ied at the famous Islamic madrassa in Deoband, India. Rahman studied Arabic at Punjab University, where he received his Master’s in Arts. He com-pleted his Doctoral degree at Oxford University on Ibn Sina’s (d. 428/1037) work Kitāb al Najāt . He spent eight years (from 1950–1958) at DurhamUniversity, where he taught Persian and Islamic philosophy. He moved toCanada from England and joined the faculty at McGill University, wherehe taught Islamic studies until 1961. He then returned to Pakistan tobecome part of the General Ayyub Khan’s reform efforts to align Pakistan’s

political and legal systems with Islamic teachings. As part of these efforts,a Central Institute of Islamic Research was set up, which Rahman directedfrom 1961–1968. Rahman also served on the Advisory Council of IslamicIdeology, which was the highest policy-making body in Pakistan. Duringthis time, he came under increasing attack from those who wanted to derailthe government’s reform efforts. His views on Sunna and ḥ adīth , amongothers, earned him the wreaths of the traditionalists and, with deteriorat-ing health and inability to pursue reforms effectively, Rahman went to theUnited States in 1968. There he spent most of his illustrious teaching andresearch career at the University of Chicago until his death in 1988.23

Rahman has written considerably on the issue of sunna and ḥ adīth

and their role in Qurʾānic interpretation as sources of legal authority. Hismost systematic discussion on this issue can be found in his book titledIslamic Methodology in History .24 Like Ghāmidī, Rahman has made a clearconceptual distinction between sunna and ḥ adīth bodies of knowledge.He conceptualizes sunna in form of a general normative moral law and anethico-religious behavioral system, giving rise to a normative practice thatcannot be textually fixed. Rahman also conceptualizes sunna as a conceptthat allows for interpretation and adaptation. This is so, argues Rahman,because sunna , as a concept, was inclusive of the Prophet’s own raʿ y and



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qiyās as well as those of the companions, which gave rise to ijmā ʿ .25 Assuch, Rahman argues that sunna , as a normative ethico-religious behav-ioral system, was not large in quantity and was not meant to be some-thing specific because “no two cases in practices are identical in theirmoral, psychological or material settings.”26 Another argument Rahmanmentions in favor of the idea that the “original” concept of sunna is not what is contained in the classical “ḥadīth-fiqhi “ literature is that ProphetMuḥ ammad was first and foremost a moral reformer, and that he onlyon very rare occasions resorted to “general legislation as a means of fur-thering the Islamic cause.” Therefore, Rahman continues, the Prophet’slegislative activity was far from being that of a pan-legist but very much

situation-based and ad hoc , as mirrored and confirmed by the contentof Qurʾān itself.27 Hence, he argues, Prophet’s legal actions could not be“strictly” and “literally” taken as normative. Furthermore, Rahman arguesthat sunna historically underwent changes from being a dynamic conceptfirst associated with general ethico-behavior norms of the Prophet and,over time, becoming co-extensive and existing in a dialectic relationship with the concept of ijmā ʿ of the Muslim community that was inclusive ofijtihād . Rahman continues that with the massive increase in circulationand writing down of ḥ adīth and the onset of the process of what we in thisvolume is described as ḥ adīthification of sunna , however, the organic linkbetween Sunna-ijtihād and ijmā ʿ became undone and sunna was largely

conflated with the concept of a saḥ ih ḥ adīth as per early classical ulūmul-ḥ adīth .28 Rahman, unlike Ghāmidī, does not attempt to clearly delin-eate the contents of the concept of sunna .

Rahman clearly recognizes the importance of ḥ adīth for Muslims andthe study of history by provocatively and rhetorically asking, “If all ofḥ adīth is given up what remains but a yawning chasm between us and theProphet?”29 He also describes the methods of those who “in the name ofprogressivism wish to brush aside the ḥ adīth and the Prophetic sunna ”as worse than Nero’s methods of rebuilding Rome.30 Equipped with hissunna -ijmā ʿ –ijtihād theory, Rahman considers that the ḥ adīth are sug-gestive of “the sum total of aphorisms put out by the Muslims themselves,

ostensibly about the Prophet, although not without an ultimate historicaltouch with the Prophet.”31 He asserts further that ḥ adīth represent the“interpreted spirit of the prophetic teaching” 32 and a total fixation of for-merly dynamic living sunna that crystallized as a result of the ijtihād-ijmā ʿ process.33 Having formulated these views on the nature and the scopeof the concepts of sunna and ḥ adīth , Rahman argued that in all cases in which the Qurʾān conflicts with the ḥ adīth , the Qurʾān had to be privi-leged over the ḥadīth categorically, since the Qurʾān, unlike the ḥ adīth , isthe direct and preeminent source of God’s guidance.34



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In summary, Rahman has developed a systematic theory of the inter-relationship between ḥ adīth and sunna bodies of knowledge as well as a pre-cise definition of sunna whose normativeness as a source of legal authorityhe readily recognized. However, he strongly departs from the ḥ adīth-basedconcept of sunna and considers ḥadīth , in principle, not as the container forcontent of the concept of sunna . Thereby, he denies their normative valueas an independent source of legal authority restricting greatly their role inQurʾānic interpretation to that of the important sources of early Muslimopinions about the Qurʾān and the Prophet, and the history of early Muslimthought.

Mu ḥ ammad Shahrū r

Muḥ ammad Shahrūr (b.1938), is one of the “most interesting and innova-tive thinkers in the contemporary Arab-Muslim world.”35 The success of hisfirst book on Islam, Al-kitāb wa’l Qurʾān: qiraʾ a muʾ asira (The Book and theQurʾān: A contemporary reading (1990)), which has sold a vast number ofcopies, has been described as an extraordinary book that “challenges a mil-lennium of Islamic tradition.”36 It propelled Shahrūr into being one of themost controversial and talked about figures among intellectuals, students,

and scholars of the entire Middle East during the 1990s. The controversyaround The Book and the Qurʾān started immediately after its first releasein Syria in 1990 and has lasted over a decade, with many books and arti-cles written on it. There were even views that Shahrūr’s book was part of aZionist organization plot to produce a new commentary of the Qur ʾān byusing an Arab writer’s name.37 Elsewhere, his ideas and theories have beencompared with that of Martin Luther, the “Father of Protestantism.”38

Muḥammad Shahrūr was born in 1938 in Damascus, the capital ofSyria. Shahrūr’s childhood was spent in a liberal atmosphere. His father wasa practicing Muslim but ethical teachings of Islam were emphasized in hisupbringing over those of ritualized tradition. Shahrūr’s most formative years

“coincided with the politically most unstable periods of the Syrian ArabRepublic after it gained its independence in 1947.”39 In 1959, Shahrūr wassent to Russia, Syria’s political ally in the mid-1950s, to study civil engineer-ing. It is in Russia where “he experienced another phase of political andideological confusion.”40 His religious beliefs were challenged by Marxistphilosophy and Soviet-style atheism. During this time, he primarily soughtto defend his theistic beliefs. He graduated in 1964 with a diploma fromthe Moscow Institute of Engineering, was fluent in Russian, and marrieda Russian wife who bore him a son. The same year he returned to Syria. In



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1968, he left Syria and studied at the University College in Dublin where heearned his master’s degree in 1969 and his doctoral degree in soil mechan-ics and foundation engineering in 1972. He returned in the same year toSyria and lectured at Damascus University until 1998. There he became a well-recognized scholar in his area of expertise. Throughout this period,the failure of the ideology of pan-Arabism and the events surrounding theSix Day War in 1967 had an important impact on shaping of his thought,including his views on religion. Sharur’s interest in religion never waned,and although he shared with other Syrian thinkers the belief that Islam pos-sesses a universal epistemology that encourages rationalism, human liberty,and the appropriation of knowledge, Shahrūr did not find his inspiration in

the classical philosophical heritage nor in the exegetical tradition of medi-eval Islam, but rather in his work as a natural scientist and engineer.”41

Without considering himself shackled by the classical Islamic disciplinesand their methodologies Shahrūr’s sole concern was to develop absoluteconsistency between what he considered to be the Qurʾānic Weltanschauung and his own modern and rational experiences of reality, which were sig-nificantly shaped by thinkers such as Alfred North Whitehead, BertrandRussell, Emmanuel Kant, Johann G. Fichte, and Georg W. F. Hegel.42

Unlike the case of many reformist minded Muslim intellectual from theMuslim majority world43 the furor around Shahrūr case has was a relatively“restrained and civilized affair” and the credits for this should not in a small

part be given to the Syrian government at that time. For example, Shahrūrhas never been accused of apostasy or blasphemy. He was never subjectedto a public hearing not was there ever any attempt to arrest him. His writ-ings were never officially banned in Syria. His The Book and the Qurʾān was officially banned in Egypt and temporarily forbidden in Saudi Arabiaand Kuwait. Today Shahrūr is considered a major proponent of a reformistinterpretation of Islam.44

Shahrūr has contributed several important methodological consider-ations and ideas to the discussion of the question of the status of sunna andḥadīth as sources of legal authority vis-à-vis the Qurʾān. At the most generallevel, he considers that the (ḥ adīth-based ) sunna 45 in classical Islamic schol-

arship inappropriately became practically the first source of legislation, ineffect, displacing the Qurʾān.46 In this context, he writes:

Islamic jurists’ excessive fixation on the life of Muḥ ammad (s) has led to theunfortunate result that the sunna of the Prophet (s) not only became theoreti-cally the second most authoritative source of Islamic law but practically alsovery often the primary source of legislation. When issuing their fatwas—inparticular on legal issues with far reaching social and political implications—Islamic jurists very often ignored the rules of the Book or had them replaced



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by the, sunna which over time became their ultimate—and often only—point of reference. By focusing on the sunna of the Prophet (s) as a majorsource of Islamic legislation, our honourable scholars clearly over steppedthe mark when they began to treat it as the principal and most authoritativesource of truth, equal if not superior to the word of God in the Book . Theirtheologically most detestable step was to regard the Book as incomplete andin need of the elaborations and specifications of the sunna , implying that adivine text needs to be completed and confirmed by a human source—whichis a truly blasphemous thought!47

Shahrūr laments that this ḥ adīth -based sunna has resulted in “no room forinnovative thinking, reform, or renewal in Islamic law.”48 To counter theḥ adīth -based approach to sunna , Shahrūr develops an innovative (but notunprecedented) discussion of the concept of Sunna. Shahrūr, makes a dis-tinction between the prophetic (nubuwwa ) and messenger (risāla ) aspectsof Muḥ ammad’s divine mission. In this context, he argues that the formerdeals with the universalist dimension of the Divine message as embodiedin the Al-Kitāb49 which he restricts to eschatological and purely theologi-cal issues and which are ambiguous and transcend this earthly reality. Thelatter is concerned solely with definite, unambiguous, and objective realitythat is subject to human faculties and senses. He goes on to assert that onlythe Qurʾān (in contradistinction to ḥ adīth and sunna ) is the sole source ofboth nubuwwa and risāla because only the Qurʾān possess the ontologi-

cal quality of “being in and for itself.” The sunna , as shall later be furtherelaborated upon, on the other hand, is defined by Shahrūr as the Prophet’sown human-bound, non-absolute ijtihād /interpretation/understanding ofthe Al-Kitāb.50

Shahrūr rebuts the traditional understanding of—and argumentsemployed in the defense of—ḥ adīth -based sunna and its necessity toQurʾānic interpretation,51 on the erroneous basis that it sanctifies all aspectsof the Prophet’s existence equally. While not rejecting the concept of sunna per se ,52 Shahrūr argues for a specific and circumstantial nature of the con-cept of sunna of the Prophet based on the following five principals:

1. the idea that Prophet’s decisions were conditioned by his historicalcontext;

2. his ijtihād in restricting the allowed did not need divine revelation;3. his restrictions of the “unrestricted permissions” (ḥ alal muṭ laq ) were

subject to constant corrections as a result in change in circumstancesin his own life;

4. his ijtihād , unlike revelations, were not infallible and5. his ijtihād , regardless if it was of Prophetic or non-Prophetic nature,

does not constitute Islamic legislation.53



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To get a more detailed understanding of Shahrūr’s concept of Sunna, espe-cially in relation to its legal authority of Sunna, we also need to examinehis views on what constitutes the concept of “obedience” to Muḥ ammad.Shahrūr distinguishes between two different types of obedience toMuḥ ammad, “combined obedience” (al-ṭ ā ʿa al-mutaṣila ) by which hemeans the obedience to Allah and His Messenger and “separate obedience”(al-ṭ ā ʿ a al-munfaṣila ) which implies eternal obedience to Allah and time-restricted obedience to Muḥ ammad.54

The first type of obedience that links the obedience of Allah to that ofhis messenger is derived from 3: 13255 and 4:69,56 and is obligatory foreveryone who lived at the time of Muḥ ammad or after his death. Shahrūr

subdivides this type of obedience into two categories, namely, absolute andrelative obedience. The examples of the former, whose instructions believerssimply follow in both form and spirit of the Qur ʾān and Messenger’s prac-tice, are restricted to the ṣalāt , ḥ ajj and ṣ awm . In the latter category, “whichrequires ijtihād within the limits set by Allah” is included the percentage ofzakāt , the minimum of which is 2.5 %, but which can change with chang-ing economic and financial circumstances of the society/individual.57

The second type of obedience to Muḥ ammad, al- ṭ ā ʿ a al-munfaṣ ila , isderived from verses 4:5958 and 5:9259 and is separate from God’s obedienceto those believers who came after his death. The nature of this obedienceis such that

It designates the obedience of his followers to what he had decided, basedon the principle of “tying and loosening.” While creating the founda-tions of a new state amidst the political and cultural turmoil of his time,Muḥ ammad (s) continuously exercised ijtihād , sometimes loosening up toa maximum of permissibility, sometimes tying it up to an absolute mini-mum. He was by no means infallible in his ijtihād , while his decisionsreflected the conditions of his time.60

In this category, Shahrūr includes Muḥ ammad’s prohibition of music,dance, singing, the visual arts, visiting the graves that “enjoy neither abso-

lute validity nor eternal authority.” This is so because these prohibitionsand their rationale were organically linked to the context of the prevailingidolatry of Arabian society of the time.

Apart from his novel insights into the concept of sunna , Shahrūr alsoinnovatively classifies ḥ adīth into two categories, namely, as words of wis-dom and prophetic statements. The former “contain moral sayings thatare universally understood and shared by all people.” They are “formu-lated from the pool of human experiences and hence come from withinhuman beings.” Shahrūr argues further that these words of wisdom “may



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be perceived by revelation” but are of different “quality” from it, since wis-dom can exist independently of revelation. Hence, no religious or civillaw should be based on them because they are general and ethico-moral innature rather than being literally sources of positive law.61

Shahrūr divides Prophetic statements into five categories. The first cat-egory of statements includes the statements about rituals, known in clas-sical scholarship as aḥ adīth al tashāʾ ir , which constitute “ Muḥ ammad’s (s)instructions, comprising his messengerhood, on how to perform the ritualobligations of the Book .” These are to be obeyed by the believers uncondi-tionally, as they come under the category of “combined obedience” (al-ṭ ā ʿ aal-mutaṣ ila ) as explained above. The second category of statements relate to

the unseen world (aḥ adīth al-akhbar bi l-ghayb ). These statements are out-side the sphere of belief (al- ʾ imān ) and because the Prophet had no specialknowledge about the unseen world, it would be improper for believers totake these statements as the truth.

The statements about legal injunctions (ḥ adīth al-aḥ kām ) that “com-prise every legal injunction and every piece of legislation that ProphetMuḥ ammad issued are another group of statements identified by Shahrūr.They are in strict compliance with the verses of the Book and are between thelimits that Allah has set. Basing himself on the conceptualization of sunna as outlined above, Shahrūr argues that these statements were contingent onthe social and political problems that the Prophet faced in ancient Arabia.

As such, these statements are not binding upon the subsequent generationsof Muslims “because they merely reflect his activities as a mujtāhid whoresponded to the needs of his time and who applied rulings that the objec-tive conditions of his society made necessary.” Therefore, even if today’sbelievers deviate from the letter of the prophetic ijtihād , this does not under-mine the potential validity of their ijtihād and does not diminish their “lovefor the Prophet Muḥ ammad.” The fourth category Shahrūr terms “SacredStatements,” which, in the classical Islamic tradition, pertains to the aḥ adīthal-quḍ siyya about the unseen world, which were believed to be inspired bydivine revelation. Shahrūr dismisses the claim that they are sacred or divineon the basis of the same reasoning he used in relation to the second category,

the above mentioned aḥ adīth al-akhbar bi l-ghayb . The final category iden-tified by Shahrūr refers to “Personal Statements,” which he names aḥ adīthal-hayāt al-insanī. These pertain to the sayings about Muḥ ammad’s personallife, his eating and sleeping habits, his favorite pastimes, his way of dress-ing, speaking, travelling, walking, running, hunting, and so on. They alsoinclude his kindness, good-naturedness, tolerance, courage, and his feelingsabout justice and injustice, truth and falsehood, hardship and welfare, andso forth.” Shahrūr forms the view that these cannot in any way be consid-ered normative, as they belong among solely personal matters.62



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Therefore, from the discussion above, we can conclude that for Shahrūrthe concepts of ḥ adīth and sunna , as he defines them, are clearly not inde-pendent or supplementary sources of legal authority in Islam per se . Theirrole in Qurʾānic interpretation, including that of Propeth’s ijtihād , especiallyin the realm of law, is non- binding because of its contextually contingentnature.

Ghulā m Parwez

Ghulām Parwez (d. 1985) was a Pakistani scholar based in Lahore. He isfounder of the Tolu-e-Islam movement. The words “Tolu-e-Islam ” meaning“dawn” or “resurgence” of Islam, were taken from the title of a poem by thesub-continent’s great Muslim philosopher and poet Allama Iqbal (d. 1938). According to its website the aims and objectives of Tolu-e-Islam are:

to remove all non-Qurʾānic ideologies, beliefs, and practices prevalent inpresent-day Islam, and replace them with Qurʾānic concepts based uponreason and rationale. Tolu-e-Islam’s literature is essentially directed towardsindividuals who are in search of truth so that they can overcome the forcesof secularism and be able to establish a pure Qurʾānic society, wherever theymay be.63

Parwez was born in a Sunnī (Ḥanafī) family of Batala, district Gurdaspur,India, in 1903. At that time, Batala, a town now in the Punjab Province ofIndia, was a very famous place of Islamic learning, philosophy, and culture.Parwez’s grandfather, Hakim Bakhsh was recognized as an accomplishedscholar and renowned sufī of the Chishtia Nizamia discipline of mysticism.From a young age, under his grandfather’s tutelage, Parwez immersed him-self in the study of the Qurʾān and the classics of Islamic scholarship. Hecompleted his secondary education from “A Lady of England” High SchoolBatala in 1921 and graduated from the Punjab University in 1934.

When he was in his twenties and during his stay in Lahore, he came

into close association with Allama Iqbal who had a significant impact onParwez’s understanding of the Qurʾān and whose ideas spurred Parwez intobeing a pioneer worker for the Pakistan Movement. With the help of Iqbal,Parwez came into association with one of the greatest Muslim Scholars ofthe subcontinent Aslam Jairajpurī (d.1955),64 by whom he was educated inadvanced studies in Arabic literature. Parwez remained in close company with Jairajpurī for over 15 years, until the partition in 1947.

In 1938, under the instructions of Ali Jinnah (d. 1948), the founderof modern day Pakistan, Parwez started publishing monthly Tolu-e-Islam



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whose primary purpose was to propagate the idea that, according to theQurʾān, ideology and not geographical boundary, was the basis for theformation of nation, and that a politically independent state was a pre-requisite for living an “Islamic” way of life. This view was antagonistic tothe interests of the British, the Hindu majority, as well as Indian Muslimultranationalists.

During the Pakistan Movement, Parwez was Jinnah’s adviser in the mat-ters pertaining to the Qurʾānic values and principles and a member of theLaw Commission formed under the 1956 Constitution of Pakistan. Parwezalso founded the Qurʾānic Education Society and was the Director of theQurʾānic Research Center established under his guidance Lahore. He orga-

nized a countrywide network of spreading the pristine Qur ʾānic teachingscalled Bazm-e-Tolu-e-Islam . Similar “Qurʾān only” or ahl -Qurʾān , organiza-tions exist in other Muslim countries most notably in Egypt.65

Parwez was a prolific writer and has authored many books on Qurʾānicteachings, the most celebrated of them being Maʾ arif -ul- Qurʾān in eightvolumes, Lughat-ul-Qurʾān in four volumes and Maḥ fūm ul - Qurʾān inthree volumes. His most sustained exposition on the issue that concerns thischapter can be found in his work titled Muqām-e-ḥ adīth (The Actual Statusof ḥ adīth ) that has been translated into English by his followers.66

In the work, Muqām-e-ḥ adīth Parwez levels a very strong critique of theclassical theory of the status of sunna and ḥ adīth as sources of legal authority

vis-à-vis the Qurʾān and their employment in Qurʾānic interpretation. Notunlike Shahrūr, he espoused a doctrine of what could be termed Qurʾānicself-sufficiency in matters of doctrinal, ritual, and legal import, which hasearned him a name of being a Qurʾānist (Qur ʾāniy ). The first argumentParwez makes in relation to the Qurʾān’ s ritual, legal and doctrinal self –suf-ficiency is based on his concept of al-dīn . Arguing against the classical viewthat al-dīn comprises of the Qurʾān and ḥ adīth , he argues that al-dīn is asystem of Islam67 that is purely Qurʾānic, based on truth (quoting Qurʾān35:31) and that only the Qurʾān has been conveyed and preserved to thehumankind in a complete and authentic form.68 Parwez adds that the samedoes not hold true for ḥ adīth as neither Allah nor the Prophet put mecha-

nisms into place to ensure the same for the ḥ adīth . He rebuts the views oftraditionalist scholars who espouse the view that ḥ adīth / sunna constituteun-recited revelation (waḥ y ghayr al-maṭlū) discussed in the introductionsection of this volume. Parwez also vehemently rejects the classical viewthat the Qur ʾān is more in need of sunna /ḥ adīth than vice versa includ-ing the idea that that sunna /ḥ adīth can abrogate or negate the Qur ʾān.69 Parwez also highlights that even if one subscribes to the classical argumentof the Prophet serving as the Qurʾān’s best explicator, the ḥ adīth literatureon the subject is not even remotely comprehensive enough to perform this



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function. An additional argument for the Qur ʾān’s self-sufficiency is madeon the basis of referring to conflicting definitions of the concept of sunna that exist among traditional minded Muslim scholars which, in his view, canonly give rise to division and sectarianism among Muslims. He maintainsthat the correct understanding of the concept of “following the Prophet” isby following the Qurʾān’s system (al-dīn ) only. In this context he states:

To follow God means to follow His law revealed in the Book the preservationof which He took upon His Ownself. By virtue of this, the Messenger becamecapable of delivering it in concrete book form to the whole of Muslim umma .In the same vein, “to follow the Messenger” will not mean that a person or

group makes his own clichés of Messenger’s teachings and starts to followthem. It is absolutely necessary, that in order to follow, we must have anobjective standard. By this we can conclude, God did not put any seal of Hisauthority nor did the Messenger deliver it to his disciples in any concreteform with his approval; that it was neither in God’s program nor the aim ofthe Messenger, to preserve the ḥ adīth .70

Parwez uses the classical argument that ḥ adīth are not the verbatim repro-ductions of the prophetic sayings but merely interpretations as anotherargument against them being included as part of al-dīn . He adds that theclassical efforts which have attempted to “rationalize” and “authenticate”ḥ adīth were insufficient as they suffer from inherent epistemological and

methodological weaknesses and that there is no “divine proof” for themto be accepted as normative. The only normative ḥ adīth is the Qurʾān. Herejects the classical theory according to which there is the “utmost needfor aḥ adīth” because without them, we cannot grasp the correct interpreta-tion of the Qurʾān. Instead, not unlike Shahrūr, he argues for Qurʾān byQurʾān (known classically as taʾ wil al Qurʾān bi -l Qur ʾ ān ) interpretationonly and demonstrates how certain interpretations of Qurʾānic passages arecontradicted by ḥ adīth .71 Parwez forms the view that “the correct stature ofḥ adīth happens to be as history of al-dīn . It can prove beneficial to history,but to present it forward to rationalize al-dīn will carry little meanings.”Parwez also argues that the most damaging aspect of placing ḥ adīth next to

al-dīn , was that it caused Qurʾān, “that is full of life, to go into eclipse.”72 Importantly, Parwez does not make a systematic distinction between sun-na and ḥ adīth as do other scholars discussed in this article.

In summary, Parwez upholds the view that ḥ adīth and sunna , as he definesthem, do not constitute sources of legal authority in Islam (or what he callsal-dīn ). Instead, he forms the view that the Qur ʾān is fully self-sufficientin terms of its own interpretation and that ḥ adīth and sunna have in manyinstances eclipsed and distorted the actual Qur ʾānic teachings, includingthose that have legal import.



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Finally, in my previous published work I have argued that that the natureand the scope of the concept of sunna, like that of the Qurʾān, comprisesof its ʿ amaliyya / ʾ ibadiyya ( i.e. worship and creed), fiqhiyya ( legal), andakhlāqiyya (ethical) elements, and that the sunna compliance or otherwiseof a particular principle, value, or behaviour is ultimately traced back tothe principles governing Qurʾānic methodology of interpretation or, moregenerally, the overall usūlu-l-fiqh theory.73 According to this approach, all ofthe components of sunna , (apart from its ʿ ibadiyya dimension, which is inessence in actu , and more or less corresponds to Ghāmidī’s concept of sunna explained above,74 requiring no interpretation and not dependent on writ-ten transmission of knowledge) are hermeneutically directly linked to that

of the Qurʾān. This, in turn, implies that the sunna compliance or otherwiseof certain principles, values, or behaviours is entirely dependent on the waythe Qurʾān is interpreted. Therefore, the most crucial and decisive factorin establishing sunna is linked to methodologies pertaining Qurʾānic inter-pretation, that is, the questions pertaining to Qurʾānic hermeneutics andnot an automatic default deferral to the ḥ adīth body of literature as eitherauthenticated or hermeneutically employed by the classical muḥ adīthūn orʾ usūliyyūn methodologies. As such, this method restores sunna ’s conceptualand hermeneutical link with the Qurʾān that was evident in the pre-classicalIslamic scholarship.75 Importantly, this approach to sunna/ḥ adīth dynamicand their role in the overall usūl ul-fiqh theory is also not constrained with

the hierarchical classical usūlu-l-fiqh theory as it dislocates and displacesthe central role of ḥ adīth body of literature, which, alongside the principleof ijmā ʿ , largely determined the hermeneutic playing field within whichQurʾān and sunna were interpreted in pre-modern Islamic legal thought asexplained in the chapters of this volume. This approach to the nature andthe concept of sunna allows for new interpretational possibilities of boththe Qurʾān and sunna by means of novel interpretational models that, forexample, give more scope to non-textual sources such as reason in interpre-tation or consider the very concept of sunna to be constitutive of reason, which are based on objective-based nature of ethical value, which permita more contextual-based approach to Qurʾāno–sunnaic interpretation, or

which are based on the notion of giving hermeneutic primacy to ethico-moral or objective-based (maqasid ) approaches to usūlu-l-fiqh theory.76

Conclusion

Contemporary Muslim scholars whom we have examined in this articlehave contributed several important methodological and hermeneutical



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insights into the question that, as we saw in all of the previous chapters, hasa long genealogy in Muslim thought, namely the status of sunna and ḥ adīth bodies of knowledge as source of legal authority and tools in Qurʾānic inter-pretation. Despite coming from, at times, very different educational andsocio-cultural backgrounds, all of them share the idea that the mainstreamclassical-based scholarships’ position on the role and the status of sunna and ḥadīth as sources of legal authority, vis-à-vis the Qurʾān needing tobe challenged and re-conceptualized. In several ways, what these scholarshave proposed with reference to the concepts of sunna and its relative statusof source of legal authority is a significant departure from the discussionsthat have taken place in the formative and classical periods, as is evident

from the discussions presented in the chapters of this volume. This is par-ticularly evident in, for example, Shahrour’s understanding of the natureof Prophet’s ijtihād being fallible and contextually contingent; Rahman’sdynamic understanding of the concept of Sunna based on his sunna -ijtihād and ijmā ʿ theory; Ghāmidī’s argument that sunna ’s scope is limited only tothings that are religious in nature and to practical affairs of life; Parwez’sconcept of the Qurʾān’s exegetical and hermeneutical self-sufficacy or myidea of hermeneutically linking, non- ʿibadiyya elements of the concept ofsunna to that of the Qurʾān in such a manner that is not constrained by theclassical usūlu-l-fiqh theory.

As noted at the very beginning of the introduction to this volume,

how we go about conceptualizing sunna has important implicationsat the level of Islamic law, ethics, and politics. While exploring thesedimensions of the concept of sunna was not a focus of this volume, itis important to note that the modernist conceptualizations of the con-cept of sunna described above have wide-ranging socio-cultural, political,legal, and ethical ramifications and often have been employed for thepurposes of reform, and as noted above, authorities associated with themhave often been labeled as reformists. As a result, these reformers wereoften strongly criticized by the proponents of classical understandings ofthe nature and the scope of the concept of sunna discussed in this book, who interpreted these attempts at reform as attacks on “Islam” itself. In

cases of Rahman and Ghāmidī this resulted in them having to go intoexile due to death threats. It remains to be seen whether or not thesenovel understandings of the concept of sunna will be able to challengeor even, perhaps, dislodge those stemming from the classical period,but given the growing chorus of voices, both Muslim and non-Muslim,demanding an Islamic reformation, dealing with the question of sunna asa source of legal authority in Islam is bound to gain further attention inthe foreseeable future.



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Notes

1. M. Masud. “Rethinking sharīa: Javēd Aḥ mad Ghāmidī on ḥ udūd,” Die Welt desIslams , 47 (3–4) (2007): 356–375, at 357.

2. A brief biographical sketch can be found here. http://renaissance.com.pk/jafe-titl98.html. A discussion on his work on Qurʿānic interpretation can be foundin Mir 1986. Islāhī was a student of Al-Farahī, (1863–1930) a celebrated anderudite Indian scholar of Islam. With Al-Farahī he learnt traditional Islamicsciences. From 1930, Islahī studied ḥ adīth sciences for several years under Abdal-Rahman Mubarakpurī ( d.1935), one of the most accomplished scholars ofḥadīth in the Subcontinent. See A. Khurshid “Mawlana Amin Ahsan Islahī: An

Obituary,” Islamic Studies , 37 (1) ( 1998): 144–146.3. A. Iftikhar (2005). Jihad and the establishment of the Islamic Global Order:

A comparative study of the worldviews and interpretative approaches of al- A’la Mawdūdī and Javed Ahmad Ghamidi. Ph.D. diss, McGill University,Department of Islamic Studies, Montreal, 5.

4. Ibid., 5–6. In this respect, his criticism of Mawdūdī was in great affinity withthat of another contemporary Indian scholar Waḥ id al-Din Khan (b.1925).

5. Ibid., 6. For his views on what constitutes religion see, J. Ghāmidī, Islam: AComprehensive Introduction . Translated by Shehzad Saleem, Al-Mawrid AFoundation for Islamic Research and Education: Lahore. Available here: http:// www.al-mawrid.org/pages/download_books.php.

6. www.al-mawrid.org.

7. www.ghamidi.org.8. www.monthly-renaissance.com.9. www.musab.edu.pk.

10. Masud, “Rethinking sharīa: Javēd Aḥ mad Ghāmidī on ḥ udūd,” 358.11. http://www.al-mawrid.org/pages/research_detail.php?research_id=5.12. See footnote 44.13. E.g. II, 135/129; III, 67/60, 95/89; IV, 125/124;14. Supra note 42, 17–18.15. H. Hansu. “Notes on the Term Mutawātir and Its Reception in Hadīth

Criticism,” Islamic Law and Society , 16 (3–4) (2009): 383–408.16. Ibid., 18–19.17. Ibid., 61–64.

18. In this context, he adds that it was the Prophet’s religious duty to ensure thatthese religious practices are widely known and can be perpetuated by tawātur principle.

19. Ghamidi gives an example of the famous ḥ adīth according to which Prophetreportedly said that only the members of the prophet’s own tribe could be theleaders of the Muslim community. He argues that, unlike the classical scholars who understood this to be an absolute religious command, this must be evalu-ated in the context of the “political situation which was to arise right after him”(i.e. the Prophet). Ibid., 67–68.



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20. Here he provides an example of ḥ adīth prohibiting use of pictures and portraits.In this context he argues: “If only some of the narratives are studied, one caneasily conclude that this prohibition is absolute and every picture and portraitis prohibited in Islam. However, if all the variants are collected and analyzed,it becomes evident that the prohibition is regarding only those pictures whichhave been made for worshipping.” Ibid., 68.

21. Ibid.22. Supra note 40, at 50–70.23. F. Rahman. Revival and Reform in Islam . Edited with an introduction by

Ebrahim Moosa. (Oxford: Oneworld 2000), 1–3.24. Supra note 34.25. Ibid., 12.

26. Ibid.27. Ibid.,10.28. Ibid., 17–23.29. Ibid.,70–71.30. Ibid.,69.31. Ibid.,76.32. Ibid.,74.33. Ibid., 75.34. A. Saeed. “Fazlur Rahman: A Framework for Interpreting Ethico-legal Content

of the Qurʾ ān,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʾān , edited by S. Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 37–67.

35. M.Shahrour.The Qur’an , Morality, and Critical Reason : The Essential Muḥ ammad

Shahrūr . Translated, edited and with an introduction by Anderas Christmann(Leiden and Boston: Brill.2009), xvii.

36. P. Clarke. “The Shahrūr Phenomenon: A Liberal Islamic Voice from Syria,”Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations , 7 (3) (1996) :337–341, at 337.

37. Ibid.38. R.Nabielek, “Muḥ ammad Shahrūr, ein ‘Martin Luther’ des Islam,” Inamo ,

23/24 (6) (2000): 73–77, 74.39. Supra note 72, xix.40. Ibid., xx.41. Ibid., xxi.42. Ibid.43. The most famous case being that of the Egyptian scholar H. N. Abu Zayd

(d.2010).44. Supra note 72, Introduction.45. He refers to the traditional Sunna as “the collective body of all ḥ adīth that

capture the words and deeds of the Prophet,” Ibid., 80. To avoid confusion andmaintain consistency, I shall refer to this understanding of classical Sunna to which he refers as ḥ adīth -based Sunna. When he employs the term Sunna in anon-traditional way I shall simply refer to it as Sunna.

46. Ibid., 71.47. Ibid.



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48. Ibid.49. By which he means the Qurʾān.50. Ibid.,75–76.51. This includes the concept of bayān as employed by Shafi’i derived from Q

16:44 to mean that bayān is equal to ḥ adīth based Sunna ; that Muḥ ammad’s (s)acts and deeds are sacrosanct, that is, unblemished by mistake and hence infal-lible giving rise to the theory of Prophet’s impeccability (al- ‘isma ) thus puttingḥ adīth based Sunna ontologically and epistemologically on equal level as theQurʿān; that Prophet’s words were inspired by God as per 53: 3–4 to meanthat ḥ adīth based Sunna equals waḥ y ; the Qurʿ ānic verse 59:7 which instructsbelievers to take what the Prophet gives them and to refrain from doing so when he forbids it is also equated with ḥ adīth based Sunna; and the concept of

obedience (taʿ a ) to Prophet as per 3:132 as meaning obedience to ḥ adīth basedSunna.

52. He accepts the uswa hasana Qur ʿānic verse as meaning that the prophet shouldbe a role model for Muslims but problematizes what the concept of “uswahasana ” actually entails arguing that it is restricted to tawḥīd defined as basicmoral commandments of and belief in God. Ibid., 95–96.

53. Ibid., 71–115.54. Ibid., 91–9555. And obey God and the Apostle; that you may obtain mercy. Y. Ali’s translation

is used in this paper.56. All who obey God and the Apostle are in the company of those on whom is the grace of God—of the prophets (who teach), the sincere

(lovers of truth), the witnesses (who testify), and the righteous(who do good): Ah! What a beautiful fellowship!57. Here he adds in a footnote that the knowledge of this obedience is neither

epistemologically nor methodologically dependent upon the traditional ḥ adīthsciences.

58. O you who believe! Obey God, and obey the apostle, and thosecharged with authority among you. If you differ in anything amongyourselves, refer it to God and His apostle, if you do believe in Godand the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination.59. Obey God, and obey the apostle, and beware (of evil): if you do turn back,

know you that it is our apostle’s duty to proclaim (the message) in the clearestmanner.

60. Ibid., 94.61. Ibid., 102–103.62. Ibid., 103–108.63. http://www.tolueislam.org/index.htm.64. Distinguished Professor of Arabic and Persian at Aligarh Muslim University,

India.65. http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/main.php.66. http://www.tolueislam.org/Parwez/mh/mh.htm.67. Perwez’s definition of al-dīn , whose details needn’t concerns us for the pur-

poses of this paper, can be gleaned from the following passage: “The reality



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is that Islam is not (as is commonly believed) a religion, in which each oneof us can worship the God of our own wishful concepts. Islam is a collectivesystem for life, in which we are collectively subservient to the Law of Qurʾān.Islamic republic or system . . . is responsible for legislating and imposing God’sLaws and having them implemented in the nation. The first Islamic nation wasestablished by the Messenger, the purpose and aim of which was to abide byGod’s Law. In Qurʾāns terminology, ‘to follow Allah and Messenger’ does notmean to follow ones wishful thinking of our own make-belief world. It meantto follow the system that the Messenger had established. God’s commands werepresent in the Qurʾān the Messenger with powers bestowed upon him by Allah,according to the needs and ethos of that culture, made the public abide by thoselaws.” Parvez sees these laws as clearly evolving and subject to change as long as

the underlying principals or objectives of these laws are maintained.68. Apart from mentioning Qurʾānic verses such as 75:17, 15:9, and 5:67.

Interestingly, he also backs up this observation on the basis of a contents ofa ḥ adīth of the Prophet’s Last Sermon according to which the prophet askedthe people present there to bear witness that he had conveyed to them theRevelation in a complete form. The Sermon has been recorded in the ḥ adīth collection of Bukharī, Tirmidhī and Ibn Ḥanbal.

69. See introduction to this volume.70. http://www.tolueislam.org/Parwez/mh/mh.htm.71. http://www.tolueislam.org/Parwez/mh/mh_04.htm.72. http://www.tolueislam.org/Parwez/mh/mh_02.htm.73. Adis Duderija, “Toward a Methodology of Understanding the Nature and

Scope of the Concept of Sunnah,” Arab Law Quarterly 21 (2007): 1–12.; AdisDuderija, A Paradigm Shift in Assessing/Evaluating the Value and Significanceof Hadith in Islamic Thought – From ulum-ul-hadith to usul-ul-fiqh ,” ArabLaw Quarterly, 23, ( 2009), 195–206 .

74. For example, I would argue that the social sphere and customs –based ele-ments of sunna as defined by Ghāmidī would need to be rethought in light of amore contextualist- oriented Qurʾānic hermeneutics. See for example, in refer-ence to divorce, Adis Duderija, “The Hermeneutical Importance of Qur’anic Assumptions in the Development of a Values Based and Purposive OrientedQur’an-Sunna Hermeneutic: Case Study of Patriarchy and Slavery,” HAWWA-

Journal of Women in the Middle East and the Muslim World , 11, 2013, 58–88.75.

76. See for example, Adis Duderija, Constructing Religiously Ideal ‘Believer’ and‘Muslim Woman’ Concepts: Neo-Traditional Salafi and Progressive Muslim Methods of Interpretation (Manahij) , Palgrave Series in Islamic Theology, Lawand History ed. by Khaled Abou El Fadl, (New York: Palgrave ,2011)

AQ: Please

provide text

for this

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the relative status of hadith and sunna

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