Dont bother Black Muslim. Am sure Mclinkin94, this great scholar, this great Muhaddith who has memorized Quran and got an Ijazah, who has a BA, MA and Phd in Islamic Studies, who has studied Islam for more than 20 years knows better than all the Imams and Scholars. He knows more than Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal, Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, Imam Abu Dawood, Imam At-Tirmidhi, Imam Ibn Majah, Imam Ibn Rahwaih, Al Ismaili, Baihaqi, Ar Razi, Al Hakim, Ibn Hibban, Ibn Khuzaima, Ad Daraqtuni, Ad Darimi, Ibn As Sakan, Imam Ashafi'i, At Tabaranee, At Tahawi, Ibn Al Qattan, Imam Malik, Ibn Manda, Abu Ya'la, Ibn Al-Jawzi, Al Baghawi, Ad Dhahabi, Al Haythami, Al Maqsidi, Ibn Hajar, Ibn Hazam, Ibn Kathir, Al Nawawi, Ibn Rajab, Al Baghdadi, Sufyan Ath Thawri, As Suyuti, Az Zahiri, Ibn Taymiyyah and the thousands of other scholars and their students who devoted their whole lives so to protect religion of Islam form falling into corruption and help the muslims of later generations. Who traveled thousands of miles just to authenticate one hadith. They faced hardship that you, me or thousand of us would face in a lifetime. They faced hunger, death, poverty, sold all their wealth for knowledge. Only to be shrugged off by someone sitting eating cocoa krispies behind a computer screen.
If he was so knowledgeable and searching for the truth, he would look into the Quran and listen to the evidences for the sunnah.
So hold on, people who get Ph.D's are always right? Knowledgeable people are always right, they are infallible. Most of them can't be wrong?
Well clearly you haven't heard of the scientific history in the united states. When the big bang evidence came out, nearly ALL scientists rejected it and appealed to the steady state model. So people you would just give an argument from authority and say "most scientists believe in the steady state model, so the big bang is bogus"
By, the way, do you think there are no Quranist scholars? I could name several.
Secondly, how do you know that information that they traveled so long distances to authenticate a hadith? By using hadiths...
Let's again quote the Quran:
"But none will grasp the message except the men of intellect."
The Holy Quran, Chapter 2, Verse 269 If we assume that you didn't bring any evidence for the authenticity of the Quran, then you can't say that 'the Quran did not authorize any other source' because we don't know if the Quran is true. I hope you understand what I'm saying.
Using hadiths as evidence is unjustified as they are unreliable.
Second, you determine the Quran is the word of God through usage of your intellect and a reflection of Allah's verses. The Quran tells us this! How could you ask this question?
This is one example, there are several examples: Quran (47:24) Then do they not reflect upon the Qur'an, or are there locks upon [their] hearts?
So you reflect on the Quran and make the judgment whether it is authentic.
As Muslims, both of us can say the Quran did not state to use hadiths to judge whether it is authentic. It said to use your intellect.
Everything you had to show me was evidence for the authenticity of the Quran.
The evidence for the authenticity of the Quran is the content of the Quran and its numerical characteristics
It's not that I can't answer yor point about the Quran being the only source or the Quran being explained in details, but its irrelevant to what we are discussing. We will discuss it later. What I can say for now, and I will leave you and all other Muslims to think about this, is that, I don't believe you are right and 99.99% of Muslim scholars are wrong. All of them have read these verses. How could not a single scholar except Rashad Khalifa (who is not a scholar), some Muslims who follow their desires, and you, undestand it in the right way?
NO. it is not irrelevant to what we are discussing. The Quran did not authorize any hadith. And as a Muslim, that should really speak to you!
Secondly, the argument from authority does not mean the are necessarily correct. Just because you are unaware of the various Quranist scholars doesn't mean they don't exist. Secondly, the majority opinion of scholars is not valid. The majority view again in science when Darwin's book came out was the evolution is bogus, but they were wrong. The majority view in nazi Germany was that blond haired blue eyed people are the supreme late. Remember what I said earlier about the majority view back then supporing the steady state model rather than the big bang?
How about this, if you like authority arguments, I could just say I don't believe you are right and 99.99% of the shia scholars are wrong. They too have read the verses of the Quran and your hadiths. Do you see why this argument holds no water?
YOU need to show reasons to support hadiths
Is this how the Science of Hadith classifies hadiths?! Are you showing me how does a hadith look like or how does the Science of Hadith classify hadiths? Wow! I can't believe you wrote this. Simply, you don't have an idea about the Science of Hadith my brother. Sincerely, I'm quite dissapointed.
Now to the main point:
From what I have seen until now, its crystal clear the you reject history.
I have to recall some earlier posts from our previous discussion:
When we were discussing Quran 31:6 (And of the people is he who buys the amusement of speech to mislead [others] from the way of Allah without knowledge and who takes it in ridicule. Those will have a humiliating punishment.) You said that 'amusement of speech' refers to hadiths. We see that those people who followed 'amusement of speech' or like you say 'hadiths' will be punished. I said that 'how could so many Muslims, almost all of the Muslims be punished' and I used as an evidence the unambiguous, clear historical fact that Muslims, since the early generations, for 1400 years, are following hadiths. You said that this was circular argument because I was using a hadith to prove hadiths. I also said that, ok, if Muslims in the past followed only the Quran, how did they dissapear? We see many small sects surviving for centuries. How could theose Muslims just dissapear? There was no answer from you. From what you said, it was clear that you rejected history, you rejected something which is known, a clear historical fact. This is important to what we are discussing now.
Being disappointed is not an argument as I am disappointed of all these so called Muslims who reject Allah's words in saying the Quran is complete and fully detailed.
Next, I reject fabricated history or unreliable history like hadiths.
The amusement to speech does refer to hadith. Hadith is nothing more than a bunch of lies. How could so many muslims be punished? Let me ask you this, if the majority of students failed a test that was fair because they didn't study and didn't obey the professor, how could so many students fail?..this is not an argument.
We don't know that Muslims have been following hadiths for 1400 years because the only way you know that is by referring to hadiths. So yes it is circular reasoning.
How did they disappear? How do you know they disappeared? By making the assumption that everyone followed hadiths?
It is not a historical fact, they are fabrications--they may contain some truth though--but we can't know which are truthful
'How do you know if the manuscript has the same verses revealed to prophet Muhammad? If it was not written during the time of the Prophet, it may have been corrupted by Muslims, the same way like hadiths, the Quran might have been corrupted.' By rejecting history, we can go even further and say: 'How do you know prophet Muhammad existed? Perhaps the Quran was written by Arab poets who combined verses in such ways that it looks like numerical miralce etc, etc, etc....' I can give hudreds of hypothesis if I reject history. Of course, what I said is stupid, but you are saying the same when it comes to the hadiths. I wonder, if a nonmuslim historian or academic asks us Muslims for strong evidence that the Quran is authentic, who is that stupid Muslim who will use the numerical miracle to prove that the Quran is authentic? You have to use historical evidence. Are manuscripts historical evidence? Yes, but then you should accept the whole history that is known to be true. The manuscripts by itself are not evidence, because you don't know what happened before the manuscripts were written. You have to accept the islamic history, and you can say for example that 'Muslims in the time of the Prophet learned the Quran by heart, and they recited it every prayer, and the arabs were known as people who could memorize long poems, and then they wrote it etc.' The historical evidence is indeed overwhelming. Then you can also use the numerical miracle as a supporting argument that the Quran was preserved.
So, if you reject history, then you follow your desires and you pick what is true and what is false. You can't say Quran was preserved while saying that hadiths are not the sayings of the Prophet. As you said in one of your posts, 'get informed'. Learn about hadiths, beacuse what you are doing is only following your desires, even if you said sometime ago that you were 'intellectually honest'; so, please be intellectually honest. I can say: If those Arabs were able to make thousands of false sayings, it was also easy for them to corrupt the Quran, or even to make it look like a numerical miracle. How could they produce so many sayings that were not said by someone? Please think about this.
You also said that you don't reject al hadiths. If this is the case, if you think that something might have been said by the Prophet, then this means that your interpretation of those verses in the Quran where it says that the Quran is detailed and that the Quran did not authorize any other source, is wrong by definition.
Okay so there is a lot here and I'm going to summarize. How do we know the Quran is the same one given to Muhammad based on the manuscripts? Again, the numerical miracle. There is no way for anyone to write a Quran with this numerical consistency unless they had a computer. IN fact, we found this consistency by using a computer and we couldn't have found it before. That is how we know the Quranic manuscripts were the ones given to Muhammad. So this pretty much covers the first half of your statement.
There is no various interpretations of the Quran. No amount of word trickery can change the fact that Islam is what God says it is in the Quran. Furthermore, there is a right way of interpreting the verses of the Quran and then there is a wrong way of interpreting the Quran and there is nothing in between these two opposites.Instead of saying that my interpretation of the Quran is wrong by definition by appealing to authority, show me why it is wrong and we discuss.
Your whole argument is that "scholars believe you should follow hadiths, so Islam says you should follow hadiths". This is not how we debate. Give me the arguments of the scholars themselves and I will rebut them here.
It is not possible that all of those sayings are not from our Prophet. Why would Allah do this to us? If we accept that hadiths, at least some of them are sayings of the Prophet, then your interpretation of the Quran is wrong, which means that Muslim scholars, for 14 centuries, have interpreted them right, and praise be to Allah for this.
It is known that for centuries, Muslims have been following hadiths. There are so many books written, all of them containing hadiths (don't say me now that all of those books are also corrupted and that they weren't written by scholars). The Quran (31:6), according to you, and all other verses which contain the word 'hadith' are refering to hadiths. The same argument again: all scholars, who were also linguists, have read those verses. They didn't interpret it as refering to hadiths of the Prophet. Verse 31 of chapter 6 threatens those who follow "the hadiths" with a humiliating punishment. If you believe that 100% of Muslims (excluding some of them + you) will be punished for this, than the discussion is over, and I can't say anything more. This means that the religion of Allah has failed totally, and this means that Allah is also a failure, everything has failed; OK, except some Muslims + you.
Why would Allah do this? Why would Allah test us? Because life is a test. You should know that very well! Hadiths are a test for humanity--and we are failing the test.
Why would Allah create islamic sects and different religions? Life is a test. The Quran explicitly state this.
It doesn't matter whether or not Muslims have been following hadiths. They are wrong.
I do believe Muslims will be punished for supporting hadiths despite Allah's clear words. Just like I believe that several billion people will be punished for not embracing Islam.
Allah doesn't fail, humans fail. Get that straight through your mind. Allah tests us and we fail to accept the message. Humans have been failing the whole time as the Quran consistently shows us. It is no surprise we are failing again.
For some reason Muslims love the prophet more than Allah and I have noticed this. People use the word Muhammad more than they use the word Allah. Ask yourself one more time who do you love more. You will say "of course I love Allah more", but do you? Do you? Don't you think this is an issue in our current Islamic world...Don't you think Humans are failing Allah's test right now?
And whoever obeys Allah and the Messenger - those will be with the ones upon whom Allah has bestowed favor of the prophets, the steadfast affirmers of truth, the martyrs and the righteous. And excellent are those as companions. [Quran 4:69]
Thanks Ali for bringing this up. I have answered this in many other posts in this blog and I feel like I am being repetitive. If you want please take a look at:
www.answering-christianity.com/blog/index.php/topic,1445.0.html :This is where I discussed nearly all of these points that Muslims tend to raise. I will explain once more:
Many people still quote this verse and say that it authorizes hadiths. Well, I have 2 verses that explain this very well:
"And obey God and obey the messenger and be cautious; but if you turn back, then know that the sole duty of the messenger is the deliverance (of the message)" 5:92
"And obey God and obey the messenger, but if you turn back, then upon Our messenger is the sole duty of the clear delivery (of the message)" 64:12
When we look at the above Quranic words, we note that God has defined very clearly the only duty of the Messenger, that being to deliver the message (Quran).
We also have in the above Quranic verses a very strong link between:
1- Obeying the messenger
2- The sole duty of the messenger was to deliver the message
1 + 2 = we must obey the message he delivered.
The word Messenger is derived from the word Message. A Messenger delivers a Message. If there was no message there would be no messenger. To Obey the Messenger would thus mean to obey the message he is delivering. the message that the prophet is delivering has been told to us in the Quran that it IS ONLY the Quran.
If we weren't to follow the messenger, then we aren't to follow the message which means we aren't follow Allah.
Say, [O Muhammad], "O mankind, indeed I am the Messenger of Allah to you all, [from Him] to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. There is no deity except Him; He gives life and causes death." So believe in Allah and His Messenger, the unlettered prophet, who believes in Allah and His words, and follow him that you may be guided. [Quran 7:158]
Same as above. We follow the prophet and therefore Allah through following his message because that is his sole duty. So we follow the Quran.