Were the Mu'taziletes, Batinis and Kalamist Quranist?
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Since none of them had any other source other than the Quran, does not that mean they were Quranist?
What else could they be? Maybe they were different Quranic interpretation that later became somewhat sectarian if they were sectarian at all. But if they had no hadith corpus, what else than being Quranist they could have become?
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Since none of them had any other source other than the Quran, does not that mean they were Quranist?
What else could they be? Maybe they were different Quranic interpretation that later became somewhat sectarian if they were sectarian at all. But if they had no hadith corpus, what else than being Quranist they could have become?
They sound like free-thinkers, liberals. Maybe they were quranists too.
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I believe they were what and how Muslims should be, and that those (called Moors) who ruled in Spain in the first hundred years were of that caliber, until they got phagocyted by Baghdad later on...
Since none of them had any other source other than the Quran, does not that mean they were Quranist?
What else could they be? Maybe they were different Quranic interpretation that later became somewhat sectarian if they were sectarian at all. But if they had no hadith corpus, what else than being Quranist they could have become?
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I think Mutazilas were Quranists, rationalists. Perhaps the group called Kharijis too were Quranist and I suspect that they were later defamed by negative propaganda and lies. As for the Batinis, they were reacting to formalism and rigid reading of the Quran... I think they were closer to Sufis.
Peace,
Edip -
I think Mutazilas were Quranists, rationalists. Perhaps the group called Kharijis too were Quranist and I suspect that they were later defamed by negative propaganda and lies. As for the Batinis, they were reacting to formalism and rigid reading of the Quran... I think they were closer to Sufis.
Peace,
EdipI see. I was wondering about that since many Sunnis call us Mu'tazilites. And without a hadith corpus its hard for me to see where else they would get their religious understanding except from the Quran and maybe philosophy.
Its too bad many of their works have been lost and we have to use Sunni sources to get what we want. However there was a female Harvard professor who wrote a book about the early sects and she said that the Mutazilite work has been found recently. I think her name was Aisha Musa. Arnold Yassin talked about her and she has a book out.
Maybe I need to read her book. There is also Ahl Al Kalam and some group called the Jahnami or something like that.
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Peace
As a Muslim, I see myself as a combination of the three Mu'taziletes, Batinis and Kalamist (the best of what they offer thereof), with the synergy that the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts...
i.e. this is what Muslims ought to be... -Allah aware- -Allah responsive- -
Ok so this is what I was thinking of
Hadith as Scripture by prof. Aisha Y. Musa
Written by Arnold Yasin Mol
Sunday, 24 May 2009 1305
book review by AY MolIn modern Islamic movements, a new trend has emerged, created because of the need to reform the Muslim society to make it progressive and 'to keep up with the times'. Famous reformers, Muhammad Abduh and Sayyid Qutb for example, were more focussed on the Qur'an and its message, than the Hadith and other historical materials deemed important as a basis for Islam. Their reason was that only the Qur'an could be seen as timeless and flexible in its usage and meaning so as to be applicable for modern society and knowledge. This trend was taken further, and eventually many reformers and groups became to renounce all historical material next to the Qur'an as unusable or even as false teachings, and have come to accept only the Qur'an as the major or only source for their ideas of what Islam is about.
These reform ideas have been seen as heretical by the majority of traditional schools in Islam and attacked and labelled as dangerous and blasphemous. As the majority of Muslims are still being deeply controlled by the traditional schools, these reform movements have always stayed a minority among the majority, and have been successful only in certain countries and social classes. But these 'Qur'an alone' reformers and followers kept popping up over the decades in all Muslim countries, and now in the age of the Internet have grown into a large community and are thus being taken more seriously, and are gaining attention and interest among the general Muslim public.
The 'Qur'an alone' or 'mostly focused on the Qur'an' movements are mostly labelled by the traditional Islamic schools as results of Western Orientalist research, who from the beginning of the 19th century have written many books critical of the reliability of the Hadith and other historical materials. Thus the 'Qur'an alone' movements are labelled as apologetic or caused by Western attacks on Islam, and thus are not based on Qur'anic teachings itself, but simply on Western beliefs and methods of viewing Islam. It is labelled as a 'Western caused' movement.
This tactic is similar to the treatment of the Medieval schools of Kalam and Mu'tazilah, who used Reason (aql) to interpret the Qur'an and its doctrines (tafsir bi'l-Ra'y). Most of these schools only accepted Mutawwir Hadith, historical reports that had multiple chain-sources. These were themselves miniscule in number compared to the accepted majority of Hadith based on simpler and more easily falsified transmission chains. And even the Mutawwir Hadith were approached with caution by these schools of Kalam. Many of the rational methods of the Kalam were taken to a certain degree into the later formed traditional schools, but their major beliefs on the Qur'anic message and their approach to the Hadith were rejected and deemed false, and thus non-Islamic (Western) teachings, created through the influence of the Greek philosophy.
When Muhammad Abduh, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, GA Parwez, Muhammad Iqbal and other reformers in the 19th and 20th century came to use the same arguments and conclusions as the Mu'tazilah, while most of the time not ever referring to them, they were labelled as neo-Mu'tazilah, conforming to the Western (and colonial ruler) judgment on Islam and its history.
They were accused of blindly believing Orientalists such as Goldziher, Schacht, Muir and others who attacked Islamic history as unreliable and many Qur'an interpretations as illogical and superstitious. Scholar Daniel Brown in his book "Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought" began to research these reformers and their methods and came to very different conclusions. According to him, many of these reformers based their ideas on the Qur'an itself and their personal research into the historical reliability of Islamic records, and believed to have found contradictions and falsified records. Thus these reformers came to the same conclusions as several Orientalists, but were not influenced by them. The traditional schools still outlawed their works or ordered rulings their work must not be read, and so many of the reformist ideas never gained firm ground in the Muslim mind.
http//islamicreform.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77hadith-as-scripture-by-prof-aisha-y-musa&catid=37quran&Itemid=65
The problem here is its not always accurate to simply look at what their opnenets focussed on as the issue of free-will could mean pre-islamic paganism fatality concept that the Mutazilites were countering. We know pagans believed that fate is not controlled by the gods who themselves fell under the influence of fate or nature.
Also the issue of kabira sins(great sins) could mean different for the Mutaziltes than what Sunnis may see as great sins.
What I want to know is what these non hadith sects believed about the rituals of Islam and what evidence they relied upon to validate it if they had no hadiths.
Maybe some break through will happen.
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with respects Bigmo,
just wanted to point out
Jahnami
can't be the name of a group of anykind as it does mean destined for hell. It's used by people to tell others off by calling them by this name.
peace
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with respects Bigmo,
just wanted to point out
can't be the name of a group of anykind as it does mean destined for hell. It's used by people to tell others off by calling them by this name.
peace
I don't know, I could have the name wrong. I am just wondering if any group of people who identified themselves with Quran and Muhammad had no hadith corpus, what else could they be but Quranist? All the other sects that came after the Mu'tazilites and co. like Sunnis, Shias, Zaydis, Ismaelis, Alawis and Ahmedis later on, all had some hadith corpus and all are very similar to each other. All are very theocratic and all are very orthodox. One seems to have come to power with the help of the Abbasids while the others were a theocracy in opposition. And all these sects trace themselves to the battle of the Camel one way or the other, which is post Quranic by decades.