Scriptures
\r\n'The slaves of God can do deeds that please the Lord of the Worlds, deeds that displease Him and deeds that cause neither anger nor approval,' explained Shah Wali Allah. This statement underlined the great questions at the heart of the Islamic tradition: how should God be understood, what actions please Him and how should human society be ordered to accord with His will? To find answers, Muslim scholars turned to three sources. First, there was the Quran, 'The Recitation' bestowed from on high upon Muhammad. Held to be the word of God in Arabic, it was revealed through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad intermittently over the course of his twenty-three-year prophetic career. It descended in verses and sometimes in whole chapters to answer questions, to inspire, to warn and to provide glimpses into the power of the divine and the nature of the unseen. It was the one intact moment of God's instruction to humankind. As the years passed, Muhammad ordered and reordered these separate transcripts into chapters forming a stream of divine consciousness, neither a strict chronology nor a linear narrative. The Quran lived privately in the recitations, prayers and scattered parchments of Muhammad's followers until the revelation was formalized in one official copy some twenty years after the Prophet's death.
\r\nAlthough the Quran was the epicenter of the Islamic movement, it was not a lengthy book. Shah Wali Allah memorized it by heart before he was seven years old (many Muslims still do the same today), and only a fraction of its verses provide details about Islamic law or dogma. The five daily prayers and the details of the Ramadan fast are found nowhere in the holy book. These were provided by Muhammad's teachings and his authoritative precedent, which explained and elaborated on the Quran. Known as the Sunna, or 'The Tradition,' Muhammad's collective words, deeds, rulings and comportment were understood to be the Quran's message implemented in one time and place by the living example of the infallible 'Messenger of God.' How the Sunna was communicated and implemented in subsequent generations would be a central cause of diversity in Islam.
\r\nThe tendency of Western readers to assume that 'scripture' refers only to the book written by or revealed to a prophet and not to the prophet himself misunderstands the nature of scripture in Islam. The full systems of Islamic theology and law are not derived primarily from the Quran. Muhammad's Sunna was a second but far more detailed living scripture, and later Muslim scholars would thus often refer to the Prophet as 'The Possessor of Two Revelations.'
\r\nAlone, however, the revelation of the Quran and the Tradition or Sunna that accompanied it would be voices unheard. It was the minds of Muslims poring over this ilm, or sacred knowledge, that interpreted it and mapped it onto earthly affairs. The meaning of the Quran's language and edicts had to be determined, and the myriad sayings of the Prophet placed within a hierarchy of rules and exceptions. Ultimately, human reason was thus a third source of guidance. It derived scales of equity and principles from the revealed teachings of the Quran and Sunna and then reapplied them to those two sources to ensure that they were understood properly. It scanned and digested the natural world that God had created, reading the Quran and Sunna coherently against its backdrop.
\r\nCompiled From:
\r\n \"Misquoting Muhammad\" - Jonathan A.C. Brown, pp. 17, 18